What makes Autistic Streamers Different?
I’ve been streaming off and on since 2015, but I only received my autism diagnosis in 2024. In those nine years, I did a lot of things that streamers are supposed to do, but didn’t work for me, which often led to the off stages of the off and on streaming. It wouldn’t be until my diagnosis that I would start to understand exactly what things caused me problems, giving me the tools to come up with alternatives—or to simply go without.
Autistic streamers face the same challenges as any other streamer, but some of the most common pieces of advice you see for stream growth go against some common autistic traits. So, with that as the intro, let’s explore what makes an autistic streamer different, and why you should follow them and be a part of their community anyway.
“Set a Schedule and Stick to It.”
One of the first pieces of advice you see in any streaming guide is “prioritize audio,” but right after that is “set and keep a schedule.” Schedules are great for an autistic individual’s possible need for routine, but that routine is probably mapped out for the entire day, not just the streaming time. Further, any interruption during the day can lead to distress (Levine). I know if I’m not fifteen minutes early for my stream, I start to panic because I need about fifteen minutes to test my audio, set my YouTube description, test my audio, and mentally prepare myself to go live. How sensitive am I to lights today? Since I use two key lights while I’m live, there’s a delicate balance of lights needed to maintain the quality of my green screen. If something goes wrong, like my audio stops working, and now I don’t have enough time to fix it, I might start to fall out of that routine and the entire stream is at risk.
The solution isn’t necessarily to not have a schedule.. rather, it’s to understand potential barriers and minimize them ahead of a stream. When I had a stream scheduled at 4:30 PM, my son asked me at 3:00 PM if we could go out for an hour. That would allow me my fifteen-minute window, but leave very little time for any complications. However, family first—always. So we went. And traffic was a disaster, and we got home at 4:25 PM. I still went live, but I did audio testing while live and simply explained to my early viewers that I didn’t have time to test before.
Another factor in setting and maintaining a schedule is an autistic person’s relationship with executive function—or executive dysfunction, in many cases. In children, this may look like missing homework assignments, while in adults, it may mean wearing dirty clothes for a few days because you couldn’t will yourself to do laundry. For this reason, it’s critical that streaming remain a fun activity so it never becomes viewed as a chore.
Streaming is a Social Activity
Although streaming is a type of social interaction, it’s much more along the lines of parallel play, which is generally autistic friendly. Parallel play is simply defined as playing alongside someone, not with them. Dr. Regan describes it in a way I really like: a couple is having coffee together but one is doing a crossword while the other is reading a book (Regan). They still had coffee together.
Autistic creators can utilize a love of parallel play in most video games. Viewers who are either playing themselves, who have played, or who are interested, will enjoy sharing their experience, knowledge, or anticipation with the streamer. This is not unique to autistic streamers, but will give streamers like me a special kind of satisfaction as this type of play is so much more rewarding than cooperative or collaborative play.
Other social elements to streaming, like reading chat, can be challenge areas for the autistic streamer. But anyone who has decided to be a streamer has probably considered the challenges in reading chat. I use SpeechChat so I don’t miss messages—it reads them into my headphones, but it really only works as a beginner tool. Once you have an active chat, it can be very disruptive and overstimulating.
Setting Boundaries
I recently tried setting up a Discord server, only to quickly realize that it was having a negative impact on my mental health. Knowing that I would need to check it every day for inappropriate content, and that anything could happen when I was asleep, left me overwhelmed instantly. I could revisit a Discord server once I’m a big enough streamer to have a team of trustworthy mods, but as a small streamer who isn’t making a living at it, it’s just not feasible for me.
When you have a boundary that isn’t respected, it can trigger the fight or flight response—especially flight. My current run is not my first run at streaming—in 2021, I had built up to around 15 average viewers on Twitch, peaking at over 25, and was seeing growth with every stream. I had a big Discord server and a schedule that I was able to stick to. But without a diagnosis, I lacked the tools and understanding of my limits, and I didn’t recognize what it meant to be disregarding my own boundaries, and when fight or flight kicked in, I deleted everything—my Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok channels, all my social media. Collectively around 30,000 followers across each platform. Now, with the tools in hand, I’m slowly rebuilding. Even a few of my regulars from back then have found me again, but it’s a constant reminder not to exceed my limit, and recognize when a piece isn’t working and cutting it out early, rather than letting it fester.
A Positive & Inclusive Space
With autism comes a strong sense of justice and morality (Autistica). I don’t have a lot of rules on my stream. The first rule is that every comment should be made to lift others up, not put people down. The other is to keep real world politics out of our safe space. When playing games like Apex Legends or Marvel Rivals, which have notoriously toxic communities, being a beacon of smiles and positivity is how I differentiate myself from others. In a game where you can go into any stream and hear someone’s mic peaking while they shout, “Get shit on!” I want to be the streamer where whether I win or lose, it’s “good game.” When a teammate is doing something I don’t understand, and I ask, “What is our teammate doing?” It’s because maybe he knows something we don’t know—I’m trying to learn. Sometimes you learn that the teammate didn’t know what they were doing, and in that case they’re probably trying to learn too, so let’s assume we all learned something and move on to the next match.
I would be doing a disservice to the LGBT+ community if I were to compare an autistic’s experience in society to that of a trans woman. However, I think it’s fair to say that both neurodivergent and trans people have their own struggles fitting into modern society. This is not about comparing, but about understanding that everyone needs a place to feel safe, and when everyone is a username, a profile picture, and a line of text, there are no barriers to being inclusive. Going back to the first rule of the stream, using language that lifts people up—there’s no place for bigotry here.
Autistic Special Interests
If you find an autistic person with the same special interest as you, you’ll find a best friend for life. In addition to a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I also have a Master of Business Administration—and my specialty was Technology & Innovation, with a secondary specialty in entrepreneurship. In fact, my MBA capstone project was a business plan for streaming, where I did a deep dive into every aspect of being a streamer from the angle of running it like a business.
My special interest in all things streaming has been somewhat costly. I’ve owned nearly every product Elgato has come out with and have used several AverMedia products as well. My current setup includes two Elgato key lights, an AverMedia GC575, an Elgato 4K X, a Shure SM7B, a Sony a5100 with a Sigma lens, and an Elgato green screen—plus a bunch of accessories on top of those. I have spent years hand selecting each piece of equipment for its specific purpose within my stream, and while some parts are underutilized (looking at you, Stream Deck), overall I’m quite happy with my setup. I have a drawer behind me with old cameras, old microphones, and some old capture cards that I should probably sell, but I always think, what if I need it one day?
On the Ozject Media site, I started the blog with the goal of discussing autism. I called it the OzBlog, and while the archived entries still exist, it never really grew into what I had envisioned. I briefly thought about doing poetry, utilizing my BFA there, but found poetry both too personal and too depressing to produce regular content with it. I stream from the basement of my house, a little alcove I call the OzHole. I came to realize as I refined my approach to content creation, that the OzHole would make a great name for a blog about streaming. And since this site’s purpose is to ultimate sell streaming plans/outlines to autistic adults, posting free blog content of the same topic makes the most business sense.
If you come into my stream with questions about streaming, I am always happy to answer them. When I was starting out, I remember Mixer getting big and wanted to migrate to Mixer, as this was before my Twitch had ever seen any growth. I joined some Mixer streams and started asking streamers about bitrate on Mixer compared to Twitch, and as you might imagine, I got banned from several channels because streamers seemed to frown upon the idea of discussing streaming during livestreams. Right or wrong, I didn’t like that. So when someone asks me about equipment or settings, I take the time to discuss it. I don’t view others streamers as my competition—I view them as my colleagues. Gatekeeping doesn’t make sense. Reddit and other creators have come a long way since the early days of Mixer, and most information you need is readily available on Google—but this wasn’t always the case. There’s a reason the simplicity of Streamlabs drove a lot of people to that platform.
References:
Autism: The challenges and opportunities of an adult diagnosis, Hallie Levine, Harvard Health.
Autism and Relationships: Parallel Play in Adulthood, Dr. Theresa Regan, Autism in the Adult.
Autistic Strengths, Autistica.
