Chess streamer Alexandra Botez was left red-faced after she accidentally went live on Twitch while making reaction faces for YouTube thumbnails.
2020 was the year chess entered the mainstream, and very few figures have benefitted from the surge in popularity more than Alexandra Botez.
Producing content alongside her younger sister Andrea, the duo’s Twitch channel has grown to nearly 700k followers, while their YouTube is rapidly approaching 300k subs.
The pair have provided tutoring to several high-profile Minecraft streamers, including Tubbo and Fundy, and were signed as official content creators for Team Envy in December 2020.
However, the elder sibling was left embarrassed on her unplanned March 12 stream when she went to record some reaction faces for thumbnails on her YouTube channel, but ended up going live on Twitch instead.
Botez’s face transitioned from shock, to disgust, to confusion, before she realized she had accidentally gone live.
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There isn’t so much a moment of terror at the moment of realization, as a mild piece of panicked acceptance. “F***!” she shouted, before quickly ending the stream.
I accidentally went live instead of recording thumbnails for YouTube🙈 pic.twitter.com/DXkAIdsoPF
— Alexandra Botez (@alexandravbotez) March 13, 2021
Several streamers pointed out their experiences of nearly doing the exact same thing, due to OBS having the “Start Streaming” and “Start Recording” options very close to each other.
OBS community moderator Matt Gajownik explained how streamers can avoid the same fate as Botez, simply by adjusting their settings to give an extra warning that they are about to go live.
“Highly recommend enabling Settings -> General -> ‘Show confirmation dialog when starting streams’,” he said.
Highly recommend enabling Settings -> General -> "Show confirmation dialog when starting streams" pic.twitter.com/YlPiltOL7x
— Matt Gajownik (@WizardCM) March 13, 2021
It goes to show even the smartest people can make mistakes like this. Back in 2018, psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson accidentally broadcasted an entire conversation with his wife after he inadvertently went live on stream.
Of course, Botez was only live for a total of 16 seconds before she realized her mistake, and, unlike Peterson, she has left her livestream up for the time being.
It’ll be interesting to see if any of these expressions actually make it onto a YouTube thumbnail; she certainly has a good variety to choose from.
