Weekly Scroll: Twitch's Antisemitism Problem
Twitch and antisemitism, prediction market theories, and a big whale problem
Welcome to the Weekly Scroll, your recap for the last week online
Sometime I hate being right about everything.
Last week we talked about Why Twitch Streamers Are Politically Insane. Most of that piece is about the structural reasons why live streaming tends to create so many insane political controversies, and immediately after it was published the internet gods helpfully provided fresh examples of this insanity.
First, we had the streamer Frogan saying that she hoped all US military members would get PTSD and lose health insurance. Then, Frogan participated in this panel at TwitchCon:
This image shows a panel of live streaming personalities ranking various other live streamers in a tier list. ‘Sabra’ is a term for Jews who were born in Israel1, and the tier list is essentially Arab = good, Jew = bad. It’s very difficult to read any other way.
There’s an undercurrent to what we’ve been talking about. So much of the insanity we’re describing focuses around Middle Eastern politics and the Israel/Palestine conflict. In most circumstances, I would rather gargle a bag of diarrhea than write about Israel/Palestine . It’s the most toxic subject on the internet, and expressing any opinion at all leads to incredibly nasty fights. But there’s a clear pattern right now on Twitch where antisemitic content basically gets a pass, and there’s some evidence that the site itself may actually be run by antisemitic leadership.
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