When you’re growing up, learning your times tables and being socially conditioned, gossip is taught to be the domain of girls; not something for the men and boys who are above such toxic trivialities.

As someone who has spent over half their life working in male-dominated industries, I can anecdotally disagree – but I don’t even need to state a case anymore, because all you need to do is look at esports Twitter.

As an industry, esports is sectioned off based on games and publishers. While you get crossover between titles, audiences are typically devoted to players, teams and the game they play. Esports Twitter, however, is where those streams cross and merge based almost entirely on one thing; gossip. And because you can publish under the blanket of anonimity on Twitter, you can say whatever you like as if you’re behind someone’s back simply because you are faceless – allowing an army of fellow faceless to spread your opinion on your behalf. And if you’re actually considered the face of something, that army may happily spread your news – or fight – for you.

It is this very nature of Twitter that leads me to question why people decide to go forth and lay bare their more eyebrow raising developments online. It’s not that they shouldn’t have the right to, it’s about who gets swept up in their dustpan of debris. When you publish a post about leaving your on camera role, why not leave it at that? Say your thanks, indicate you are taking a step back or a break and then switch off. Why share the gory details of how your underwear got dirty before airing it in public? Why bring other people into a conversation you didn’t ask for, hurting them further?

Perhaps being in the spotlight for so many years, accessible to the people who watch you, changes the way we see ourselves and our need to share. Instead of disappointing those closest to us, we think immediately of the faceless – but incredibly vocal – chorus, and treat them as the “sixth team member”. After all, these are the audience members who will reply to talent announcements questioning our absence when our face hasn’t made the cut. If you want them to be your weapon, you’ve got to feed them bullets.

I do believe there is an etiquette for broadcast talent to abide by online – without becoming boring. One rule I’m trying to adopt when I’m not included in something is to not tweet my disappointment, but my excitement instead – ultimately esports allows young people to achieve their dreams and we are so privileged to witness that, whether in person or online. Sure, I’ll give a lil’ favourite to acknowloedge someone who puts my hat into the ring, but not to someone who wants me to replace someone else who earned their spot.

It’s a hard thing to do sometimes in this industry because we always feel so utterly replaceable and our competition are our friends, but I think it’s really important to allow someone ownership.

Typically if I’ve not been able to take a job and someone else is offered the role, that’s a similar situation – the exception in the past being if I’m a regular face and about to give birth(!), and for the Reload Elite Series in Paris at EWC which I don’t work on (and they have regular hosts for regardless) because people online were saying I had chosen to work on VALORANT over Fortnite, which wasn’t true – and it was my daughter’s second birthday so I chose not to work at all!

That being said, when I’m an unusual face on a line-up I am running to Reddit to explain I’m just temporary.

I am not above being messy, by the way. I came into the industry imperfect, optimistic, hopelessly naive and looking to change things for the better – which led to me annoying people who then didn’t just passively hope I would stumble, but looked for moments where they could perpetuate the fall. I’ve also misconstrued what people meant in their tweets, and had to sit back, learn and apologise. And don’t get me started on the saddest thing I’ve ever written – right here on this blog – that was deleted before the Counter-Strike community even saw it, but is probably a factor in me no longer being part of that space. (It wasn’t offensive, but it was definitely the words of someone who put grief on pause for too long, describing the sacrifices made to stay in the frame.)

Perhaps this post in itself is too puritanical – who doesn’t jump into the drama and expand the updates the algorithym throws at us? But we can get into the fray without contributing to the fight. I guess the message is; think about the third party before you post.