Emote Rejected As Obscene

[impartialsanity]

So, I mistakenly believed that using an ‘x’ to represent a cat’s bum wouldn’t be considered obscene. I based it on having seen what I considered far more lewd (gasm, primarily) emotes, and having seen cat bums represented with that in comics, cartoons, etc, geared toward all ages.

That said, it was denied and I looked further into the issue. I found the TwitchSupport post on Reddit stating that they had decided that anuses of any kind were not going to be allowed (presumably because it’s easier than trying to lay out specific guidelines on what might be considered safe versus obscene.

My artist, lovely person that she is, thought my idea of using a fig leaf was perfect. There’s no anus, and it’s a great classical art reference, where the leaf is often used to cover what would otherwise be considered obscene/embarrassing parts of the body.

Long story short, it was rejected again, this time with the chat code cited as obscene (“butt” same code as before, which was not mentioned the first time) as well as the emote itself cited as obscene.

This is the current form of the emote:

My only possible thought was that the leaf might somehow be construed as phallic? My artist is going to change the leaf itself so it looks a bit more like the classical sculpted leaf.

My frustration lays in the vague rules that I’ve read multiple times (about three times before I even submitted it the first time). Obscenity is clearly subjective, when Twitch is inundated with Gasm emotes.

It bothers me that something as simple as a cat butt is considered lewd, when a simple search of the term “gasm” produces dozens of emotes that are blatantly sexual. **On top of that, I have found multiple instances of animal butts (BTTV shared and channel-exclusive) which include an “x”, or cover the area with shapes like (I saw one with an actual graphic anus, but that was a non-BTTV Twitch-sub emote). This tells me that the guidelines are being inconsistently applied, possibly out of lack of clarity or because reviewers are told to “use their own judgement”.

I don’t want to end up being unable to provide my viewers with more emotes because I kept getting canned “obscenity” responses on an emote that has already been previewed by my followers—whose ages, at least insofar as they have been mentioned, range from pre-teens to forties. As a side request, please ensure NightDev’s guidelines regarding obscenity (especially if they are not the same as Twitch’s) are clearly outlined and followed consistently. I will also likely be following this up with an email to the NightDev team for better oversight and clarity.

[night]

We tend to have stricter guidelines than Twitch on allowed emote content, but in general “butt emotes” are disallowed on our platform (blanket ban to ensure fairness).

[impartialsanity]

I was going to try and send an email, but the contact form doesn’t seem to allow for me to do that, unless I want to lie and say I have an account issue.

I understand that BTTV/NightDev may only have a small team and limited time to respond to questions on this forum, but as a user, it’s incredibly frustrating to get what is essentially a canned response when I’ve put time and effort into researching the issue to ensure I provide more than what seems to be the typical “my emote isn’t stolen/lewd/etc” one to two line posts.

In particular, I would really appreciate replies directly addressing:

1. Inconsistencies in disallowing butt emotes — I’ve found multiple animal/fruit butt emotes just by searching the “butt/bum” keyword on your Shared Emote page (including, but not limited to a corgi butt with an x, and a text emote, code “BUTTS”, involving a speech bubble with “BUTTS” written inside). If I had easy access to Channel/User specific emote lists, I guarantee I would be able to find dozens of examples.

2. Choosing to have the stance of blanket banning butts, when guidelines can be easily outlined (no human butts; accepting animal butts when no anus is present; accepting fruit butts). And, frankly, animal butts not only appear in children’s media constantly, but I can readily link to book upon book where butts are the literal focus and the target audience is just learning to read.

3. Claiming a stricter guideline tolerance when there are 28 pages of Gasm face—an emote that is blatantly, unapologetically sexual—on the Shared emotes list.

4. Vague guidelines. At no point in the guidelines present on the Emote Submission page is there anything that really tells the user what they can’t submit. Returning to points 3 and 4, reading the Content portion of BTTV guidelines would set me up to believe that Gasm emotes would be disallowed, but that animal behinds would be acceptable. Yet BTTV essentially blames the user for rejections/bans.

It’s doubly frustrating because I feel like I completely wasted my artist’s time, because it took three submissions and this post to even hear that butt emotes weren’t allowed.