Is Kaceytron's intentional triggering truly harmful?
Trolls have been around since the beginning of the internet, hiding behind their monitors causing grief wherever they see fit. Anyone who’s been on the internet has probably experienced them. They’re not all bad; some trolls are good sports about their jokes and gags, but others take it too far. The question is, is there money in being a troll?
Kaceytron, real name Kacey, is streamer on the popular platform Twitch. Her stream is a new form of troll-stream that uses ‘triggers’ to get rises out her audience. Trolls have created streams before but the premise of these streams is that the streamer trolls other players in the game they’re playing, other people on Twitch, and anyone else external to the stream while their audience is in on the joke.
For example, the Twitch streamer and League of Legends professional player, ‘Sneaky’, often trolls his old Korean teammate ‘Rush’ by teaching him that lewd words have different meanings. The majority of the audience is English speaking and so understand the joke. As Rush understands when Sneaky is joking there’s not real damage done, it’s just playful trolling.
Kaceytron is different in that she trolls everyone in her stream, as well as people she plays with and other streamers on Twitch as she plays a character during her stream. She does this through the use of ‘triggers’ that she knows will (in her own words) “get a rise out of [her] audience.” For example, Kacey plays the popular MOBA League of Legends. In the game there are various rules and common knowledge - such as in-game roles, the basic objectives and the way people control their characters - that players will abide by and strike out at people who don’t. Kacey takes advantage of this knowledge to troll her audience.
In the game she plays the support role as a character called Morgana. The right champion for the right role: so far so good. The trolling starts as she get herself killed by the enemy team over and over again, all the while blaming her ADC (Attack Damage Carry, the role that plays alongside support at the start of the game) for not being good enough. This triggers the audience as the majority of them are players of the game and so know that she should be helping the ADC and waiting for them to attack the enemy team instead of running straight at them herself. Aah, but that’s exactly what Kacey wants! The audience start to send mean comments in her Twitch chat - as expected when someone on the internet is outraged. She responds by flat out denying that she did anything wrong, or worse, making up new ‘rules’ about the game like “I’m supposed to take damage, to make them scared.” This just stirs the pot more and entices people to flame (abuse) her more.
She’s got what she wanted, but how is she making money off this? On Twitch there's a setting where only Subscribers to the channel can talk in the chat. Kacey very frequently has this turned on, so that all those people wanting to flame her have to pay her first. There’s also a feature that makes all her donations be read out to her by a robotic voice. She has this on almost all the time and makes a point to react to every comment, again enticing people to give her money.
Some people might say this is extortionate, myself included, but her stream is still live as she’s technically not doing anything to breach the Twitch terms of service. Kacey has made money off the idea of being a troll; she might not be morally right here but she’s pretty smart nonetheless.
Fancy checking out Kaceytron's shenanigans for yourself? You can check out her Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/kaceytron
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