This is the fifth edition of the Streaming Awards, and for QT it’s been the most emotionally draining rollout yet. As the show’s creator and producer, showrunner, talent wrangler, creative lead, and so much more (her only support is an assistant and a production team that she contracts), she controls the event to her precise liking and down to the last detail. But she is also the primary target for the ire that virtually any stream inevitably off-gasses—especially one that convenes so many of the scene’s stars, and deems a select few winners. A child of divorce, QT is used to being a “gatherer,” and she has found herself in a position familiar to many women: having to appease and soothe multiple, competing parties. But her flock is a sprawling group of young, fame-hungry (and indeed, famous), drama-prone internet stars. In her dreams, the Streamer Awards is the one joyous night in which all the beefs and betrayals fall away. But the livestreaming world is more toxic than ever, an around-the-clock popularity contest whose cruelty unavoidably infects the Awards. QT, meanwhile, has become exhausted, emotionally “numb,” and paranoid about things she says being twisted against her.

Most legacy media conversations about the streaming world center around reductive comparisons: Pokimane is the Charli D’Amelio of Twitch. Hasan Piker is the Rush Limbaugh of the left. This is mainly because people who still read typically never watch the banal and delirious daily livestreams that make people like Piker and Pokimane so famous. Readers are older, and the way to make them care about the new generation of media stars is to strip them down to something recognizable.

But QT doesn’t have a parallel outside the streaming world; she’s a workaholic who scoffs at the term “girlboss,” a woman known for cooking who’s the opposite of a “tradwife” influencer. Even inside Twitch, she’s small fry compared to the legends. She is, however, immensely influential, a popular loner who bridges different friend groups and knows all the gossip. Talking to her reveals a streamscape spilling over with highly complex beefs and lore and politics.

“Sorry our interview is turning into a therapy session,” QT says at one point. “I have a lot of big feelings.”

It’s a sunny winter day in East LA when my car pulls up at the end of the cul-de-sac in front of QT’s house. She shares the home with her two cats, dog, and boyfriend, the popular variety game streamer Ludwig Ahgren. Inside, there’s a kitchen with a gargantuan, fully stocked refrigerator; through some patio doors, a pool. QT shows me a side room with boxes packed with Peepos, the frog trophies she hands out to Streamer Awards winners, and a corner full of vintage Playboy magazines, her latest obsession. One, she excitedly tells me, includes a story about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Today is a hectic day for QT, who has never revealed her surname. (Her first name is Blaire.) After a night of insomnia that kept her up till four, she went on the science YouTuber Hank Green’s show. Then she recorded a brief stream, where she announced the Streamer Awards’ musical acts (Ironmouse, a Puerto Rican influencer who streams under the guise of a pink-haired anime avatar called a “VTuber,” performing alongside…Ty Dolla $ign) and her cohost Maya Higa. Later today, QT will record Wine About It, her gossipy podcast with the gaming streamer Valkyrae. In the evening, she’ll cook dinner and then work for hours before she hopefully falls asleep.