Pokimane Gets Called Out For Gambling Hypocrisy
Over the last couple of months, Pokimane has become a prominent critic of professional streamers accepting sponsorships from gambling websites and promoting them on their channel. In particular, she has called out the likes of xQc and Trainwrecks for their participation in gambling streams. However, her argument against the practice was undercut when she was recently caught seemingly watching a gambling stream.
During a recent room tour posted to Pokimane's YouTube channel, eagle-eyed viewers on Reddit noticed that the content running on Pokimane's monitor appeared to be one of Hafu's gambling streams, suggesting that she watches more gambling videos than she lets on. That clip quickly went viral and was seen by fellow streamers such as Mizkif, who called out Pokimane in a reaction video. Mizkif remarked, "She's actually a hate watcher! She preaches that she hates gambling and she watches it!"
xQc, who has traditionally planted his feet on both sides of the issue by participating in gambling streams and telling the world he is sick of that type of streaming, also took the opportunity to post a reaction video. In the bizarre clip, he overanalyzes Pokimane's open tabs, jokingly implies that Pokimane's room tour was actually an undercover ad for gambling streams, and finally performs his own truncated room tour.
Pokimane responds to gambling stream scrutiny
Of course, the backlash to the possible hypocrisy of Pokimane viewing a gambling stream during her room tour quickly made it back to her, and she took the opportunity to respond to the comments coming in from across the internet.
Pokimane laughed at xQc's tongue-in-cheek accusation of her possible participation in a guerilla marketing campaign. She explained that she was looking at Hafu's channel and was shocked to find her participating in gambling streams. According to Pokimane, she had opened the gambling stream in the moments before her videographer arrived to shoot the room reveal video and then simply forgot to turn it off.
All things considered, that's a pretty mundane explanation for how she accidentally shared a streamer trend that she's rallied against in the past. While gambling has long been present in video gaming in many forms, it has led to bans and lawsuits for Twitch, as well as conflicts between prominent streamers. This apparent slip-up is just the latest in a long line of controversies surround Twitch's gambling meta.
While Pokimane seems to be taking a firm stance on the issue and the mistake in stride, she and her videographer might benefit from paying a little more attention as to what they share on her well-curated YouTube channel.