How a Twitch gambling scandal spiralled into sexual harassment allegations
Last week, a major Twitch streamer admitted he couldn't pay back loans from friends and fans because of a gambling addiction. It was a shocking revelation but, as the week went on, the reaction from other popular streamers spiralled into a battle that eventually had nothing to do with gambling. Petty drama erupted, serious allegations were revisited, and tweets were tweeted and deleted. By the time Twitch reacted by banning streams of unlicensed online gambling sites, it was becoming hard to tell what had caused it.
The messy, unpleasant fight has been hard to follow, especially for those who don't pay close attention to Twitch stars or their personal connections to each other. Here's the short version of how gambling debts led to multiple apologies about seemingly unrelated events. It was a good week for TwitLonger, if not for some of Twitch's top stars.
Twitch's Very Bad Week kicked off on September 18, when streamer ItsSliker was accused of scamming both friends and fans out of tens of thousands of dollars. Screenshots that allegedly showed ItsSliker asking fellow streamers for money surfaced on Discord and Twitter; in them he offered vague claims about needing the funds for things like bills or flight tickets. The same day, ItsSliker admitted he was gambling the money away, saying in an apology stream that he «never intended on scamming anyone.»
The discourse around Twitch and gambling has intensified this year, and even though ItsSliker wasn't actively gambling on-stream, the revelation angered some major streamers nonetheless. Pokimane, Mizkif, and HasanAbi began calling for Twitch to ban gambling streams, starting up the hashtag#TwitchStopGambling. Hasan and Mizkif also streamed a call with ItsSliker, confronting
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