Latest news with #Asmongold
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Why did bbno$ blur Asmongold from his latest music video: Uncovering Twitch drama, video erasure and more
(Image via YouTube/bbno$) The new music video from bbno$, the Canadian rapper, was released on May 29, 2025. With it came an unexpected turn, sparking widespread discussions, as the fans noticed Asmongold, the popular Twitch streamer, being mysteriously blurred out from it. The track mary poppins features many popular streamers from the group OTK. However, the face of Asmongold was replaced with the cartoon reptile. The deliberate visual censorship with the pointed opening message fuelled questions and debates across social media platforms, with many questioning if this was a moral statement or a personal jab. Why was Asmongold censored from mary poppins? BBNO$ Censored Asmongold Out Of His Music Video The censorship was not subtle. In the place of Asmongold, right alongside the other fellow OTK personalities, like Esfand, Mizkif, Emiru, and others, a cartoonish lizard image appeared. The lizard image took the place of Asmongold, and it was not a technical glitch but a clear and intentional choice, which signalled right from the opening seconds of the video. As soon as the video begins, the text disclaimer explicitly states the rationale of the artist. It read, " At the time of recording, I was unaware of certain individuals' ethical beliefs. As a result, I've chosen to censor those whose values I do not support ." Asmongold gets Face Censored from Entire bbno$ Music Video The statement framed blurring as the direct consequence of the values misalignment that was discovered after the video was filmed. No specific details were offered by Canada rapper bbno$ about the nature of the conflicting beliefs in the message. But bbno$ decision doesn't seem to be random. It can be traced back to the controversial remarks made by the streamer in late 2024 about the Israel-Palestine conflict that led to a significant backlash. The other layer of the disclaimer concluded the statement by saying, "Additionally, all funds generated by this video will be donated to the PCRF ( The donation that is supposed to be made to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund has further hinted at the disagreement's potential nature and a direct response to Asmongold's past statements without explicitly calling him out. Uncovering the Twitch drama which forced Asmongold's edit The context of bbno$ decision could be traced back to last year. It was in October 2024, when Asmongold during a livestream made a controversial comment. It was about the Palestine-Israel conflict and his remarks were perceived by many to not just be dehumanizing but also inflammatory. It ignited significant backlash across the online community against him. Asmongold's fallout was huge. He even faced a temporary ban from Twitch and subsequently stepped down from the leadership position in OTK. The incident fundamentally altered Asmongold's perceptions in some circles. While mary poppins' video was filmed before (in May 2024, reportedly), before the comments and the bans, Canada rapper bbno$ did know about them before the release of the video. The public stance of the rapper, emphasized by PCRF donation, contrasted directly with Asmongold's past statements. The clash within the ethical beliefs led bbno$ to implement censorship and effectively erase the visible participation of the streamer to avoid association with the views he rejected explicitly. How did Asmongold react to being censored from mary poppins? addressing the controversy.. The situation was addressed by Asmongold on May 30, 2025, on social media and during the Twitch stream. The reaction was notably measured. It lacked public dispute or personal anger. On X, he took it easy and posted the reptile graphic, covering his face. His post read, " Very generous of them to give me more teeth in post production, never had someone care like that before" During the stream, he even elaborated further and showed an understanding of the position of bbno$. He stated, 'There's no ill will or any negativity about it. I just think that he doesn't want to be involved with my politics." Asmongold even acknowledged that his controversial online persona and the resultant hate, along with widespread discussion, have created pressure for others. He explained, 'This is why I moved a lot away from collabing and doing anything with anybody else" He further added, " I'm not going to expect people to put their career on the line ." Asmongold, with this, ensured to express feeling bad about potentially wasting the time of those involved in the shoot. However, he did accept the artist's rights to make the final call. Either way, Asmongold's calm reaction suggests he expected this, but the fans are undivided. While some argue that Canada rapper bbno$ took a principled stand, others see it as virtual signalling. The incident, though, highlights the growing trend that artists and streamers are distancing themselves from the polarizing figures to avoid any backlash. Asmongold controversy 2024 is not isolated. There are other creators who have faced exclusions over their past remarks, and these incidents highlight that old controversies truly never faced. They just get blurred out.
Express Tribune
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Twitch faces backlash unbanning HasanAbi after one-day ban over terrorist content discussion
Twitch is facing criticism from parts of the online community after reinstating political commentator Hasan Piker, known as 'HasanAbi,' just over a day after suspending him for 'improper handling of terrorist propaganda.' HasanAbi was banned on May 25, 2025, after covering the motives behind a shooting involving Israeli embassy staff. According to Twitch's Terms of Service, even critical examination of terrorist content can lead to suspension. Hasan addressed the incident on X (formerly Twitter), saying, 'I believe this is a bad policy for news and press freedom. I'll take the suspension, but hope Twitch changes this policy in the future.' i covered the motives of the israeli embassy staff shooter. twitch tos dictates a suspension for even critical examination of the manifesto. i believe this is a bad policy for news and press freedom. ill take the suspension, but hope twitch changes this policy in the future. — hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 25, 2025 Shortly after his statement, Twitch reinstated his channel. According to the automated account @StreamerBans, the suspension lasted one day, six minutes, and 20 seconds. The short duration of the ban has drawn scrutiny from viewers and fellow streamers. Reddit users on r/LivestreamFail criticised the timing and impact of the suspension, with one commenting, 'They banned him during his day off, so the ban means nothing.' Another wrote, 'Allow CEO's favourite streamer to spread terrorist propaganda… problem solved.' Prominent Twitch personality Zack "Asmongold" also weighed in, criticising Twitch's approach to moderation. '24-hour suspensions serve no purpose and act more often as a reward than punishment through the extra attention they create,' he said. 'Why ban for critiquing a terrorist manifesto but not for endorsement?' 24 hour suspensions serve no purpose and act more often as a reward than punishment through the extra attention they create Why ban for critiquing a terrorist manifesto/propaganda but not for endorsement Is criticizing terrorism ToS but promoting isnt? Make it make sense — Zack (@Asmongold) May 25, 2025 The backlash has reignited tensions between the two streamers. In response to Asmongold's remarks, HasanAbi referred to him as a 'disgusting little creature.' The controversy underscores growing concerns around Twitch's content moderation policies and highlights broader debates on censorship, journalistic freedom, and consistency in platform enforcement.
Atlantic
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
How Video Games Took Over Politics
When Representative Al Green of Texas started shouting and waving his cane around during Donald Trump's address to Congress last month, pundits described the Democrat as causing a disruption, pulling a stunt, or peacefully protesting. In the wilds of online alternative media, another term was being used: malding. Mald is a blend of mad and bald. It's video-gamer slang for getting so angry after suffering a loss that you pull your hair out. I learned the word by watching Twitch, the streaming platform that is famous for turning video games into a spectator sport—and that has, of late, become an important forum for political commentary. One of the most popular Twitch streamers right now is a 35-year-old World of Warcraft expert who goes by the name Asmongold and primarily streams under the handle zackrawrr. On the day after Trump's congressional address, Asmongold kicked off his stream by telling his viewers he was excited to finish playing the new game Monster Hunter Wilds— and to sort through the fallout from Trump's speech. He pulled up a TV-news interview in which Green explained that he'd interrupted the president to object to potential Medicaid cuts. Asmongold offered his view: Interrupting Trump was tantamount to 'malding out,' which makes 'people think you're a fucking retard.' Asmongold, whose real name is Zack Hoyt, is a prominent member of a class of influencers that has been helping remake the American electorate. With an average of more than 2.2 million people tuning in to Twitch at any given moment—and clips of the top streamers regularly going megaviral on the wider internet—the platform is, as the journalist Nathan Grayson points out in the new book Stream Big, comparable in reach to 'mainstream television networks like CNN and Fox during prime-time slots and major events.' (And that's without counting other streaming venues, such as Kick and YouTube.) During last year's campaign, the Trump camp courted the streamer Adin Ross in order to reach a young, largely male constituency that ended up helping decide the election. Trump's second administration has made it even clearer how the culture of gaming—a pastime enjoyed weekly by 61 percent of adults, age 36 on average—is bleeding into American politics. The avowed Diablo 4 player Elon Musk explains DOGE's activities with gaming terms such as speedrunning (beating a game way more quickly than its creators intended—or slashing government at a far faster rate than previously seemed possible). Musk recently beefed with Hasan Piker, the popular leftist Twitch streamer who has been enlisted by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to help rally opposition to Trump. He has also publicly feuded with Asmongold—after Asmongold criticized Musk for exaggerating his own gaming accomplishments (which is kind of like the 2020s equivalent of a politician fudging their golf handicap or war-zone experience). I've been dipping in and out of Asmongold's channel for the past month to understand what it means for politics to be processed through the lens of video games. After all, how a society amuses itself tends to affect how it governs itself. The rise of TV, the media theorist Neil Postman famously argued, remade politics into visual entertainment, ruled by optics. Professional sports, it's often said, primes people to view elections as a contest between rivals. The internet has inflated the importance of identity and authenticity, inviting campaigners to act like just another face in the social-media scroll. Gaming seems to be intensifying the effects of those three media and adding in something else: cynicism. Asmongold's hair is scraggly and brown; his build is stringy; his eyebrows are given to vigorous wiggling. He likes to brag about not showering for months. Most of his streams start with him taking questions from his viewers, who provide a continuous river of comments in his Twitch chat room. The topics might include what he ate last night (possibly Taco Cabana), what he thinks of puzzle games (not a fan: 'The reason why is I don't want to think '), and whether he's ever going to stream from the White House ('We'll see what happens'). He then starts browsing the internet, sharing his screen with viewers while clicking among memes and news clips shared on Reddit and X. He'll watch speeches and news segments in full, pausing every so often to add an 'uh oh' or a 'Let's go!' or a longer bit of analysis. Before I started tuning in to Twitch—keeping it on in the background while sending emails or cleaning the house—I wondered whether its practitioners were just updated versions of old-media archetypes, such as the talk-radio host, football commentator, and news anchor. But Asmongold is less energetic and polished than those kinds of professionals; the feeling one gets is not of watching him but of watching with him. I sometimes felt a pang of nostalgia for middle-school hangouts with friends. A specific form of communication arises from a group of guys staring at the same screen: You murmur nonsense back and forth in a knowingly Neanderthal manner; it's bracketed in irony, based less in thinking than reacting. He's playing the role of a buddy on the couch. That said, he's a buddy with a lot of opinions. Last year, he was temporarily banned from Twitch for saying that Palestinians were part of an 'inferior culture' whose destruction he doesn't mourn (he apologized); earlier this month, he attracted controversy for saying that transgender kids exist only because of adults' mental illness (he doubled down on that one). But his style is far from the stridency of provocateurs such as Candace Owens and Newsmax's Trump apologists. Instead, he's detached or wryly amused. He comes off like a burned-out tutor hired to translate current events into gamerspeak for distracted teens. (For example, he said Trump's tariffs were fixing 'the loot council,' equating global capital to gold or treasures earned in a World of Warcraft raid.) Indeed, Asmongold's foray into political commentary often seems to have been undertaken half-heartedly. The gaming world's rightward drift can be traced back to the 'Gamergate' controversy of a decade ago, when a vocal slice of gamers organized an angry backlash to game designers and journalists who had been trying to make the art form more diverse and inclusive. 'All we wanted to do was play video games,' Asmongold said in a recent stream. 'And then they had to put girls in video games. And so now we have to elect Donald Trump to stop that.' He was speaking in a sarcastic deadpan, but he was suggesting a truth about the particular brand of conservatism that has taken hold of numerous men lately: In many cases, it's driven not by a committed belief system but by a tribal vendetta against, to use one of his favorite terms, the 'retards' of the identity-focused left. That particular slur actually says a lot about Asmongold's outlook. He presents himself as standing for opinions that are so widely shared, and so obvious, that disagreeing with him means you're intellectually disabled (and, the logic of his usage would suggest he thinks, pitiful). He'll often reiterate that he's no partisan hack; unlike many elected Republicans, he's in favor of universal basic income and a constitutional right to an abortion. 'I place pretty much no values in principles or morality,' he said in one stream. 'I think that these are top-down ideas that are given to you by the elites.' The professed disregard for ideology is, of course, hardly rare these days. Joe Rogan's entire brand is freethinking. Even Trump likes to justify his decisions as being 'common sense.' This sort of logic is perhaps why the term NPC, or non-player character, has become trendy on the right. In video games, an NPC is a computer-controlled ally or opponent, such as a blacksmith who sells the player gear and a goblin whom the player must slay. Their pool of dialogue is limited and their characterization thin; they have no real identity beyond how the player sees them. In recent years, Musk and many others have taken to calling their liberal opponents NPCs. Ironically enough, the diss suggests its own ideology: Politics isn't a dispute among philosophical visions for a better world, or even a contest among constituencies for resources; it's a quest for certain humans who matter to defeat people-shaped obstacles that don't. In this schema, Trump is simply the man who's rescuing the country from the rule of the brainless. Asmongold's commentary about the president usually focuses not on whether any given decision by Trump is wise in its own right but rather on how the 'average' or 'normal' person is going to react. Asmongold has, for example, little particular insight about the economy: 'I don't really care about whether the tariffs are good or bad—I don't give a fuck,' he said in one stream. But he seems to have schadenfreude about the distress the tariffs have caused. Over and over, he's hammered at the idea that 'normal people' don't care about the stock market in the same way that the elites who are criticizing Trump's policies do. Asmongold doesn't agree with everything Trump does—but he clearly thinks that the president is scaring the right people. Sometimes I'd start to wonder what I was doing spending time listening to Asmongold at all. Then I'd notice that 60,000 people were watching live, or I'd go to his YouTube page and see that the viewership for any given clip from his streams ranges from the hundreds of thousands to the millions. He may sound like just some guy on the couch—but now he, and many other guys on the couch, have captured a slice of the voting public, and have ties to political figures of influence. Not all gaming streamers are alike; Piker, who's been hyped as the potential 'Joe Rogan of the left' in news coverage since the election, delivers heady Marxist theory and wonkish research on geopolitics in a tone of frat-boy exuberance. But Asmongold is the more popular figure, and he's one member of a larger, right-leaning ecosystem. Often while watching Asmongold, I thought about the video-game concept of 'the meta.' It refers to shared knowledge among dedicated players about the best practices for succeeding in a game. Understanding the meta means approaching video games with a moneyball mentality; it means knowing, say, the optimal sword to use against a particular boss. Gamers play games for all sorts of reasons: to role-play, to challenge themselves, to kill time with friends. But digging into the meta means looking beneath a fantastical veneer—story, graphics, so on—to exploit the rules. To see the world in this way means discounting the ideas that ostensibly govern our society—ethics, beliefs, norms—and instead processing life as a struggle for dominance. The strangest thing about this view of politics is that it's seductive enough, perhaps even addictive enough, to pull people away from the greatest distraction on Earth: video games. On the first day I tuned in to Asmongold, I was amazed to find that it took him a full five hours of chitchatting before he finally fired up Monster Hunter Wilds, a game about, well, hunting monsters. In combat, he frantically mashed buttons, hooting 'Big dick!' whenever he was doing well. During cutscenes—videos advancing the game's narrative—he talked over the dialogue, issuing summaries like, 'So I have to kill the big thing, right?' I recognize his hypnotized, single-minded mentality from my own gaming experiences. After a certain amount of playtime, what's on-screen stops looking like a coherent world and starts looking like inputs and outputs, challenges and rewards. And when you look up, reality feels like the screen.
Express Tribune
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Twitch streamer Jynxzi accidentally leaks over $450K in monthly revenue during livestream
Popular Twitch streamer Jynxzi accidentally revealed his astonishing monthly earnings during a recent broadcast, shocking fans with just how lucrative streaming can be. The 23-year-old Rainbow Six Siege star, who boasts over 7 million followers on the platform, unintentionally showed his Twitch dashboard on April 23, disclosing revenue from March 25 to April 23 totaling a massive $452,448. While chatting casually with viewers about football, Jynxzi stood up and inadvertently switched screens, momentarily displaying his backend stats for all to see. 'Oh my God,' he exclaimed in a moment of panic, quickly removing the screen but not before viewers captured the eye-watering numbers. According to the leak, Jynxzi's income stems largely from over 80,000 active subscribers, combined with strong ad revenue fueled by nearly 25,000 average concurrent viewers. His financial success places him among the top-performing Twitch creators. In fact, he ranked as the third most-watched English-language Twitch streamer in March 2025, just behind Caedrel and Asmongold. The incident has since gone viral in the streaming community, sparking comparisons to other streamers' earnings. For example, Ninja revealed a $142,177 monthly income in 2023, while Asmongold disclosed a significantly lower $37,001 after refusing to run frequent ads. Jynxzi, who won Best FPS Streamer at the 2024 Streamer Awards, continues to solidify his place as one of Twitch's biggest stars—now with a clearer picture of just how much that status pays.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Yahoo
Twitch streamer shows support for JSO officer injured in shooting
Internet personality Zack 'Asmongold' Hoyt is showing support for a Jacksonville Sheriff's officer after body cam footage appears to show the officer listening to the streamer moments before last month's officer-involved shooting. On March 12, Officer A.C. Gaulding attempted to conduct a traffic stop at the intersection of Trout River Boulevard and Ribault Avenue. Gaulding was shot in the foot during the shooting, while the suspect, 33-year-old Brandon White, was killed. Weeks later, JSO released body cam footage leading up to the shooting, which appeared to include Officer Gaulding listening to the popular streamer while driving and before exiting his vehicle. 'This is the average Asmongold viewer. Hero police officer who takes down an armed gunman,' joked Hoyt to his viewers. 'He might be watching now, I hope he's doing well.' When asked by a viewer if the streamer if he is pro-police, Hoyt says 'I am massively pro-police, I completely support the police. Absolutely.' 'I hope he gets better, and he's just a traditional, everyday Asmongold viewer,' says the popular streamer. Asmongold is a YouTuber and Twitch streamer with over 5 million subscribers across multiple channels, where he plays video games and provides social and political commentary. Officer Gaulding was discharged from the hospital less than a week after the shooting. In a post on social media, JSO says, 'Leaving the hospital with the support of his team, Jacksonville Sheriff's Officer A.C. Gaulding continues to recover from getting shot during a traffic stop last Wednesday morning. Fellow officers and friends cheered him on as he left UF Health post-surgery on Thursday, a day after a man wearing body armor armed with a rifle and handgun shot him in the foot. Officer Gaulding returned fire, killing the shooter. The case remains under investigation. We'd like to thank our wonderful community for the support for our officer during this difficult time, especially the medical professionals at UF Health and our brothers and sisters at Jacksonville Fire and Rescue. Please join us in wishing Officer Gaulding the absolute best as he heals.' WOKV reached out to JSO for a comment, and because this is an active investigation, they are unable to comment as of this posting.
