If you know you're autistic—either gone through professional diagnosis or you self identify—then you're probably at some stage of unmasking yourself. My diagnosis came in January 2024 and, although I knew before that, my journey really began after I got it in writing. I was working full time and masking heavily both at work and at home. Though I've been streaming since 2017, I never realized how detrimental my masking was until I severely burnt out in 2021 and deleted all of my social media and streaming accounts. When I finally built up the desire to return, I had to start from zero again.

Masking is "a conscious or unconscious suppression of natural autistic responses" (Bennie). In primary school, I was told I was "too weird" by classmates and "too passive" by teachers—so, in high school, I tried to stop being weird and passive: I made friends, joined dance club, and got a girlfriend—kind of. But eventually, my mask fell short and my school friends became less friendly. I couldn't hold my girlfriend's hand as I had just learned that physical touch was uncomfortable for me. This led to more bullying and isolation, and eventually led to me quitting school altogether.

At work, masking meant I went over and above to make people happy—extreme people pleasing. Often at the expense of my own happiness as I would take on too many projects. Since I refused to submit anything short of perfect, I would work under tremendous, mostly self-inflicted pressure. I'd get everything done with a fake smile, never revealing the mental torture that I was under to get across the finish line. There was a measurable pattern where I would work until I burned out, then I would quit until the burnout subsided before starting it all over again at a new job.

In streaming, I fell into the trap of "community building" above all else. People will tell you that you need a Discord server. You need a donation page. You need fancy overlays. Oh, scratch that, overlays are old news and now you need a minimalist design. Remember the tip cup? That thing was annoying as hell. In early 2021, my average viewers on Twitch were between 20 and 25. I ran an active Discord which I was moderating alone because that's how I do it.. take on everything myself. After a particularly heinous hate raid, I deleted the Discord server and erased my presence from the Internet without a word to even my most devoted community members.

Minimalist is Okay

Tip cups aside, there is no need for fancy overlays in 2025. If you're streaming video games, the focus is split between you and the games. There are elements that can be valuable and interactive without being distracting. I like a minimalist alert box. I also have my camera—and nothing else. No camera frame and no noisy extensions. They can be fun, but they can also be overstimulating and overwhelming. Especially if you're fairly new to streaming, adding more features is never my recommendation. Stick to simple and experiment once you're comfortable.

Your Camera is What Creates You

What I mean when I say your camera creates you, is that your camera provides your viewer with a direct feed to you—your facial expressions, your imperfections, or your jaw-dropping beauty. Whatever you look like, the camera adds humanity and authenticity to your stream.

With the popularity of VTubers and PNGTubers, we are learning that a persona representing yourself can still be authentic and impactful. Meaning you don't necessarily need to put your true face out there for all to see. Although, in an article focused on unmasking yourself, the thought that someone would wear a digital mask is somewhat ironic. But since autistic masking is not wearing a literal mask, I think VTubing and PNGTubing are not contradictory to the idea of being your true self.

What is hard to argue is the value of having a visual representation of you on the screen. If you are camera shy, PNGTubing is quite approachable without significant financial investment. In general, I feel like viewers are there to connect with the streamers who are streaming things they find interesting—whether that be games, hot tubs, or blog writing. It is harder to connect with someone when they are a disembodied voice. Like schizophrenia. But less scary.

Social Media is Stupid

Ignoring the fact that live-streaming platforms are a form of social media, let's talk about the mental impact of maintaining a Twitter account, a Bluesky account, or a Facebook page.

If you want to be successful on social media, you need to be active. Large companies hire social media managers, sometimes social media management teams, because they recognize the amount of work that goes into maintaining a relevant social media presence. How, then, is a small streamer expected to keep up? First off—you're not. You're never going to be Wendy's on Twitter. But, there are still an overwhelming amount of tasks to perform to maintain a growing social media presence.

First, you need to post relevant content regularly. It's important to note that regularly does not always mean daily. Regularly means at a regular cadence that the platform's algorithms can predict. YouTube has always been the easiest example of this, and is why creators who post regularly see the best results. Relevant content means it is high quality and original.

Second, it cannot always be about you. If the only thing you ever post on Twitter is, "I'm live right now on YouTube, come check me out!" You'll never see a single follower come over from Twitter. Reddit has the best rule on self promotion—the ten-to-one ratio. You should post ten things that are not about your stream or your content for every one post about your content. If you stream three times per week and post YouTube videos twice, you need 50 social media posts that are not about you, but are still high quality, relevant content, to hit that magic ratio. And, you need to do that for every platform that you're a part of. And while some posts can certainly be copied between platforms, that's not in your best interest, because each platform features a slightly different audience. What works on Twitter may not work on Bluesky, even though they are similar platforms. I have accounts on many social media sites, with username Ozject, but I am not good at maintaining any regularity in posting. I usually link to new blog posts, and once in a while I have a thought that goes on Twitter and Bluesky, but it's really kind of a waste of my time as I don't put in the full amount of work required to see any growth. What I should do is narrow down one or two platforms, focusing entirely on growing those. Maybe now that I'm finally writing that out, it'll actually happen. I probably choose Bluesky and Facebook, but we'll see.

Streaming as a Social Setting

If you think of streaming as willingly putting yourself into a social setting, you might feel the urge to mask. However, it is my belief that autistic people who begin streaming do so knowing what the expectations are and being okay with them. After all, we are in control of our streams and therefore we control the flow of the conversation and the activities.

When I'm playing an first-person shooter, like Apex Legends, I will often have viewers ask if they can play with me. Apex is a team game, but I find it very different playing with random people assigned to my squad than playing with people from stream. My answer to this question is always, "I'm not partying up right now, but I welcome stream sniping if you want to try and join me or kill me." Setting this boundary allows me to refuse to put myself in a position I know will be uncomfortable for me—that is, the feeling that I need to be at my best because someone has chosen to join me—without completely shutting down what may be a genuine wish to play the game together. I've had people join and kill me, but I've also had people join and protect me—even when they were assigned to an enemy squad. And a few times, those viewers have been in my squad and we get to celebrate because they did it.

There are some areas where you might find yourself masking. You might laugh at a joke in chat that you don't fully understand. You might enter your chat with pre-written conversations or rehearsed answers to questions you expect. You may conceal your interests to appear more approachable and less autistic to your viewers. These are some of the masking techniques identified in Examples Of Autism Masking (Guy-Evans). What makes live content so special is the unscripted nature of it. I have deleted entire lines, entire paragraphs from this very article—but if you were in the live with me while I wrote it, you would have been able to see those lost words. That's the experience we're trying to share. Laughing at a joke that misses the mark or preparing a script for every viewer isn't going to make you more authentic—it's going to make you uncomfortable.

Embrace the Crazy

On the topic of crazy, here's a picture from 15 years ago of a silly photo shoot I did to feel better about myself.

In a previous article {https://ozject.media/ozhole/autistic-content-creators-special-interests/}, I emphasized the value of embracing your special interests and making your stream all about that interest. In my case, my special interest is streaming. It's the technology. The trends. The equipment. I love everything about streaming, even though I may not be the most entertaining person (I speak in a monotone voice, I pretty much never look at the camera, and I can't make up my mind on a schedule or game to play long term). This puts me in an uncomfortable position for growth, because no two streams are ever the same.

But, when someone comes into my chat and asks me about OBS settings, or microphones, or cameras, my eyes light up like Christmas and I can go on for an hour, forgetting that I'm playing a video game as I go over every camera I've ever used or thought about using, why I chose to use it or not, and what I would do if I were a new streamer now. Topics about streaming are my absolute favourite things to discuss while streaming.

I think this may stem from when I was starting out, there was very limited information out there on how to stream. There was a lot of gatekeeping, and the hardware wasn't that great yet—this was before NVIDIA made NVENC a leader in the scene. This was before Silicon Macs with dedicated encoder chips. Streaming was hard, and people weren't really willing to answer questions. As I struggled, experimented, and learned, the scene opened up quite a bit. I remember Harris Heller being one of the first I saw who openly talked about settings and equipment, and soon after that, I was seeing it everywhere. I don't like people coming into my stream and saying, "Hey, I'm live, come check me out." But people who are here, talking about streaming, asking questions about my setup or looking for answers about their own—that's what I like to see.

This section is called "Embrace the Crazy," and in just a few short minutes, I've written over 350 words about this topic. It's safe to say that this is me embracing my own crazy.

Find your crazy, and build your stream around it. At least during the early growth phase, you'll find happiness and safety.

Speaking of Safety..

Stay safe. Existing without masks carries risks—because you may not be used to it. You may reveal identifying information about yourself without even realizing it. Take precautions, and if you're going to script anything, it should be with the goal of keeping yourself safe.

References:

Bennie, Maureen, “What is autistic masking?” Jan 11, 2022. Autism Awareness Centre, Inc. Accessed Oct 3, 2025.
Guy-Evans, Olivia, “Examples of Autism Masking,” Oct 30, 2024. SimplyPsychology. Accessed Oct 3, 2025.

How Unmasking Builds Authenticity