QTCinderella created The Streamer Awards, and she’s not going anywhere

The job of dragging streamers into the spotlight is not easy. QTCinderella, a content creator and event planner extraordinaire has made quite a name for herself doing exactly that.

In partnership with Twitch, she hosted the Streamer Awards last weekend. It was one of largest streamer-run events for content creation. According to statistics provided by Twitch to Polygon, the award show hosted more than 300 streamers and attracted over 1.6million unique viewers. It was its second year. After the event, QTCinderella sat down with Polygon via video chat to talk about how she created the “Avengers” of content-creation events, and what it was like to plan an award show to celebrate streaming — even after she had to deal with being at the center of a deepfake porn scandal, where her likeness was used in explicit content without her consent.

QTCinderella has always loved planning events since childhood. “I had an Alice in WonderlandFor my 16th birthday, I hosted a murder-mystery event. No one showed up, so it’s surreal to see 300 people show up now. However, I love to connect people. My mom was the same way,” she said.

Photo by Twitch

She told Polygon she didn’t realize how her interest in events could apply to streaming until she attended another event, ShitCon, organized by friend and streamer Malena. “It was one stream with a group of us and we just played games. This was all. And from that, I realized how you can apply event planning to this industry specifically.” From there, QTCinderella asked her friend if she herself could plan a similar camping event in Los Angeles, which became one of her first main streamer productions, Shitcamp. The event occurred in 2021. QTCinderella continued development of Shitcamp, as well other events such as Christmas Concerts or Master Baker.

“My experience in event planning just went wild. And I found my niche. What I am passionate about is bringing people together. People say my group streams remind them of the Avengers. Like you finally see Spider-Man and Doctor Strange in the same room and you’re like, Oh my god.”

Since then, she’s been filling an important role in content creation: planning events. While it might be easier to focus on flashy stunts or marathon-long streams to rack up subscribers, the kind of work QTCinderella does is slightly more behind the scenes, but she’s no less indefatigable. She was disappointed to see that the existing esports award shows and video games didn’t have a comprehensive set of categories for streamers. This prompted her to create something that would fill the void.

For The Streamer Awards, she didn’t hire a production company. It takes a lot knowledge to plan an event like The Streamer Awards. Although she started the event by herself, Geoff Keighley was a mentor to her throughout.

“It’s really been cool because you would think sometimes people get too competitive, especially in this industry,” QTCinderella said. “He could have gone one route and just ignored me, but no, he reached out. He was like, ‘Let me know if you need help.’ And I was like, ‘Thank god, I do.’ And he’s been so helpful.”

The event was still challenging despite all of the support. Organizing streamers at one place is a particular challenge.

“I don’t think people realize every single person that you saw in a seat had a personal message from me, not only an invite, their RSVP, their plus-one details, their dietary restrictions, their seating assignment, their arrival time, their after-party information, their dress code information,” she said. “All of this stuff has to be communicated to 300-plus people and I am literally the one doing that.”

Her work highlights streamers’ work and brings them together. Many streamers do their work in their own homes. Streamers often have beef because most information is filtered through the screens. It’s easy to get swept up in gossip. Streamers can get together to share their professions at the award show.

“I genuinely believe that, you know, the facade of an award show, underneath it is a connection between humans. And that’s what’s so much more important than anything else — than any frog trophy — is getting these people together and having a family reunion once a year.”

Content creators face many challenges. Streamers on YouTube and Twitch must grind, and adapt to an ever-changing internet landscape, to get viewers and find the next “meta,” a phrase used to describe a popular game or trendy way to stream for a certain time. Pokimane and other major streamers have made the decision to reduce their streaming. Personal drama can lead to speculations and comments from others streamers. Polygon asked QTCinderella whether she had any reservations about celebrating this industry given the current state of affairs.

“I understand the concept of, Wow, we’re celebrating, you know, millionaires. Not only that, but we’re celebrating toxic millionaires,” she said. “I think it’s wildly misunderstood. Essentially, I think people think ‘gaming’ and they think ‘toxic,’ but you don’t know these people. Just because you see tyler1 yell at someone in a video game, he’s not a bad person. He’s actually really fucking kind. He’s very sweet. It helps to dispel some misconceptions about these people. Everybody has a facade. We’re all entertainers.”

QTCinderella knows firsthand what it’s like to be embroiled in controversy. Atrioc, a streamer and colleague, accidentally showed some of the open tabs from his browser during a livestream in January. A website selling AI-generated deepfake porn from other streamers was one of the tabs. One of these streamers featured her image among deepfakes. She endured online harassment for weeks after that.

QTCinderella, who was live streaming the event from her home in California at the time spoke about its emotional impact. “Fuck the fucking internet. Fuck the constant exploitation and objectification of women,” she said. Polygon asked about the impact of this incident on planning The Streamer Awards.

“I think any woman in the industry can attest that it is just an upward battle, you are always swimming upstream, and you can either give up or keep swimming. It’s exhausting. But I’m a fighter. And I’m going to stick around. I’ve started making jokes about it. That’s something that I do when I am out of control of something that’s horrible that’s happened to me,” she said. “My intro to the award show was a joke about AI porn. It’s because you can make fun of it and have complete control. It is now my choice how other people see me. I am a victim here, but I’m not going to let that define me.’”

As for her own aspirations for the show and its future, QTCinderella doesn’t have something as formal as the Oscars in mind.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be polished enough to be at [the level of] the Oscars,” she said. “But maybe we’re the MTV Music Video Awards or something like that. Like, I will never be that polished, because that’s not who streamers are. I do want to represent streamers and we will be scuffed.”