Popular Twitch stars under siege
Twitch’s biggest female stars are under attack. Valkrae, Cinna and Emiru were chased down in public, while Amouranth was robbed at gunpoint in the same night. Why isn’t the platform doing more to protect its top streamers?
Image by Cybernews
Twitch’s biggest female stars are under attack. Valkrae, Cinna and Emiru were chased down in public, while Amouranth was robbed at gunpoint in the same night. Why isn’t the platform doing more to protect its top streamers?
Twitch has created a new kind of celebrity. The Amazon-owned streaming platform, best known for gaming, is the internet's answer to Hollywood. Streamers have become celebrities in their own right.
But as female streamers, in particular, are being told to hire bodyguards after a spike of recent attacks, alarm bells are ringing. Shouldn’t the platform be doing more to help protect its stars?
Valkyrae, Cinna, and Emiru are all popular female influencers on the platform, fetching hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of fans in streaming events.
On March 2nd, one man tracked down their location on Santa Monica Pier and chased them, telling them he was going to kill them, after getting down on one knee to ask for Emiru’s number.
The three influencers managed to shout down security, but the sad thing was that they seemed used to the situation as they proclaimed, “Oh no, not another one,” to the predatory fan.
To add to the evening’s woes, one of the most popular influencers on Twitch, Amouranth, was robbed at gunpoint at her home, forcing her out of bed and having her cryptocurrency stolen in the same evening.
I'm sorry for not saying anything sooner I've just been in shock
undefined emi ⭐️ (@emiru) March 3, 2025
For those who don't know, I was streaming with Rae and Cinna last night and a man asked for my phone number. I turned him down, and he started following our group and threatening to kill us
I wish I could say this…
Pathological parasocial ties
So, what makes Twitch stars different from other influencers and celebrities? Well, Amouranth often posts adult-style content and blurs the lines between gaming and adult entertainment.
The parasocial relationships can border on the pathological, which makes the prospect of such an attack all the more hideous.
And due to this live location tracking feature for Valkyrae, Cinna, and Emiru, when the streamers log off, they’re still increasingly vulnerable. It’s not like in Hollywood, for example, when security or a chauffeur escorts you everywhere.
When you factor in that the live chats often get quite obsessive and that the streamers are receptive to live harassment, Twitch’s security operations should undoubtedly come under intense scrutiny.
Twitch's blind spots
Doxxing is another horrendous type of behavior in which public information about an individual, such as phone numbers or documentation credentials, is made available.
Even more ominous is swatting. This is when a troll reports a serious crime, so large SWAT teams are deployed to an influencer's home, in one case, when they had just finished streaming.
In one horrendous case of this, when transgender activist Clara Sorrenti was framed as having sent death threats to London City councilors, she was arrested at gunpoint.
While a solution from Twitch might not be clear-cut, a deep investigation and reform of in-platform security should be called for in incidents such as this.
Security gaps widen
Why should streamers have to take matters into their own hands by hiring security? Influencers quite commonly get banned for things like using inappropriate language or gestures that are non-malicious.
How can someone stalking and being inappropriate, even lightly in a live chat, slip through the radar? Water-tight moderation must be humanly possible, and we shouldn’t have to wait for AI to develop into a police officer.
These generic phrases, such as “We take the safety of our community very seriously,” aren’t enough in this kind of situation.
Influencers such as xChocoBars and QTCinderella are popular streamers who have spoken out multiple times about the need for more proactive measures. But still, it seems that things have to escalate to breaking point until it swells down again after a few days.
The constant public presence of such an influencer definitely exposes them to dangerous attention. When the influencers post on other platforms, such as YouTube or the Wild West of X, there’s no “that’s all folks!” or end credits.
When someone’s life has been threatened, perhaps you really need a better online bouncer like you’d get at a bar to throw them out first time – shame the perpetrator can’t be roughed up a bit as well.