The Internet is now one of the go-to places to celebrate Pride Month and to connect with queer individuals, which often find great representation in Twitch streamers and content creators who offer a safe platform for everyone to be themselves fully. Among them, Veronica “Nikatine” Ripley sticks out for her popularity and for being always up for uplifting the voices of peer LGBTQIA+ individuals, especially those of minorities, like people of color and trans folks. Game Rant talked to Nikatine about what it takes to come out, to be a queer Twitch streamer, and much more.
Last year, Game Rant started a Pride Month Streamer Spotlight, which we’re happy to continue this year with several fresh streamers.
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Nikatine’s Coming Out Experience and Balancing Private Life Versus Online Presence
Nikatine’s handle comes from the time when she came out to her dad, with her stating that she wanted to be called Veronica, hence the short for it being “Nika,” and the rest is history. However, Nikatine was not done with coming out and discovering her own identity just yet and recently shared a tweet with another coming out story about being gay and in love with a woman. Still, her second coming out was not an easy one, because it meant worrying about sponsorships and managing her private life in contrast to her online presence.
Luckily, coming out is not always a traumatic experience, and Nikatine found all the love and the support she hoped for in her community and among her friends. No matter how challenging this experience was, it was also liberating to finally lift a weight off her shoulders and not feel like she was hiding something, keeping a secret from those who back her when needed. This also allowed Nikatine to set boundaries about what becomes public and what doesn’t, including her girlfriend’s identity.
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Nikatine’s Comparison of Tanking in Video Games and Protecting Others From Haters
Resilience is not often something people can learn, but rather an innate skill, a feature that one simply happens to have, but Nikatine’s story tells otherwise. When she first started streaming, Nikatine was worried about the things that haters and trolls could say to her to hurt her, which is often a reality in social media and platforms like Twitch. Being an openly queer individual can be very rewarding, but it can also attract the wrong kind of people to the streams who can say pretty much whatever they want in chat.
However, Nikatine’s negative experiences became a way for her to become indifferent to haters, and instead, they helped the streamer create an incredibly safe environment for herself and her followers thanks to the efforts of a team of moderators and the tools offered by Twitch. It’s indicative that Nikatine describes her experience and current role as that of a tank in video games, the character who protects teammates.
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What Can Change to Improve the Lives of LGBTQIA+ Individuals
Despite the world being in a much better place than it was just a decade ago with regard to LGBTQIA+ rights and safety, there is still a lot to do, and there are still so many positive changes to be made. Nikatine strongly believes that the narrative about trans people and other minorities needs to be told from their perspective because it’s the only way to have a metaphorical seat at the table when important discussions take place, be it regarding laws or something else. There is also not a lot of trans representation in media, even though some shows and movies are finally starting to feature trans actors and actresses for trans roles, which is a great way of telling authentic stories.
Pride Month is the perfect time to uplift the voices of those people who are hardly heard during the year, and it’s the perfect time to also become more accepting of those minorities. That’s why Nikatine finds it extremely rewarding to be a queer content creator on Twitch, as she gets the benefits of the platform’s reach to have a positive impact on other people’s lives, and that makes all the difference.
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What Nikatine Wants to See on Twitch in the Future
Although Twitch is ever-improving its means of protecting its streamers, there is still a long way to go. Something Nikatine would like to see is a collective block list that can be accessed by content creators in order to ban accounts within it that belong to people who have been hateful or trolled fellow streamers. Something like this is already doable on Twitter and through third-party websites by allowing anyone to subscribe to that specific block list and avoid unpleasant interactions without ever having to deal with them first-hand.
What Nikatine suggests is that there should be a team-based block list or maybe one that’s simply an opt-in feature for content creators to subscribe to if they want, so that the experiences of one don’t have to be the experiences of all. Twitch has already made important steps in the right direction with its moderation tools, and block lists would help keep minorities and LGBTQIA+ communities safe, which would be invaluable in modern times.
Check Out More Pride Month Streamer Spotlights
2021 Pride Month Spotlight: MermaidRoyal on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: PikaChulita on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: JeffBrutlag on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: LuxieGames on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: Breadwitchery on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: QueerlyBee on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: AshleyRoboto on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Spotlight: TaylorRynai on Twitch 2021 Pride Month Recap 2022 Pride Month Spotlight: Toph on Twitch 2022 Pride Month Spotlight: blizzb3ar on Twitch
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