Offline with SIRI DAHL

INTERVIEW by MOLLY SIMMONS

Siri Dahl rose to fame between 2012 and 2015 as one of porns breakout bombshells. While we rarely see this kind of meteoric success, the landscape of her career was anything but a straight shot to the top. This season, Petit Mort got the privilege to talk to Siri about how she started, why she retired, and the reasons for coming back to the job she loved—this time with a twist. She is a bonafide gamer on twitch who self produces porn with her partner and independently collaborates with adult studios in LA. She is an inspiration for all who seek the independence to follow what makes them happy.

PETIT MORT (MOLLY SIMMONS)

First of all, thank you so much for being here, we’re so excited to feature you in the issue. Where I’d like to start is your work as both a porn performer and a streamer—which is really unique and is something that we’ve not yet featured in Petit Mort before. Can you share a little bit more about how you became a streamer, your relationship to gaming, and how your audiences intersect or differ?

SIRI DAHL

To start off, I always regretted not starting Twitch streaming in 2013 or 2014 when my fans were constantly asking me to do it. I think I resisted because I was worried I would have imposter syndrome, because I’ve never been a hardcore gamer. When Twitch was becoming a thing around that time, it was just super duper hardcore gamers that were on there. I was intimidated by that, honestly. So I never attempted it. But I always had the temptation, it was sort of a bucket list thing. I thought “oh, one day I’ll start streaming video games.” Then that Sunday came when I was stuck at home during quarantine early on in the pandemic. I launched my Twitch channel in May of 2020. Since then I’ve been continually growing my brand as a streamer and developing the type of content that I like to stream. I’ve invested so much money in really good equipment for streaming.

It’s very funny to me, because it’s not really a business yet – it’s incredibly challenging to build a loyal audience. Even though I already have hundreds of thousands of followers as a porn star, it doesn’t necessarily translate directly into streaming or streaming income. The income is nice, it encourages me to stay online longer when I stream, but it’s pennies compared to what I make doing my adult content. That’s a little bit of the fun part for me—it not being a huge income generator gives me more freedom because I don’t rely on streaming. Therefore, when I stream I do whatever the fuck I want.

My audience for Twitch is mostly my existing fans of my work in porn. A lot of European fans like to come watch my streams. I’ve noticed that and I thought that was interesting, especially because I don’t stream on European friendly times. They’re up at 4am to watch my streams. And I’m like, well, this is crazy. But I love you. Thank you.

The type of content that I stream is really just whatever I want to do. I could change the content of my streams to gather a larger audience on Twitch, but that wouldn’t be as much fun for me. I pretty much exclusively stream RPGs – I’ve done several, beginning-to-end role playing game streams. Not in one sitting, of course–But I feel like I sat there for a week. I generally only stream one game at a time. Right now I’m playing Mass Effect. So every stream that I do when a game comes on, it’s Mass Effect, and that will be the case until I finish it and then I will play a different game. A lot of streamers don’t do that, though, they’ll jump around. But again, that’s a style of streaming that is different from what I do because for those people it’s probably their primary source of income. So they’re doing things to continually expand and grow their audience. And I’m just over here like, I will stay at 75 concurrent viewers forever if it means that I can continue making just a tiny amount of money, but doing whatever the fuck I want on here–like if I want to play Mass Effect until I finish it.

There is another stream category called just chatting that I do a lot. And that is literally just what it is. It’s just chatting. My fans really enjoy that too. It’s like a cam show without any of the nudity or adult content. It’s literally just me sitting there like we’re doing right now. And I’m just talking, but it can turn into a Q&A.