A popular Taiwanese streamer recently sparked controversy on Asian social media, after earning around $3,000 by simply streaming herself sleeping for five hours to thousands of her fans.

Wang Yiming, a former member of Chinese-Malaysian pop group AMOi-AMOi, joined Twitch late last year, soon after her music group disbanded, and quickly became one of the most popular Twitch streamers in Taiwan. She usually plays video games and chats with her fans, but yesterday evening, she decided to try something new. She logged into her Twitch account at around 5pm, but instead of her usual desk, fans were treated to Yiming’s bed, which she proceeded to lie on and go to sleep until about 10pm. During that time, she managed to attract tens of thousands of viewers, with a peak of 11,200 concurrent viewers.

All Wang Yiming did during her controversial stream was put on an eye mask and go to sleep, yet she managed to generate an estimated $3,000 in revenue from donations alone, plus the advertising revenue according to the number of people who tuned in. Some of the people watching her got into the stream more than others, commenting on her sleeping position, whether she had her mouth open, etc.

When the former singer woke up, she was shocked to see that thousands of people had watched her sleep for around 5 hours. Despite doing virtually nothing, she was the top streamer in Taiwan during those 5 hours.

While Wang’s fans seemed to love her new stream format, there were many on Taiwanese social media who criticized the current state of Twitch streaming, claiming that the success of the sleep stream confirms that quality content is inferior to good looks and a bit of skin to stare at. Some even called the people who watched Wang sleeping, “perverts”.

Interestingly, sleep streams have become somewhat of a trend on Twitch and other livestreaming platforms. For the past two years, popular streamers have been engaging in on-stream sleeping, with some allowing viewers to wake them up with donation notifications.

 

While Wang Yiming’ sleep stream was the most popular stream in Taiwan yesterday, it was far from the most popular sleep stream ever. In February of last year, at the height of the coronavirus lockdown, another popular Taiwanese streamer decided to fight boredom by broadcasting himself sleeping and reached a whopping 18.57 viewers.