Travel streamers give housebound viewers a chance to momentarily escape to exotic locations, sharing the eccentricities of the world and recording people and their customs from different cultures. Among these streamers, few are better known – or better praised – than Jinnytty, an English-speaking South Korean Twitch streamer (real name Yoo Yoon-jin).
Following on from our last streamer profile on Usada Pekora, this time we’re looking at Jinnytty’s rise to fame on live streaming. Jinnytty has used her travel experience to partner with various organizations, such as esports organization TSM and her agency UTA. Just recently, Jinnytty also signed with social media agency Gameplan Media to boost her online profile. Incredibly, among all IRL streamers (male and female), Jinnytty sits at #15 by hours watched this year.
In this article, we’re looking at the defining moments of her streaming career, and which streams are most popular among her fans, to gain an insight into Jinnytty’s content creation strategy.
Jinnytty’s Popularity in Taiwan and Successive Collaborations
When Jinnytty launched her channel back in June of 2017, her content focused almost exclusively on Hearthstone gameplay – either playing the game herself, or co-streaming masters of the game. She soon became popular within the Taiwanese community, jumping up to 332K hours watched in February of 2018. To embrace this section of her fanbase, Jinnytty attended a fan convention in Taiwan. She clearly caught the travel bug from this trip, and over the next couple of years, Jinnytty gradually grew her fanbase while traveling around Japan and the U.S.
When 2020 rolled around, the COVID pandemic came as a double-edged sword to Jinnytty’s content. On one hand, the lockdown boosted the number of viewers on streaming platforms. On the other hand, it also made travel virtually impossible. In February of 2021, Jinnytty landed in hot water when online commentators accused her and her brother of flouting quarantine rules. Jinnytty subsequently moved back to South Korea amidst controversy involving Mizkif and other streamers from the Texas-based OTK collective.
Jinnytty cooled off and amassed more followers throughout COVID back in Korea where quarantine rules were less strict. After the bans were lifted, she heralded her comeback with a 5-year anniversary Subathon stream in Europe that brought in 2.5M hours watched for July 2022. Off the back of this success, Jinny signed with TSM and was now on the road to top-tier steamer status. Her “Waddlethon” event brought her back to Taiwan and generated her highest monthly viewership yet: 3.6M hours watched in May of 2023.
At the 2024 Streamer Awards, Jinnytty’s immense popularity was finally officially recognized when she won the Best IRL Streamer Award (after having been nominated in the same category the previous two years). Following her big win, Jinnytty hit 1M Twitch followers on the 15th of March and cemented her place as one of the most exceptional streamers in the current streaming landscape.
Jinnytty’s Lockdown and Long-trip Travel Streams Entertain Fans
As previously mentioned, Jinnytty’s career has been shaped by two major trends: A focus on travel streams, and the COVID pandemic. These trends are reflected in her most popular streams to date. Jinnytty’s most popular stream ever, “Jinny’s Truman Show 139 Hours stream for 500K followers”, occurred just prior to her COVID controversy and brought in 1.1M hours watched over 136 hours of airtime. The higher lockdown-era Twitch platform viewership clearly helped Jinnytty find new fans.
In fact, many of her other top streams (all travel streams unsurprisingly) came after this newfound lockdown-era interest. 6 of Jinnytty’s top 10 streams were travel streams that took place after 2022. Most noticeable amongst these are the Waddlethon streams, which at first glance seem relatively unimpressive at just 200K and 191K hours watched each. However, when accounting for these streams’ lower airtimes, their average viewerships (AMA) are an incredible 15K and 12K, respectively. No doubt the endurance challenge of streaming for nearly two months straight got fans invested, plus returning to the home of her original core fanbase.
Thanks to the picturesque nature of Jinnytty’s content, she also has a strong following on social media platforms like Instagram (339K followers) and TikTok (219K followers), which newly signed marketing agency Gameplan Media will presumably help her to grow. Jinnytty still has a whole globe to explore, and plenty more content to create; perhaps a big-name collaborator could help her branch out into as-yet untapped viewers. Stream Hatchet will see how Jinnytty tops herself in the coming months.
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