Cuddled in her at-home office, a large casement window illuminates the room with natural light in the morning as her LEDs take charge at night. Affixed on her desk are a keyboard and a slew of study materials as she prepares herself, and her audience, for a day of properly productive work and a salve from the debilitating power of loneliness. “I’m so glad for the community that grew around StudyTme. I 100 percent believe had there not been the same people who joined me when they did, that this growth would not have happened,” she said in a phone interview with Lifewire. “I didn’t want anyone to know. I wasn’t expecting to be found by anyone. It was just supposed to be a way to keep myself accountable.”
A Chance Encounter
Mazza was raised in the shadow of Venice in a quaint remote area of Verona, Italy most famously known for being the regional backdrop of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. A city of lovers known for its intimate landscapes, Mazza says it was anything but. Her time growing up is marred by isolation. She would eventually discover, akin to those open-road American movies, that she had a desire to get out, see the world, and explore it. Mazza went from a relatively sheltered child to a traveling connoisseur with dreams of experiencing as much of the world as it had to offer the budding data scientist. “I got a scholarship to go out for a year to Taiwan, that’s where I understood I was meant to be in places. So after that, I lived there for two years… then I did a master’s in Paris. And then I moved to Grenoble for another year,” she said. The desire to “be in places” came to a halt when the pandemic forced everyone to be in one place. Unable to experience the world outside the four walls of her home, Mazza found herself back to a place she thought she left in her childhood: isolation. It was a challenge, and that’s when she discovered the connective virtual world of Twitch. Initially, it was just a way to use the connectedness to hold herself accountable during study sessions, but it quickly turned into something more. Within a month, Mazza became a Twitch affiliate and two months into her steady streaming she became a coveted Twitch Partner. “I thought to just record myself so I’ll feel a bit embarrassed if people see me on Instagram when I’m supposed to be doing work. I was not expecting to become a streamer or anything,” she said.
Industry Tastemaker
A year-and-a-half and 50,000 followers later, this overnight sensation has carved out her very own Twitch genre. The success of her stream at the height of the pandemic has shown just how diverse Twitch content can be. Long gone is the trope of the Twitch gamer. Twitch is being recognized for it all, from art streams and music to hot tubs and, now, study streams. “[Study streaming is] a very closed community from the streamer’s point of view,” she explained, detailing the dearth of study streamers during her initial launch period. “I always found myself a little lonely in the journey as a content creator, which is probably why it’s harder for me to realize that this can be a career path since I’m not sharing the dream with anyone else.” While Mazza shucks the ‘pioneer’ label, citing other streamers who came before her, she’s by far the most visible study streamer. Perhaps tastemaker is a better description. Since her ascent on the platform, she’s noted the emergence of other study streamers. What was previously an embryonic community, not yet reaching infancy, has morphed into a bubbling Twitch genre connecting a different audience to the streaming platform. All off the backs of StudyTme, the CEO Gang, and Mazza’s unexpected success. “I’m so happy that we’re creating more communities on the platform, but it also makes me sad that there’s a need for this kind of content,” she said. “I’m still trying to find my sweet spot of what I want to show [of] myself. And also, in the meantime, I’m learning more about myself, who I am, and what I like to do. Maybe [I’ll] develop StudyTme into something bigger? We’ll see.”
