\u201cI disconnected my mic because people were being a little creeepeeee,\u201d Jessie says in a singsong voice into the mic on her headset. A pretty 20-year-old with long blonde hair swept to the side of her face, Jessie is playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2<\/em> in a video on YouTube<\/a>. She\u2019s wearing a horizontal-striped tube top, and she looks a bit like a young Charlize Theron, if Theron had mermaid-length hair and breasts the size of small volleyballs.<\/p>
Looking at her YouTube comments, it\u2019s not hard to see what Jessie is talking about:<\/p>
Jessie is a young, attractive woman in a male-dominated community that is notoriously hostile to females. So it\u2019s not exactly surprising that she receives harassment on YouTube and her Twitch channel, where she regularly streams COD<\/em> and\u00a0League of Legends<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>
But because Jessie is Jessie Rogers<\/a>, a former adult performer who left porn in 2012 after shooting more than 40 movies, she receives much more vitriol than the average female gamer does on a daily basis. She also receives more positive attention as well: She has 75,000 followers on her Twitch channel<\/a>. As she explains it, \u201csome men just go crazy when they see a porn girl gaming.\u201d<\/p>
\u201cCrazy in a good way, or crazy in a bad way?\u201d I ask.<\/p>
\u201cBoth,\u201d she says.<\/p>
Rogers is far from the only former or current adult performer to have carved out a side career in the gaming industry. Porn stars have been increasingly gravitating to the gaming world, streaming on Twitch<\/a>, showing up at conventions, or just dropping the name of their favorite first-person shooter on Twitter<\/a>. \u201cNerd\u201d porn stars like April O\u2019Neil are G4<\/a> mainstays, and it\u2019s rumored that popular streamers like KneeColeSlaw <\/a>have previously worked as camgirls<\/a> (NSFW). There\u2019s even a website,\u00a0PwnedByGirls<\/a>,\u00a0founded by porn star Alana Evans, devoted to adult performers who game.<\/p>
\u201cI think adult performers kind of see it as a platform to pull in more fans, or cement the fans they already have,\u201d says Evans, a self-professed \u201cgamer nerd\u201d who originally founded PwnedByGirls in 2011 as a cam-based site where gamer girls would play topless<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cYou have girls who see it as a cool new avenue to reach more fans.\u201d<\/p>
The obsession with \u201cfake gamer girls\u201d<\/a> is deep-rooted in the gaming community, with gamers accusing attractive women of being \u201ccam whores\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and derisively referring to men who donate to female streamers on Twitch as \u201cwhite knights<\/a>.” But Rogers and Evans say it is worse for female adult performers, who, by virtue of the stigma associated with porn, already encounter discrimination on a daily basis<\/a>. When they move into the gaming sphere, such harassment increases tenfold.<\/p>
In 2011, when PwnedByGirls first launched, Evans publicly feuded with a female gamer named Ninja Girl Rachel,<\/a> who also streamed sexually suggestive gameplays. Evans says Ninja Girl Rachel and her followers accused her of ripping off her \u201csexy gamer girl\u201d concept and faking her gameplays, circulating a video that allegedly showed her playing Gears of War 3 <\/em>with a turned-off controller. \u201cI had telephone calls and voicemails. They called me threatening my children. It was over playing video games,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was very silly.\u201d<\/p> <\/p>
MissMiaRose<\/a>, an adult performer-turned-professional gamer who BTNSmash listed as the second-best female streamer<\/a> on Twitch, experiences harassment on the same level that Alana Evans and Jessie Rogers do. When I sat in on her League<\/em> stream a few weeks ago, which doubled as an informal AMA, within the span of five minutes she fielded comments such as, \u201cMia rose how is getting fucked for others entertainment? Must make ur dad proud\u201d and \u201cdamn ur such an ugly slut.\u201d<\/p>
But the primary difference between Jessie and Alana and MissMiaRose is that Mia has almost completed her successful transition from adult performer to legitimate professional gamer. With more than 60,000 subscribers and\u00a0a non-playable character<\/a> in\u00a0World of Warcraft<\/em>\u00a0named in her honor, she\u2019s now an established member of the Twitch community, streaming almost every day. Her success is largely due to the fact that, above all else, Rose has a thick skin.<\/p>
Mia started gaming when she was five-years-old, when her father introduced her to \u201cZelda, Secret of Manna, all the Final Fantasy [games].\u201d \u201cI was supposed to be a boy, so he was pissed about that, but he said fuck it and just introduced me to games,\u201d she told me. After entering the industry with her sister, fellow former adult performer Ava Rose, when she was 18, she briefly put gaming on hiatus until a friend introduced her to Word of Warcraft<\/em>\u00a0while she was recovering from cosmetic surgery.\u00a0She started streaming after receiving a shoutout from the pro gamer Towelie<\/a> on Twitter nearly two-and-a-half years ago.<\/p>
For the past few years, Mia has been adhering to this dictum on her channel, and it seems to be working out well for her. She\u2019s earned the respect of some of Twitch\u2019s top streamers, like Towelie and Athene<\/a>, and she\u2019s at a point where she can now pay her rent and earn a living off her gaming career alone. But by far the defining moment of MissMiaRose\u2019s streaming career came a few weeks ago, while she was signing up for a dating site.<\/p>
