"What are you talking about? Like these mental gymnastics man."
All Apologies
It's only been a few days since gaming streamer Atrioc admitted to buying deepfake porn of his colleagues. But in the interim, all hell has broken loose in the streaming community.
Earlier in the week, Atrioc, whose real name is Brandon Ewing, tearfully admitted that he had purchased access to a website that showed nonconsensual deepfake porn of his female colleagues, after eagle-eyed fans noticed a tab with the page in one of his videos.
Now, discourse is rippling through the community. Take the male streamer MoistCr1TiKaL, who pushed back against some in the scene saying the videos weren't a big deal.
"What are you talking about? Like these mental gymnastics man," MoistCr1TiKal, whose real name is Charles Christopher White Jr, said in the exchange. "It’s not parody, you’re creating non-consensual content."
White kept at his clapback when still other defenders of the deepfake site chimed in, slamming their "degeneracy" and expressing surprise that he would see such "braindead takes" in his stream's chat.
Laugh Out Loud
On the other side of the debacle was YouTuber Ethan Klein, who, per a writeup from the Dextero streaming blog, got called out by his own filming crew when he reportedly had a technician edit a slowed-down clip of one of the affected female streamers' discussing the deepfake violation with Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song" playing on top of it. In viral video of the incident, Klein is heard laughing uproariously.
Following the stunt, Klein himself became the subject of fellow streamers' ire and subsequently issued his own apology video in which he both said he respected the female streamer in question and also seemed to blame his laughter on having Tourette's Syndrome.
Obviously, the streamers are not OK, and this whole fiasco could serve as a trial balloon for something similar in other industries where people don't have such goofy handles.
Let's hope, at least, that anyone who wants to make deepfake porn following this scandal thinks twice after seeing the surprisingly heartfelt protestations from both women and men in the gaming industry.
More on deepfakes: Trashy TV Prank Show Deepfakes Celebrities Into Jackass-Style Situations
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