Valkyrae is fed up with constant YouTube viewer demands: “I feel like a zoo animal”

Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter is fed up with her YouTube viewers making constant demands while she’s streaming, admitting she “feels like a zoo animal” and struggles to stay in a good mood when her chat turns against her.

Valkyrae is no stranger to thousands tuning in to watch her stream games like Minecraft, GTA, and Among Us. She is, after all, the “Queen of YouTube.”

With more and more fans, however, comes higher expectations. Some fans simply want to see her play Among Us all day. Others would prefer she dive into Minecraft and GTA RP for hours on end. There’s even a loyal Valkyrae brigade that wants to see Hofstetter just chatting with her viewers the entire time.

The constant demands have Valkyrae “fed up.”

The problem, the YouTube star explained, is that her chat turning against her to make demands about what she plays often, reasonable or not, ruins her moods.

It has her feeling like a “zoo animal” instead of a streamer.

The issue came to a head again during her June 2 broadcast, when Hofstetter found herself torn between playing Minecraft with her OfflineTV friends, and a GTA RP court case that she had promised to attend as her character, Ray.

“Sometimes I just feel like a zoo animal,” she admitted. “Like a monkey you throw food at, tell it to do a trick, and when it doesn’t do what you want, you hate it.”

The main issue Hofstetter often struggles with is that a vocal minority in the chat can begin demanding she do something different ⁠— what they “really” want her to play ⁠— and the rest of her YouTube fans will take it and run.

The spam, she adds, makes her “a little resentful.”

“Let’s get this straight: I’m not doing this for anyone. I think I’m going to leave my chat in members-only mode, seeing stuff like that just ruins my mood,” she said. “It’s stupid because I’ve been practicing to make sure that my chat doesn’t ruin my mood, but these ugly comments, fabricated lies, they make it worse.”

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Valkyrae continued: “After today, I’m going to do my best to ignore those kinds of things in chat. I hate when it ruins my mood. I’m not as happy as I was earlier.”

“Someone pointed out to me that, sure, the comments in chat aren’t crippling, but they do affect me. And yes, they don’t affect me badly, but they change my mood, and I don’t want my chatroom to have that kind of power over me.

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“I want to have a consistent, happy, good stream the whole time. I don’t want to be excited, then go to down and stressed out. I’ll have to work on it.”

It’s not everyone in chat though, she concedes.

“Honestly, I feel like it’s just a vocal minority,” added Valkyrae. “I understand that the majority of chat is just chilling, having a good time, enjoying each game. A lot of people enjoy what I’m doing in the moment, no matter what. I just felt like I had to talk about it today; it was quite a bit worse than it’s been lately.

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“It’s just a vocal minority, but the vocal minority consumes the chat and it’s just so frustrating. I do understand that it’s just a small few though.”