Twitch’s hot tub meta may not be at its height of popularity anymore, back when the stars of the genre like Amouranth and Indiefoxx made it the biggest trend in streaming. But one streamer, Taylor Jevaux, has mastered the art of the hot tub – and it involves rarely ever being on camera.
With over 1.6 million followers, Jevaux is among the top 20 most-followed female streamers on all of Twitch – although over 1 million of this following spiked in May 2021, so it is potentially the result of a follow bot or error on Twitch’s end.
Although viewership dropped over the following 12 months, as the hot tub meta subsided, Taylor’s channel boomed again in 2022, with her average viewership rising to as much as 8,500 in June.
But, there is something very peculiar about Taylor’s stream, which sets it apart from almost any other: She is rarely ever actually on it.
Hot tub streamer stays off camera
Although each stream lasts roughly four hours, Taylor is typically not visible for over 90% of this time.
Instead, she stands to the side, just off camera, talking to viewers who simply stare at an inflatable hot tub for hours on end.
Throughout the streams, Taylor will continually reiterate that she’s “just about to get on”, and do regular countdowns – which often reach zero, and then nothing happens. Sometimes the countdown will just start again.
As chat spams messages like “scam” and “boring” – the view count continues to rise. Is this a new Twitch meta? Simply building up constant anticipation to the streamer eventually appearing in a big reveal?
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Eventually, Taylor will in fact appear, usually to perform body-weight squats in the hot tub for 5 minutes or so, before promptly moving off camera again.
Most bizarre, however, is that the viewership numbers are often highest before Taylor appears, and will drop once she actually gets on to do the squats or whatever task is on for that day.
Presumably, this is because people are tuning in to see how long it will actually take for the streamer to make an appearance; is the build-up more intriguing than the content itself?
Despite pulling in upwards of 6,000 viewers on most streams, and as high as 9,000, Taylor’s on-screen sub count is also suspiciously low, showing only 41 subs on July 14. According to Twitch stats website StreamsCharts however, Taylor’s sub count is actually as high as 1,200.
The chat on these streams is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather toxic. Many viewers bemoan the long wait times for Taylor to appear on camera, and are then hyper-critical when she eventually does make a short appearance.
However, Taylor doesn’t seem to care one bit. She may have fully mastered the art of baiting thousands of Twitch viewers all at once – and it’s certainly working.