Technology

A lot of victim blaming in these comments, which I find pretty surprising on a platform that's supposed to be crawling with leftists and socially liberal people

Twitch was started by a bunch of prepubescent rodents. They have yet to grow up.

You cultivate these parasocial relationships with people online who pay you for them. Like.

You should be safe attending an event like this. And doing so doesn't give anyone the right to you, to hurt you, or anything about you beyond what choose to share.

At the same time the entire streaming thing seems designed to prey upon lonely maladjusted weirdos, so while I'm not shocked that someone tried soemthing like this (I am shocked at how shitty the security was here), this isn't super surprising.

The entire thing feels exploitative and gross for everyone involved, both the streamers and the people watching / paying them.

I can't even watch anything on Twitch anymore. I used to watch moonmoon, gigaboots, cohhcarnage, northern lion, etc and I just stopped months ago. It's not fun anymore. I might tune in to watch desert bus or AGDQ but that's about it and that's just for background noise when those events are happening.

But the site, overall, just isn't the same. Maybe the content got worse or I just grew out of it.

Emiru did a short stream going into additional details about the incident, as well as some other fuck-ups by Twitch staff that weren't mentioned in this article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_USuIpVAqAw

tl;dw: Emiru calls out Twitch for lying about the situation in their official statements, expresses concern for what sort of response a smaller streamer would've gotten if they were attacked like this, and draws attention to Twitch's lack of security and professionalism. Twitch staffers originally laughed about the situation to Emiru's face, and didn't seem to care until the video went viral. They ran background checks on everybody who signed up for her meet-and-greet event, but the attendees were allowed to bring a plus-one with them, who did NOT have to get background checked. Twitch staff also allowed people to walk around even after their badges couldn't scan properly.

Also, because this isn't anywhere near the first time Emiru has been attacked in public, she points out that she's spent tens of thousands of dollars for her own private security, and wasn't even allowed to bring her preferred bodyguard with her because he's permanently banned from Twitch events due to restraining a stalker during a previous event.

Twitch fucked up big time here.

"To tell you honestly, I am a lot more hurt and upset by how Twitch handled it during and after the fact."

Man, I hate how hard I relate to this. I'm so used to creepy guys that it often becomes part of the background noise of being in public. I remember the first time I went to a kink nightclub, I was startled by how infrequently I was randomly groped; being in such a consent aware space made me realise how many people in a regular nightclub will use the crowdedness as plausible deniability in trying to cop a feel. That stuff is honestly so prevalent that the individual instances hardly bother me anymore (though thinking about how often it happens and how powerless women are to stop it does get to me)

However, sometimes, something happens that goes beyond this, and makes me feel genuinely unsafe and violated. Often, it's scary because it represents an escalation of harassment, such as a coworker who becomes increasingly invasive. There have been enough times where reporting harassment or an assault has gone ignored (or worse) that now when it happens, I feel desperately anxious in not knowing whether to report a thing.

Beyond the effect of the harassment on me, I feel that it's my ethical duty to report things like this. It would obviously not be feasible to report everything that was sus, but some things cross the line and need to be reported. However, my greatest fear in reporting something is that it may reveal the organisation to be shitty. The betrayal hurts more than the harassment. Even if it's a big company like Twitch, which you wouldn't necessarily expect to be giving a fuck, there's still the desperate hope that "the system" will respond to flagrant violations of codes of conduct (and also the law). It's demoralising when those in power act like sexual harassment and sexual assault don't have laws against them. This undermines the law, and makes it as though it isn't even there.

Twitch seems like a shit company that caters to shitty people. So none of this is a surprise

I can imagine that this type of celebrity attracts the most unhinged obsessed fans with borderline personality disorder and/or other potentially dangerous and antisocial behaviors.

It sounds like Twitch staff didn't handle this well and Emiru is calling them out on it. Even though they claim the individual was dealt with immediately, it sounds like it took Emiru pushing for it for anything to happen and that they pressured her to do in person meet and greets when she felt uncomfortable about them. Curious beyond that how could Twitch as an organization make things safer for streamers like her.