Boiler Room promises to tackle dull, sexist bros

Boiler Room have long had problems with people in their chatrooms directing sexist and misogynistic comments towards female DJs, and now it seems that they’ve had enough. The electronic music live streaming channel have said that they’ll be cracking down on offensive and abusive comments, including hiring moderators to clean up the comments section and raise the quality of discussion.

The announcement followed a set from Glaswegian DJ/producer Nightwave, who played a Boiler Room set in Paris last night. Nightwave is a great DJ, and she’s also a woman – and the negative comments seemed to stem entirely from this fact.

The issue had been bubbling up for a while. Earlier this week, Swedish club DJ Toxe played a set with Boiler Room that inevitably resulted in a score of sexist comments. DJs including Manchester’s Madam X highlighted the issue on Twitter, pointing out that it had become particularly prevalent since Boiler Room started broadcasting their shows on Facebook Live, inviting anybody with a Facebook account to comment. It had gotten bad enough that Nightwave was already expressing concern about the comments a day before her set.

Still, it’s important to remember that these aren’t isolated incidents. Boiler Room has long had a problem with its chatroom – as far back as 2011, electronic music journalist Angus Finlayson was writing on The Quietus that “it’s almost a Boiler Room cliche that members of the chatroom will complain about the distinct lack of kinesis on the dancefloor (also that they will pass comment on any unfortunate young female close enough to pick out).”

Still, it seems that yesterday’s actions were enough for Boiler Room to have finally taken action. After posting a statement on Twitter, they said that they’d begin employing moderators to sort out the problems. “The #1 worst thing about what we do are the trash comments”, they wrote.

Speaking to FACT, Boiler Room host and programmer Gabriel Szatan expanded on their earlier statement. “We obviously can’t just shut down any comment when someone is like, ‘They fucked up that mix, that song is shit’ but we can’t allow straight up vile transphobic, misogynistic, racist things to carry on,” he said, “We’re scratching our heads on determining how to monitor it but we know that today is the line in the sand. It [will be] difficult, but that’s not to absolve ourselves. As the biggest live streaming company in the underground that should stand (up) for its liberal values, we know now that it’s our responsibility to lead the field.”

Check out some of their tweets below, as well as some of Nightwave’s wonderful responses to the haters.