Open letter to Natalie's parents

An open letter to Natalie’s parents,



I am not writing this to necessarily convince you of letting your daughter back on Twitch, but maybe in the hopes of you letting her go back to her internet use before this situation; and to shed some light on what you saw, and the Twitch community.



Firstly, I’d like to say that what you saw being said in the video was awful and not representative of the total Twitch community. Much like in real life, these people are a loud minority that make the rest of us look bad. These people abuse the power anonymity gives them, but I assure you their intent is only to provoke a reaction – the vast majority are just bored 16 year old kids sitting at home. As for the pictures/videos created involving your daughter, these are jokes (memes) made for the purpose of getting a laugh out of the people watching and the streamer; there is no malicious intent.



Twitch can actually be a fantastic place where massive amounts of good are done; Reckful (Byron Bernstein) himself has raised over a thousand dollars and donated to multiple different charities over the years. Other streamers like Sodapoppin (Chance Morris) and many others have raised over multiple thousands of dollars – here is a link to an article stating that $17.4 million was raised for charities in 2015 by Twitch streamers (https://blog.twitch.tv/twitch-gives-back-2015-charity-recap-ac9b0e1a15bd). Our community on Twitch may not be a conventional one, but it is a far better place than people like to make it out to be, and far better than what you have been exposed to. People across the world have met and formed friendships, played games with each other and enjoyed each other’s company for many years, exposed to cultures we wouldn’t usually be; these kinds of experiences are hard to come by, and I am a far better person for having had them.



This being said, I can see why having thousands of people interacting with your daughter (albeit the vast majority in an innocent way) could be unwanted – you ask for a certain level of privacy and we must respect that. What I would ask is that you consider letting her use social media again; not for Twitch purposes, but on private for interaction with real life friends. I’m currently in my first year of university as well (in England though) and I can vouch for the fact that social media is an incredibly integral part of social interaction at this stage of our lives. Being able to interact with friends when we’re not actually with them, and viewing posts to see what they’re up to is a very useful tool in keeping friendships alive (especially long distance ones). Not only this, but for gamers being able to use the internet to play games online is incredibly important to us – games are a huge part of our lives, and while others might frown on us for playing them, the relationships we build playing with friends online are some of the best. I know that Natalie had a group of friends from before Twitch that she would play games online with; it would be very sad if she could no longer do this. This is why I ask that you consider continuing to let her do the things she was doing before this happened.



I hope that I’ve been at least able to convince you that the internet (and Twitch) really aren’t terrible places, and have helped create some of the most amazing experiences for people that have been exposed to them. As for my reason for writing this – it is simply because I feel partly responsible, as a viewer, for what has happened; if Twitch hadn’t come into Natalie’s life, this wouldn’t have happened. Apologies if any of this comes off as condescending – I understand that you may already be aware of much of what I’ve said, but I included it all for completeness sake. Congratulations on raising a wonderful daughter.



Best wishes,

a viewer of Byron’s stream.

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