Last month, drama-baiting YouTuber LeafyIsHere shouted an internet-wide fist about the idea that Imane “Pokimane” Anys, the most popular female streamer on Twitch, has a boyfriend. It was the most recent evolution of a long-running thought: women on the internet keep their dating lives secret to offend gullible men to give her money. Yesterday, Anys posted an apology video in response to the boyfriend drama, as well as a whole lot of other things. Now it has been taken apart, shoved under a microscope, and returned to the drama machine.
Anys’ almost 16-minute “My Overdue Apology” video touches on a wide range of topics, including times in the past that they have issued DMCA takedowns of videos that include their footage as tweets. DMCA takedowns are a big deal on YouTube because many people worry that they will become weapons in the service of censorship. Anys says she did this not because the videos criticized her, but because she included content she had removed or because the videos were named with clickbaity lies. In her video, she even said she treated those situations ‘badly’.
Anys also apologized for using the N-word when she was a teenager, at a time when she was not as well known as she is now, but still had an audience. In a clip that she is estimated to be “about seven years ago”, that she can be heard twice using her while talking animatedly about how unfriendly someone (who is not mentioned in the clip) is. She also says she used the N-word in a tweet from “about five years ago”, which has since been deleted. Fans have been aware of these things for over a year, but Anys has nothing to do with the level of control that, say, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins did when he rapped the N-word during a stream in 2018, perhaps because their use of racist language occurred before Twitch reached mainstream levels of popularity.
“Although I never said it with ill intent or racial context or the hard R, I still want to make it clear that I do not approve of the use of that language,” she said in the apology video. ‘I now want my things or my silence not to be erased now to look different. I’ve commented on this in the past, but to be honest, my statements or comments were not even good enough at the time … I just want to make it clear that I’m really sorry when I hurt or offend anyone with what I said. I really wish I could go back in time and change the past. Unfortunately I can not. I hope that my behavior regarding language will speak for itself over the last few years and beyond. ”
Other apologies and explanations shared a consistent theme, centering around the perception of some people of Anys as a digital siren receiving donations from a procession of desperate saps and simps. First, she reviewed a three-month-old video titled “Simply goes pretty homeless for Pokimane” created by YouTuber It’sAGundam, which surpassed a fan’s tongue-in-cheek tweets. This fan said his savings are running dry, but that he would donate another $ 500 to Anys, and he further added that he was recently evicted and would “sleep behind a Starbucks so I can use the free wifi [and] donate the rest of my money. The same person said in another tweet that it was “a joke”, but that did not stop ItAGundam from posting a video in which he took the comments seriously and made his appearance from the fan.
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At the moment, Anys asked him why the video is sponsored, which makes sense, given that insults are not generally considered market-friendly, and YouTube has rules against running your own ads on videos that focus on “shaming or insulting an individual as a group” (although it is not always the case when it comes to actual removal of said ads). However, Anys still asked It’sundundam in her video.
“I want to sincerely apologize to both ItAGundam and the sponsor of that video for the comments and remarks I made,” Anys said in the apology video. “I fully understand the concerns of people to go after someone else’s existence, especially in a time like this.”
Later in the video, she addresses the fervor of having a boyfriend or not and her persistent silence on the subject, which LeafyIsHere mostly uses to fuel drama’s collective ID of YouTube, but which has also been repeated by figures like unscrupulous drama monger Daniel “Keemstar” Keem.
“I personally made the decision seven years ago or when I came into streaming that I did not want my personal life to be part of my content,” Anys said. “For me, this also ensures a healthier separation between my work life and personal life, which is an area where the rules are already quite blurred. I understand that some people could relate this to donations, but you could also argue that one can earn a lot of money by publishing the relationship or making content out of it. None of these things are completely wrong … I personally want to be able to experience my relationships without the control of an online audience. If you disagree, that’s fine. You do not have to support me or my content. ”
Despite what, on the face of it, is a pretty rational explanation for drawing a line in the sand, especially for someone whose fans regularly ship them with every male streamer they choose to interact with, many on YouTube en Twitter have reacted negatively. On YouTube, several videos mention their apology as “2/10”, with reference a now-infamous July tweet from Keem in which he rated Anys herself two out of ten. Some take issue with their statements on matters such as DMCA takedowns. Others continue to refer to the idea that Anys just wants to sift money from penniless young men who believe she is single. But while the content of men’s tasks can be detrimental – especially the idea that women are on the hook for fans who donate them, but men are not – the real point of all this is just a take, every take. As before Kotaku former reporter Cecilia D’Anastasio and Wired staff writer Emma Gray Ellis explained in in Wired piece about the Anys boyfriend drama last monthto, it’s all business.
“The circus industry’s industrial field that has grown around the volatile world of Internet celebrities depends on predictable responses to formula content,” the pair wrote. ‘It does not matter if she has a boyfriend, if her Twitch stream is actually funny or not; the content is not the content. The reaction is the content. Once the complex solar scandal starts publishing the drama, reacting to it, reacting to reactions to it, reacting to celebrities’ reactions to reactions to it, across every social media platform, all the time, until the next scandal happens. The result is often millions of YouTube views, and an awful lot of corresponding advertising revenue. It may not be good for high-minded public conversations, but it’s good for a lot of people wallets, from ‘drama channels’ to YouTube. ‘
It is a very unusual poisonous culture in a lot of ways, but powerful people benefit from it, and others can knock on the seedy underbelly so it stays.
Some Twitch streamers, at least, have publicly supported Anys’ decision to keep their dating life on the down-low.
“[There are] all these weird comments that people make, and they try and hyperanalyze, ”he said World of Warcraft streamer Esfand during a stream yesterday, referring fans who poke holes in a previous relationship between fellow streamers Asmongold and Pink Sparkles. “It’s just a strange thing.”
As part of his own stream yesterday, Félix “xQc” Lengyel also referred to an earlier era of Twitch, in which streamers were more forthcoming about their relationships, and streamers such as Reckful and Blue and Sodapoppin and LegendaryLea openly dated.
“If you have a super-out relationship or whatever, then the problem is that no human is perfectly ridiculous,” he said, suggesting a hypothetical situation in which a streamer regularly runs late, and his viewers get angry. “[They’ll be like] “He’s late because he spends time with her, not with us.” … You leave third parties, people who are outside the country [relationship], actually make a wedge between the people … In the past, in the Reckful era, there was a lot of that. I think almost every streamer, all great streamers, learned from these instances. ”
Other streamers, such as Devin Nash and Steven “Destiny” Bonnell, questioned Anys’ decision in doubt to make a video on topics such as It’sAGundam, given that some of her apologies simply return to the drama machine.
“I feel like she could have tackled a legitimate critique, but these fine stupid dramas, she feels the need to do, but she should not have tackled it,” Nash said. during a recent stream. “Do we even want to platform the people who are such unthinkable losers that even their attention is purely unethical?”
‘Imagine you’re making an apology video to a man who’s a TF2 avatar to shake the appearance of other people, ”said Bonnell during its own stream, referring to the fact that ItAGundam represents itself in videos with a digital avatar, instead of its own face.
Still, other streamers and YouTubers have supported Anys on sites like Twitter, saying they have them back, and it is unfortunate that she feels the need to apologize for some of these things. As for Anys herself, she states in her video.
“A lot of different opinions about whether I needed this or not, or if it flows into the drama,” she said said on Twitter. “[In my opinion] it is important to acknowledge if I have harmed others, along with an apology and provide accurate information about these specimens. ”
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