II.
As we walk around the sanctuary, Maya notes the cameras rigged throughout each animal enclosure.
The video feed isn’t solely for staff to observe Alveus’ “ambassadors,” as the team likes to call them. It’s for fans back home to watch along, too.
She credits Connor O’Brien, the nonprofit’s Director of Operations, for the complex setup. “I think it’s one of the most ethical ways to view wildlife,” Connor tells me. “The cameras are expensive, it’s hard to get into, but it’s been so well worth it. People get so attached to [the animals] because it’s so accessible.”
It may be a surprise for someone whose day job includes the title “streamer,” but Maya barely spent any time online growing up—or even playing video games. “I think I first started watching some beauty creators in college, when I was learning how to do makeup,” she says.
Around that time, friends introduced her to Twitch. She’d posted several videos on Instagram for fun, singing covers of her favorite songs. Why not stream them? her friends asked. “They thought I could make money that way,” Maya laughs.
On April 15, 2019, one stream took off in ways Maya never could’ve imagined. In between songs, Maya began describing a red-tailed hawk she was currently rehabilitating. Chat didn’t believe her. “‘You don’t have a hawk in your backyard,’” she remembers the hundred or so viewers saying. “‘There’s no way.’”
Maya disappeared, before bringing the bird back inside. She then launched into the presentation-style program she’d learned in school. “I said, ‘This is Bean. He’s a juvenile red-tailed hawk, the most common widespread bird in North America.’”
Some of her viewers clipped the speech in amazement and posted it on r/LiveStreamFails, a subreddit dedicated to celebrating streaming culture (and its heroes’ many misadventures).
The clip garnered two hundred seventy-five thousand views.
Maya’s supervisor at the zoo was stunned. “The events that we were doing, teaching kids—we would go to classrooms with, like, twenty kids at a time,” Maya says. “So the potential for impact [online] was very obvious, and very fast, and very exciting.”
Another thing she’d begun to realize was that hosting mobile events (as in, those away from the zoo) was a laborious process. Transportation often became a logistical nightmare. Sometimes the humans scared the animals; sometimes the animals scared the humans. With her newfound popularity on Twitch—and graduation quickly approaching—why not invest more time into presenting the same programs, only via streaming?
Following the viral clip of Bean, Maya reveled in her role as the Internet’s favorite wildlife educator, introducing her viewers to falcons, crows, and even raccoons. It was fun, it was stressful, and it quickly became a “real” thing. “I guess there were a lot of moments [in college] where I was wondering what my career was going to look like, because I had no intention of doing content creation as a job,” Maya tells me.
Her parents were a bit dubious of streaming, yet curious. “The first time Maya was home from college, she said she’d streamed last night and made some money,” Vicki tells me. “I was flabbergasted. Why would people pay her to sing? It did not make sense to me.”
Yet her parents had both begun working in tech in the eighties, riding the explosive startup zeitgeist that was spreading across Silicon Valley like wildfire. Vicki cut her teeth under none other than Steve Jobs, serving as his director of hardware quality at NeXT Computer before following him back to Apple (and Pixar, too, where she helped support the teams behind A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2).
“We know that there are trends, and they have staying power—or not,” she says.
At NeXT, their mission was to build computers that “our friends could afford to buy.” Vicki saw that mission turn from a dream into a reality. “I am holding onto one while I’m having this conversations with you,” she says, motioning to her iPhone.
So when Maya told her parents she was moving to Texas, linking up with the streaming community in Austin, they evaluated the risk against the rising popularity of Twitch.
Eventually, they obliged.
And by February 2021, Maya had opened her very own animal sanctuary.
As we walk around the sanctuary, Maya notes the cameras rigged throughout each animal enclosure.
The video feed isn’t solely for staff to observe Alveus’ “ambassadors,” as the team likes to call them. It’s for fans back home to watch along, too.
She credits Connor O’Brien, the nonprofit’s Director of Operations, for the complex setup. “I think it’s one of the most ethical ways to view wildlife,” Connor tells me. “The cameras are expensive, it’s hard to get into, but it’s been so well worth it. People get so attached to [the animals] because it’s so accessible.”
It may be a surprise for someone whose day job includes the title “streamer,” but Maya barely spent any time online growing up—or even playing video games. “I think I first started watching some beauty creators in college, when I was learning how to do makeup,” she says.
Around that time, friends introduced her to Twitch. She’d posted several videos on Instagram for fun, singing covers of her favorite songs. Why not stream them? her friends asked. “They thought I could make money that way,” Maya laughs.
On April 15, 2019, one stream took off in ways Maya never could’ve imagined. In between songs, Maya began describing a red-tailed hawk she was currently rehabilitating. Chat didn’t believe her. “‘You don’t have a hawk in your backyard,’” she remembers the hundred or so viewers saying. “‘There’s no way.’”
Maya disappeared, before bringing the bird back inside. She then launched into the presentation-style program she’d learned in school. “I said, ‘This is Bean. He’s a juvenile red-tailed hawk, the most common widespread bird in North America.’”
Some of her viewers clipped the speech in amazement and posted it on r/LiveStreamFails, a subreddit dedicated to celebrating streaming culture (and its heroes’ many misadventures).
The clip garnered two hundred seventy-five thousand views.
Maya’s supervisor at the zoo was stunned. “The events that we were doing, teaching kids—we would go to classrooms with, like, twenty kids at a time,” Maya says. “So the potential for impact [online] was very obvious, and very fast, and very exciting.”
Another thing she’d begun to realize was that hosting mobile events (as in, those away from the zoo) was a laborious process. Transportation often became a logistical nightmare. Sometimes the humans scared the animals; sometimes the animals scared the humans. With her newfound popularity on Twitch—and graduation quickly approaching—why not invest more time into presenting the same programs, only via streaming?
Following the viral clip of Bean, Maya reveled in her role as the Internet’s favorite wildlife educator, introducing her viewers to falcons, crows, and even raccoons. It was fun, it was stressful, and it quickly became a “real” thing. “I guess there were a lot of moments [in college] where I was wondering what my career was going to look like, because I had no intention of doing content creation as a job,” Maya tells me.
Her parents were a bit dubious of streaming, yet curious. “The first time Maya was home from college, she said she’d streamed last night and made some money,” Vicki tells me. “I was flabbergasted. Why would people pay her to sing? It did not make sense to me.”
Yet her parents had both begun working in tech in the eighties, riding the explosive startup zeitgeist that was spreading across Silicon Valley like wildfire. Vicki cut her teeth under none other than Steve Jobs, serving as his director of hardware quality at NeXT Computer before following him back to Apple (and Pixar, too, where she helped support the teams behind A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2).
“We know that there are trends, and they have staying power—or not,” she says.
At NeXT, their mission was to build computers that “our friends could afford to buy.” Vicki saw that mission turn from a dream into a reality. “I am holding onto one while I’m having this conversations with you,” she says, motioning to her iPhone.
So when Maya told her parents she was moving to Texas, linking up with the streaming community in Austin, they evaluated the risk against the rising popularity of Twitch.
Eventually, they obliged.
And by February 2021, Maya had opened her very own animal sanctuary.
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