Twitch streamer xQc breaks personal viewership record with Reddit antics
Twitch streamer and internet personality Félix Lengyel better known as xQc has set a brand new personal record of peak viewership in just two days on Twitch, reaching all-time high viewers of 293,000 while he was “modifying” the subreddit landscape of r/Place amid controversy.
r/Place made its return for this year’s April Fools Day, to be specific the subreddit was revived since its inception back in April Fools Day 2017. Put it simply, r/Place is a platform for a collaborative project and social experiment. This year r/Place quickly gained popularity among Twitch streamers, one of which is xQc and his community.
In xQc’s case, he has a large base of online community and his legion of viewers had worked to provide xQc a special spot within r/Place. The streamer’s community’s hard labor was rewarded by a huge portion of r/Place’s canvas. But things did not go as planned as xQc and his viewers left trails of unpleasant marks on Reddit moderators following their not-so-innocent image on the subreddit.
xQc, r/Place antics, all-time viewership
xQc and his community stormed r/Place’s canvas as soon as the special spot is given to the streamer. The 26-year-old and his 10 million Twitch followers, commonly known as “Juicers”, created an NSFW artwork in honor of the Canadian streamer.
Reddit alongside its moderators deemed the move as controversial and quickly censored the not-so-innocent art piece. It did not take long for the image to be covered in a black shaded area.
Since the Canadian streamer’s artwork is built on a collaborative platform, where individual pixels can be changed by each user, the only thing to do in light of the censorship is to return the favor back to Reddit moderators.
xQc led with huge disappointment spurned his viewers and encouraged them with a single mission in their minds, bringing the NSFW part back to its place.
This antic has affected xQc’s popularity on Twitch, attracting more people and Reddit users who are not familiar with his work, which eventually led to a surge of viewership despite the controversy.
The streamer’s previous popularity record was 220,720 and surpassed with his r/Place live stream, reaching 233,000 viewers. As the streamer and his legion of online fans continued their antics on Monday, earlier this week, the streamer’s view count has reached 293,000.
xQc’s response, apology, death threats
People that are not regular to xQc’s stream were frustrated that he and his community practically took over the platform. xQc then received backlashes mainly come from such concern that big streamers use their followers to easily secure a spot on the canvas. As a result, many were disappointed.
xQc shared his thoughts and addressed some of the backlashes, especially to the people that are not regular to his stream. For him, it was all about the fun, enjoyment, and making things different. He later apologizes on behalf of his community and revealed he received death threats for his antics.
“I feel like it was a lot of fun for everybody. At the end of the day, whatever you think is ‘destroyed’ and rebuilt, it gave you something to do. I’m sorry if I hurt or ‘malded’ you. I thought this was just a canvas for fun, on a fun website,” xQc said.
“I have gotten more death threats in an hour than I have gotten in the past six years combined from changing pixels from one color to another on a corporate website that makes your f***ing lights flash on your monitor.”
