Popular World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold has hit out at Twitch for supposedly allowing a member of their new Safety Advisory Council, ‘FerociouslySteph’, to make ‘discriminating’ comments.
Shortly after Twitch announced its new Safety Advisory council (a group of streamers, academics, and leaders that was put together to advise the company on online safety issues), one of the members received a lot of backlash over a series of clips from her stream.
Twitch streamer and council member Steph ‘FerociouslySteph’ Loehr was under fire after she made some comments during her recent broadcasts, calling for voice chat to be removed from video games and along with some controversial takes about “cis white males.”
WoW streamer Asmongold later voiced his own thoughts on the controversy during his May 16 stream, addressing FerociouslySteph’s comments and calling Twitch out for double standards.
“It’s ridiculous and at the same time this person can say negative things about white people and it’s fine, If I said that about black people or trans people I would be banned,” he explained.
“They do it and it’s completely ok and Twitch accepts it.” Asmongold claimed, comparing the situation to a classic fairy tale, “It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes and everyone is afraid to say what’s f***ing obvious.”
After claiming that many of Twitch’s top streamers such as xQc, Summit, or LIRIK would have been banned for saying something similar, Asmongold also claimed that it was unfair for people to be judged based on their race.
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“I think that it’s wrong if somebody is going to sit there and say that, as a white person, I find this offensive. I don’t want somebody to say negative, denigrating things about me based off my race,” the WoW streamer added.
Asmongold then finished by calling for Twitch to rectify this “discrimination” and admitted that he was offended by some of FerociouslySteph’s comments.
“I thought this was America where people get to be treated [on] how they act, and not based off what they look like,” he said, “this is plain f***ing discrimination and if anybody had said that about anyone else they would be off the platform but this person is being endorsed by Twitch and that is offensive to me, and it’s not fair, and its wrong, and Twitch needs to fix it.”
Following much of the backlash, FerociouslySteph later made claims that some of her quotes had been misrepresented, clarifying what she meant, on Twitter, about her voice chat comments.
I have never and will never say most gamers are white supremacists.White men have the most privilege when it comes to voice chat communication.This statement has riled more than a few white supremacists.Remember having privilege does not invalidate your hardships.
— FerociouslySteph (@FerociouslyS) May 16, 2020
Twitch has acknowledged the backlash directed at Loehr, but have claimed that she is being harassed. The platform told Newsweek “it is unfortunate to see a member of the advisory council targeted for harassment.”