Help yourself in order to help others: Talking to Twitch streamer Myrteya

Exploring healing, community, and a desire to stream simply for fun

This article mentions circumstances surrounding suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

There are myriad reasons that people join Twitch. But for Croatian streamer Myrteya, it was one of salvation.

“I was rehabilitating from a suicide attempt. And I remembered that I had an old Twitch account. So, because I was bored while I was rehabilitating at home, I logged in.”

After gaining access to her long-forgotten account, Myrteya (real name Matea) discovered the people she had enjoyed watching were still streaming. She also discovered ‘linaorsomething’, a League of Legends streamer with 8.9K followers. Lina’s community, The Cool Cats, became a home for Matea, until she decided to start streaming herself.

“I felt really lonely playing League on my own. So I loaded it up on my old, slow laptop and I just started to stream myself playing. I had no webcam, I had no idea how to do things. I was just talking to myself…But then I remember when I noticed there was one person watching, so I started talking to them. And then there were two people, and three. And, I don’t know, it was just really exciting. Then one day, Lina raided me [‘Raiding’ is when a streamer ends their stream by automatically sending their viewers over to another active stream]. I had no idea what a raid was but Lina just wanted to support me.”

Matea began streaming in February 2021 and now has 2.5K followers on Twitch. She has gone from mumbling to herself to engaging with a vibrant and active audience as she plays League of Legends and Genshin Impact.

But this isn’t simply a feel-good story of Twitch helping someone back onto their feet, as you’ll soon see. It’s so much more than that.

“Tiha voda siječe brda”

When Matea first went off to college, it was for BUSINESS. However, she quickly came to realize that the lessons of business school were at odds with her own moral code.

“Basically the motto was ‘anything that makes profit is worth it’. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want my job to be finding the best way to market a special box to children.”

Matea left business school in favour of a double major in German and Ethnology at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. However, her moral resolve and a desire to help others shine through in her work on Twitch.

“I just wanted to make new friends and play games with cool people”

Matea told me with a laugh. Matea’s Twitch and community, known as ‘The Magicals’, is all about playing games and enjoying the company of others. Viewers are welcome to join her League of Leagues matches at any point in her streams; she makes a point to respond to every message that comes in chat. Her channel point redeems are all about entertainment - making her say anime phrases or telling funny stories from her life.

Her screen name, Myrteya, speaks to this well. It comes from a mix of her own name and that of Myrtoessa, a nymph from Greek mythology who is widely interpreted as a nurturing water-bearer. The Nine Muses, also of Greek myth, were also an inspiration.

“I wanted to create something where people could just come and hang out and have fun. I didn’t want anyone to have to feel any pressure to talk or do anything. I just want people to have fun”

At the end of the day, Matea very genuinely just wants to be your friend.

And this motive is why Matea spurns the rapid commercialization and fight for space that is so prevalent across social media,

“You see all these TikToks that are like… “How to gain lots of followers really fast” or like “Here are tips for becoming super successful on Twitch” and I don’t like that. Why does everything have to be a competition? There is room for everyone. And if someone wants to make money, then that’s fine but that’s just not what I am interested in”

As with any social platform, Twitch is over-saturated by design. Owned by Amazon, the platform is built to give the illusion that anyone can succeed while ensuring that the people who do are the ones who generate the most for the site.

But for Matea, it’s just about being there and giving something for people to watch. While she does make some money from Twitch, she does not consider it her job. Currently, she works as a German-language customer service representative (being fluent in Croatian, German, and English).

“Doing Twitch full-time is a dream, but it’s one I think of as ‘if it happens, it happens’. I don’t look at my numbers after I stream because I don’t care if I had one person watching or 100 people watching. I stream because I want to and I want to hang out and play games with people. I have my sub counter but I don’t demand people sub to me or give me money. I don’t chase these big follow numbers or anything like that… I just want to stream”

Not a role model, but an example that things get better

To this end, Matea hopes that her streams can be something positive in the world.

“We talk a lot about mental health. Like, every stream, we stop and we talk about a different mental illness so that people know more about them and understand them better. We talk about LGBT things, like Pride. I want my streams to be a place where people can learn things, but also feel safe about who they are.”

Matea’s community Discord has a ‘venting’ channel and Matea makes a point of personally responding to every message in it.

Even before she streamed, Matea has always been one to accept others.

“I remember when I was at college, this girl asked if she could sit with me and my friends. I knew that people made fun of her because she was very tall. And I just thought that was stupid because I thought being tall must be awesome. I am very short so like, when I want to get a manga off my shelf, I have to stand on something to reach it. So I said that yes of course she could sit with us.”

And while she doesn’t view herself as a role model, she hopes that people can something inspiring in her work:

“I wouldn’t say I’m a role model…but I have been through a lot of things and I just want to be there for people who are going through things in their own lives. I want to people know that they are not alone, and there is someone out there who cares about them and hopes that they are okay”

“Tiha voda siječe brda” - it’s a Croatian phrase that translates as ‘The silent water cuts through the hills’ and it’s one that applies perfectly to Matea. She doesn’t crave a spotlight, yet still marks her own mark the world.

Reclaiming E-girl and loving yourself

Away from Twitch, Matea is also active on Instagram (1475 followers) and TikTok (302 followers). Here, Matea is a self-described ‘e-girl’.

For those unfamiliar, e-girl is a phrase that evolved out of the ‘Gamer Girl/Girl Gamer’ lexicon. According to an article from Vox, the first usage of e-girl was in 2009. It carries the same meaning as the Gamer Girl, aimed at conventionally attractive women in gaming and gaming-adjacent spaces as a way of discrediting and belittling them. The thought process is they use their looks and a flirty demeanour to get men to like them. When applied to Twitch and social media, there is often an implication that they are doing this to ‘con’ people into giving them money.

But for Matea, the self-described e-girl, it’s all just a meme.

“The e-girl stuff is just a joke. People are be like “ew e-girl” but what does that even mean? So I decided to play into it. I started using the meme and the joke because you can’t use insult me with it if I am already calling myself an e-girl”

And most of all, Matea likes the e-girl aesthetic.

“To me, e-girl isn’t a thing, it’s an aesthetic. It’s cute and sparkly and that’s who I am. So I use it as a meme, because that’s what it is. But it’s also my style and the way I like to look.”

Beyond removing the power of the e-girl insult from those who might use it, Instagram has helped Matea discover and love who she is.

“I used to hide everywhere. I used to skip photo day at school. But as I started taking pictures, I started to realize “hey, I’m not as shitty as I thought”. And it made me more confident. It made me less self-aware about wanting to fix parts of myself. It’s my way of saying this is who I am.”

And like how she hopes her streams can inspire others, she wants her presence on Instagram to serve as a beacon for others as well.

“We are very body-positive in my community. I struggled a lot with my body in the past but I feel more confident now and I hope my confidence can help inspire people to feel better about themselves too”

As with everything she does, Matea’s social media presence is all about helping others now that she has made progress in helping herself.

The importance of balance

Away from streaming, social media, and work, Matea enjoys a simple, cozy life. She enjoys anime and says she can often be found surrounded by pillows as she reads manga. In the before times, Matea was an avid attendee of galleries and museums, with her favourite being the various museums at the Vatican.

“I’m very cottagecore. I like cute things and going to interesting places”

However, as much as she recognises the importance of being away from Twitch, Matea often finds it hard to stay disciplined in taking those breaks.

“I understand that it’s important to take breaks from streaming and I do. But when I am away, I can’t stop but thinking that I just want to be streaming. My audience are my friends and I just want to spend time with them.”

Balance is something that every streamer has had to contend with, but for Matea it’s additionally hard. She doesn’t see an audience watching her streams, she sees a group of friends hanging out with her. And all she wants do is hang out with her friends.

And she has a community that loves her. Matea is often the target of trolls and often has her confidence knocked. Last week, she even briefly announced that she would be taking a hiatus from streaming after a particularly bad stream. But her community is always ready to

TLDR

23-year-old Croatian streamer Matea joined Twitch as she recovered from one of the lowest points in her life. She found a community that accepted her and gave her the confidence to start streaming.

What started as pure gameplay and Matea talking to herself has turned into a bright, vibrant community that often game together and show up en masse to each of her streams. When you talk to her, or tune into of her streams, she has so much energy and excitement. At one point in our interview, we went completely off the rails and spent a good ten minutes discussing the hilarious concept of putting some of League of Legends’ more hyper-masculine male characters in maid outfits.

Now Matea looks to use her experiences and the self-confidence she has gained to help those who tune into her streams. She pushes a message of not being afraid to talk about mental health, finding a way to love yourself, and loving what you do.

Making money is not her primary concern, going as far as to ignore her stream analytics. Because at the end of the day, she streams because it’s fun, not because she’s striving to make millions.

At the end of the day, Matea just wants to play games with her friends, and happens to stream herself doing it.

If a cute, cozy streaming atmosphere is what you are looking, look no further than Myrteya.

All images provided by and used with the permission of Myrteya.