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Estimated reading time — 13minutes

I am one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. I play games spanning all genres, and my streams consistently get over 20,000 viewers. I love what I do. It has taken me many years to get to where I am today, and not a day goes by that I wish I was doing something else.

That is until the horrifying events of last Friday happened, which have shaken me to my very core and left me wondering if I will ever stream again.

The stream started normally. I powered on my face cam, loaded up my Twitch interface, and then went live. My viewer count immediately jumped to 2,500, and within a few minutes was at 10,000. Although this has been the norm for at least two years, watching that viewer count rise so quickly still makes my heart race inside my chest. It makes me remember all of the streams that I did back in the day: when five viewers meant that my stream was popping off, and receiving even a tiny donation sent my head spinning through the clouds.

I greeted my chat, and then made a big announcement: for today’s stream, I was not only going to play the games of their choice, but I was going to play them with randomly chosen subscribers. I wanted to do something special for my sixth-anniversary stream, and the positive response was immediate. The chat board started filling up so quickly with comments and emotes that they flew across my computer monitor faster than my eye could register.

The event began successfully. I played a few matches of Overwatch with a guy who happened to be around my age (and who was hilarious) and then Dead by Daylight with a girl who had just finished high school. My stream quickly rose to 50,000 viewers, and might’ve even reached 100,000 had things not turned out the way they did.

As it stands, the stream took a frightening turn while I was playing with the third subscriber of the day—a seven-year-old kid named Tanner.

“Hello Dee!” he said after joining my discord server, opting to call me by my nickname instead of my streamer name.

“Hey buddy,” I said.

I could immediately tell by the sound of Tanner’s voice that he wasn’t any older than ten. For this reason, my initial thought was to discreetly find a way to dump him and then pick a different subscriber to play with. It’s not that I have anything against kids. I just felt uncomfortable streaming with somebody so young. I didn’t want to do or say something that might upset him, and I also wasn’t sure how my chat was going to respond. I have a zero tolerance policy for bullying or negativity during my streams, and the last thing I wanted to do was exploit this kid for my own personal gain.

When I turned my head to read the chat room though, the comments were nothing but positive:

He sounds so cute!

Come on Dee! Play with him!!

I wonder what game he’s going to choose?

These comments and several dozen similar ones flooded my monitor within seconds of Tanner’s voice ringing in my headset, so I knew that I had to play with him. If I backed out, then there would be an uproar.

I wish now that I had listened to my gut feeling and dumped him rather than put myself (and my chat) through what happened later. Looking back though, joining my discord server might’ve been the best thing that Tanner could’ve done that evening—for it increased his chances of making it through the night.

“Welcome to the stream,” I continued. “Do you know what game you want to play?”

“Minecraft!”

He gave the answer that everybody in the chat had predicted, which spent them spiraling into awwwws and silly emotes.

There was an innocence to Tanner’s voice that made me like him immediately. I could tell that he was the quintessential kid: fun-loving, excitable, and quick to laugh.

“Minecraft it is then,” I said. “Let’s boot her up.”

“Okay.”

We were silent as we launched the game. I knew that as a professional I should be making small talk with him, but I just wasn’t sure how to go about bantering with such a little kid. I don’t have any younger siblings or cousins, and my wife and I haven’t reached the point where we’ve decided to have kids of our own yet.

Luckily Tanner solved this problem for me.

“Should we play in my world or yours?” he said.

“Let’s play in yours. I think everybody would love to see what you’ve built.”

“Alright.”

He sent me an invite. I accepted it, and then spawned into his world.

“Come and find me so I can give you a tour of my—”

His voice was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass, which boomed through his headset so loudly I had to lower my volume. Based on the explosiveness of the sound, I figured that its source was close to his computer.

“Is everything alright?” I said.

“Something just broke in the living room,” he said. “Let me check.” I heard the muffled sound of him taking off his headset, and then heard him quickly pick it back up and place it on his head less than a minute later. “Dee,” he continued, voice a frightened whisper. “There is a strange man inside my house, and he just went into my parent’s room.”

* * * * * *

The stress in Tanner’s voice convinced me that he wasn’t lying. I could practically hear the tears forming in the back of his eyes, and would’ve tried to comfort him if the phrases “strange man” and “parent’s room” weren’t ringing inside my mind so loudly they were threatening to block out all reason. I felt like somebody had laced the Dr. Pepper bottle resting beside my mouse pad with acid; I was experiencing a bad trip, and this stream gone wrong was my own personal hell.

It was the realization that I was still maneuvering my character in Minecraft that finally snapped me back to reality. Here a child was in the middle of experiencing a life-threatening event live on my stream, and there I was mining a tree for its logs with my bare fists as “Subwoofer Lullaby” pulsed gently through my headset. The shame I felt at my selfishness, and forever caring so much about view counts and the fickle comments of my chat, still lines my throat to this day.

I closed down Minecraft, yanked my hand away from the mouse, and then placed my focus solely on the microphone and the sound of Tanner’s voice. Everything else that I normally cared about while streaming I buried under my desire to help this innocent kid, who probably fell asleep every night watching my YouTube videos on his IPad.

Doing my part to save his life was all that mattered.

“Tanner,” I said. “You need to call the police immediately. Are you by a phone?”

Luckily my voice came out steady. I was afraid that it would come out shaky given the adrenaline pumping through my body like a drug. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the comments of my chat room whizzing across my monitor like a broken slot machine. I did my best to ignore them.

“My phone is in the living room,” he said, voice just above a whisper. I could tell that he was only moments away from crying.

“Don’t worry buddy. I will call the police for you. Is there any place that you can hide? Where inside the house are you? Are you in your room?”

“Yes. I am in my room.” His tears had started falling full force, making his voice nasally.

The distant scream of a woman erupted in my headset. The scream sounded painful, and guttural, as if whoever was making it was having their vocal cords torn out one thread at a time.

For one of the only times that night, the chat became completely still.

“You need to hide now, Tanner. Is your headset wireless?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Take it with you and crawl under your bed.”

For the next few moments, all I could hear were sniffles and the rustling sound of Tanner sliding under his bed.

“I’m here.”

“Are you safe?”

“Yes.”

“Ok good. Stay put

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