September's livestream drama storylines are juicy.
First, we got the chess drama. Not necessarily livestream community alone, but since COVID twitch viewerbase has been surprisingly invested in high-level chess. It also helped that several grand masters turned out to be quite entertaining streamers - as well as massive drama queens. Who knew?
Anyway, the main story is that at a top-level chess championship, the current best rated chess player, Magnus Carlsen, lost a game to a up and coming player, Hans Niemann. Niemann is young, and a prodigy, but he's not on the same level as Carlsen, and he won using black pieces. A statistical anomaly.
Immediately after his loss, Carlsen resigned from the tournament, stating he "can't say the reason", because he'll get in trouble. The implication being that he's certain that Niemann cheated, but can't actually prove it. Accusing someone of cheating in chess is a serious thing, apparently, so Carlsen is careful with his words. Or non words, rather, as he has kept silent for the rest.
The chess world immediately went into shitstorm drama mode, with several other grand masters like Nakamura coming out and taking Carlsen's side, while Niemann vehemently defended himself (obviously). Then some more skeletons fall out of the closet, and it's shown that Niemann has cheated in the past, in online tournaments. However, he was 12 and 16 when those moments took place. Easily attributed to youthful idiocy.
As it stands now, well, it still hasn't been proven. Some theories state that he was cheating using a chess AI, and used something called a "sockfish" to communicate with it. Unlikely, since competitors are fairly tightly checked before being allowed near the board. Another is that Niemann may have a mole in Carlsen's camp, and was able to peek at his preparations and strategies. But again, it's nothing but suggestions.
Meanwhile, some drama frogs on Twitch chat made the joke that Niemann cheated using a vibrating buttplug to communicate with the AI, and it got picked up as a serious suggestion by official news outlets. Peak journalism there.
Second drama was less important. Basically, xQc, one of the biggest streamers on Twitch, got into a slapfight with Mizkif, who is also one of the biggest. The slapping was mostly about sponsorships, morality, and keeping promises. There was some slapping from xQc about how in the past, Mizkif streamed his then GF's podcast, because he was afraid it would get more views than his stream, and Mizkif slapped back by exposing xQc about ditching several meetups (including a charity thing) in favor of gambling on stream.
Yes, it has been rather well documented that xQc has a rather extensive history with gambling, often streaming literal casino websites, where he just spends thousands of dollars on a digital slotmachine. It has been a major point of criticism of him before, as he has a rather youthful , and impressionable audience. Who he willingly exposes to gambling. He also often took sponsorships from those gambling sites, being fully aware of his influence over young kids.
The drama further evolved when xQc's ex-gf came out of the woodworks, claiming his family is incredibly toxic, and a horrible influence on him. xQc then came and exposed more details about their breakup, and how she never get along with his family, despite the ex-gf's wishes to keep the details private. Obviously, he caught flak for that as well.
But, that drama took a rather abrupt step aside, when the whole Sliker story came out. It's fairly recent, so lots of details are still being worked out, but... Sliker "borrowed" over $300k from friends, fans, and other streamers, to feed his gambling addiction. He'd contact people, spin some bullshit story about how his bank got locked, and he needed 100, 500, or 1000 GBP for whatever reason. Mom needed a plane ticket, he needed to buy some food, whatever. He'd promise to pay them back, but of course, he never did. All that money went into gambling. After a while, he started to "borrow" money to be able to directly pay back others, effectively setting up a ponzi scheme.
Here as well, his ex-gf came out, said that his gambling addiction caused their breakup, and that she's afraid he'll take his own life. More and more people came forward with stories about Sliker asking them for money, with top "contributors" having given him $7k (which was a fan), $27k (another streamer), and mostly, $100k. That last number was from Trainwrecks, who has his own history with gambling and shady stuff, and agreed to give Sliker the 100k to pay off gambling debts, so he could have "a clean slate". Instead, it was used for gambling. Of course. He apparently even asked his own moderator team for money, and now that team is shitting all over his livestream. Setting the title to "i'm a thief!" and playing confession clips over and over, spamming his chat, and other shit. It's wild.
Sliker himself has admitted to everything, and has confessed that he needs help, and he's going to seek it. He also admitted that if this story hadn't been brought to light, he probably would've continued with his behavior, and is/was fully convinced he would be able to pay everyone back once he "wins big". Pure gambling addict mentality.
The drama expanded into the larger Twitch metasphere, with several streamers either taking Sliker's side ("it's an addiction!"), and others saying he belongs in jail. Some big streamers got into a call with Sliker, to talk things out, which led to more immature slapfighting.
Some streamers (mostly Minx, who is known for being a loudmouth) started saying that Sliker doesn't deserve a platform anymore, and that any conversations just worsens it all, that they are part of the problem for even trying to defend it, etc... In the other camp, the response to people calling for blood (sometimes literally, yikes) is usually that making light of a gambling addiction only makes things worse, yadda yadda yadda...
Meanwhile, Ludwig and xQc (yes, the one from the previous drama) have stated they will pay back anyone who lost money in this fiasco, stating "it's about the victims", and that it's about helping someone with an addiction. Of course, Minx started slapping on this generous move, by shouting that that'll only reinforce the behavior with Sliker, since he's now given an easy way out. A fair point, but still.
It's the most inappropriate people giving their uninformed opinions and fans taking it as gospel, typical Twitch.
So yeah. I'm way to invested in this. I always mocked my mom for following that stupid celebrity drama, and yet, here I sit, typing out a fucking novel for y'all. Shit's wild. Don't go to /r/livestreamfails, folks. It's toxic, full of vitriol, and loves to stir up drama.