xQc’s whole deal is that he’s a provocateur. His entire career, he has built his audience by existing right on the edge of the line. He’s had five different bans from Twitch, for everything from watching the Olympics to showing gorillas having sex, and streaming as an agent of chaos has brought him huge success. None huger than his move to Kick, for which he has been paid an NBA-style salary of $70 million over two years, which could rise to $100 million. But that only makes what he’s doing with his time even more confusing.
On his first day on Kick, xQc streamed The Dark Knight in its entirety. I don’t pretend to ‘get’ xQc, and I certainly don’t get this. The Dark Knight is not a new or cult movie, we’ve all seen it before. If I was paying someone $100 million to host entertainment, I’d expect them to treat it a little more seriously than when my friends and I threw on a movie to watch in the background during pre-drinks 12 years ago. But maybe that’s the joke. An anti-joke. You pay all this money and he just watches a movie. Good one, I guess?
But as side-splitting as the gag of ‘watching a popular movie we’ve all seen before’ is, it’s also a DMCA violation. Usually I’m on the side of streamers with this, after they get stuck down for a snippet of in-game music or something else equally litigious, but this is flagrantly flouting the rules. With Kick wanting to establish itself as a legitimate platform and not just an Adin Ross machine, breaking rules like this so needlessly is foolish. So, Kick asked xQc not to do it again. Then he watched Breaking Bad.
This one, I kinda get. Breaking Bad has become a meme-heavy show, and many younger people know it exclusively from the memes rather than as one of television’s finest shows. So it’s somewhat funny to suggest watching it unironically. If you’re in xQc’s audience, I see that landing. There’s also the fact ‘provocateur’ is just the grown-up word for ‘class clown’, so if you’ve been told not to do something, the funniest thing is to immediately do it again. Of course that’s funny. But isn’t it less funny when you’re not doing it to an overworked and undermotivated teacher, but instead to someone giving you $50 million a year?
In a way, I suppose it’s more funny. I have to hand it to xQc, it’s the ultimate ‘I don’t give a fuck’ move. He’s not hurting anyone, not provoking any marginalised groups or targeting any individuals. He’s just watching TV, and he found a way to make that rebellious. I have to admire it. But again, I would feel differently if I was giving him $50 million a year.
It’s this untouchable confidence that Kick is paying for, but is this a light testing of the waters before pushing into the really extreme content Kick initially seemed keen to support with its ‘no rules’ mantra? Kick has nobody to blame but itself if this goes wrong, and ‘anything goes’ stops being such an effective motto when you’re shelling out nine figures for stars rather than just banging the war drums for viewers to get publicity. You can either be an edgy, underground, rule-breaking platform on the run from the DMCA and all other laws, or you can pay headliners $100 million to represent you. It’s not both.
Clearly, this is a strategy Kick is going to build upon. Soon after xQc, Amouranth came along on another big money deal. That means Kick now has the biggest male and female streamers from Twitch. Much like xQc, Amouranth has also had frequent bans from Twitch, and has built up her audience through it. In fact, in our interview with Amouranth, she told us that these bans (while stressful) can increase notoriety which leads to popularity and growth in the public sphere and on other platforms like OnlyFans. Leading with ‘no rules’, making Adin Ross the face of your brand, then bringing in xQc and Amouranth is a bold strategy, but it feels like Kick is flying too high, its arms seared by the melting wax that drips down its flesh.
Time will tell how successful Kick will be, and whether others will join xQc or Amouranth either through salary payments or jumping off Twitch’s ship. Pokimane has already said she has no interest, and I think it’s more likely to be xQc’s fellow provocateurs who decide to follow suit. xQc is the perfect star for a platform like Kick, but if all he’s going to use it for is DMCA violations on old shows and movies, then that’s a big waste of time and money all around.