Top Twitch star Pokimane slammed the League of Legends community over their response to her friends, LilyPichu and Michael Reeves, having a cameo in the Mid-Season Invitational groups draw.
Pokimane and many of her peers actually came up on Twitch through League of Legends, starting as LoL streamers before expanding into other titles and growing exponentially as content creators.
Since creators such as Lily have long been so interlinked with the community, she and Michael Reeves were invited to make a small cameo at the MSI draw, and before long, the backlash started to come flying in.
Tweets and various posts across social media were implying that Lily and Michael had no right being on the show, and before long, Pokimane made her thoughts on the issue known.
We aren't getting paid for this. They just asked me and I said sure can I bring Michael, that's it. Honestly regretting my decision from the backlash tbh. I didn't realize it was this serious.
— lily 💙 (@LilyPichu) April 22, 2022
Speaking about all of the negative tweets, Poki felt inclined to defend her friends and explain why their critics are wrong.
“I feel like this is one of the reasons the League of Legends community and game isn’t doing as well as it could,” she said. “I think League is a great game, it’s a really, really fun, well-made game. But some parts of the community just get mad over things that really don’t … it’s just… you know.
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“Lily, someone who’s been making League content for over 10 years and has devoted so much of her time to it, is still considered as random or someone that’s not relevant enough to be doing what she’s doing. What kind of copium are they sipping to be thinking that?
Timestamp 4:08
Poki went on to call out certain comments, questioning calls for others to take Lily’s place because they’ve got a better rank in League of Legends, telling fans to “put some respect on her name.”
“This level of toxicity for something this insignificant, that is meant to be entertaining anyway,” she said, clearly a bit perplexed by the thought process of critics. “I just think it’s a little unreasonable … It’s been really hard to convince myself to go back to streaming League, just because the community isn’t as nice as so many other games’ communities.”
MSI 2022 kicks off from May 10-29, and with all groups drawn, fans are now looking forward to the international League of Legends action.