Streamers Who Have Dealt With Terrifying Stalkers

The following article includes allegations of stalking and threats of violence.

Whether it be video games, cosplay, workout routines, or simply just chatting with friends, streaming provides a great way for content creators to spread their work throughout the internet. Through websites such as Twitch and YouTube, streamers have been provided platforms dedicated displaying their content, with each streamer providing hours of entertainment for those who have grown to love and respect them. It is also through these platforms that fans are able to show their love for their favorite streamers, often showing it through monetary donations, subscriptions, buying their merchandise, or even just a simple show of praise in the chats they set up.

Through these services, the streaming industry has created a space for both the streamers and fans to enjoy themselves and feel comfortable. But what happens when this love and respect that fans have turns into something more dark and dangerous? What happens when a single fan's donations number in the thousands of dollars, and those messages of encouragement turn to declarations of love, demands for attention, and threats of violence, ultimately bleeding out from the comfort of the streams and into the personal life of the streamer. Due to this type of obsession, many streamers have faced abuse, threats, confrontations, and even acts of violence at the hands of fans who've turned into terrifying stalkers.

In TwitLonger post titled, "MY STALKER OF 5 YEARS PLEAD GUILTY TO A FELONY CHARGE OF STALKING!!!" former Twitch streamer and current Bethesda community manager Devann "LadyDevann" McCarthy recounted a harrowing story of death threats, threats of abuse, and false criminal allegations — all at the hands of an obsessed fan-turned-revenge-seeker. According to LadyDevann, her torment started when her stalker ordered one of her cosplay prints, asking that she sign it to the stalker's dead brother. She explained, "I thought it was strange but didn't question someone's grief coping mechanism so I did." As she would soon find out, her gut feeling was right.

From that point forward, the stalker would harass LadyDevann on stream and in her everyday life. He sent emails to her employers that falsely accused her of crimes and bombarded her with screenshots showing how long it would take them to hike to her place of work and kill her, among other horrifying threats.

This all came to a head when the stalker broke a peace order LadyDevann had filed against him. He was finally arrested and plead guilty to his crimes. Since then, LadyDevann has been vocal regarding her experience, even going on podcasts in order to bring more awareness to these issues, as well as to give advice on how to deal with these situations.

For any professional streamer, monitoring your chat can be no easy feat, especially when you're the owner of a channel with hundreds of fans watching at any given time. That's where moderators come in, assisting with monitoring the chat and making sure that a creator's stream is a safe and welcoming place for fans. Unfortunately for Nalipls, she was put into a situation in which one of her own Twitch moderators went from being a defender of her channel to an obsessed fan.

On January 27, 2022, Nalipls recounted how she had been stalked and harassed for 2 years by a former moderator for her Twitch channel. The stalker, who went by the handle "Propain," had initially met her at the 2019 Blizzcon and began to employ worrying methods to get her attention. According to Nalipls, "After that meeting, his behavior started to become concerning. It started with his increasing need for attention in my stream, increasing donations, and continued attempts to get me to speak with him privately in discord." This obsession eventually turned into aggression, the stalker creating fake accounts to harass Nalipls and driving the streamer to quit streaming in 2021.

Fortunately for Nalipls, the moderator, later identified as Evan Baltierra, was taken into custody by California law enforcement and charged with one count of stalking. Nalipls made sure to let her fans on Twitter know as soon as the news broke:

my stalker plead guilty today https://t.co/coCNVnC1fb

— nali (@nalipls) July 12, 2022

Pokimane has been a target of obsessed fans on many occasions. During an interview with Anthony Padilla, she recounted an experience in which a fan walked around her neighborhood trying to meet with her. Upon meeting one of Pokimane's roommates, the stalker insisted that they should be taken to Poki and that they were "meant to be together." Poki explained that she continued to stream for the rest of the night: "I ran to my door, I locked it, and I streamed all night because I was like, If this guy finds me and tries to do something scary, at least I'll be streaming so people will see what happens." Thankfully, the situation did not escalate from there. 

Although she still enjoys streaming content for her viewers, it is clear that her stalkers and the harassment from fans and haters alike may have had a negative effect on the streamer. For instance, her Apple Watch went off while streaming at one point, causing her to panic and worry that someone was trying to hack her info.

In March 2023, Pokimane also revealed that someone in the streaming industry had been targeting and manipulating her fans by falsifying a romantic relationship between themselves and Pokimane. While this offender has since been fired, the incident serves as yet another reminder of the darkness that lurks in the corners of the streaming community.

BrookeAB has been experiencing harassment from various users on Twitch over the last few years. While none of their identities have been shared, BrookeAB has told her fans of the horrific acts and messages that have been issued by several stalkers. In a post on TwitLonger, BrookeAB explained that she, her friends, and her family have received threats of murder, arson, and many other obscene acts. BrookeAB harassers even went so far as to threaten people unaffiliated with her, simply acting on the assumption that they might be.

This abuse from her stalkers had a negative effect on the streamer's career and social activity, causing BrookeAB to take breaks from social media and skip TwitchCon in 2022. The streamer alerted her fans of the sad decision to miss the convention in a tweet on May 27, 2022.

been getting asked this question a lot recently so just wanted to give a heads up â€" I will not be going to twitchcon this year! nothing wrong on Twitch end they do a great job with security, I just don’t feel safe with my stalkers and constant death threats.

I’M SORRY :( ❤️

— brooke (@brookeab) May 27, 2022

Given the severity of her stalkers' actions, BrookeAB has been searching for ways to permanently ban those who have been stalking her, as well as prevent them from making new accounts.

While many obsessed fans are mostly harmless and do not end up committing any acts of physical violence or property damage, Justfoxii was forced to encounter a stalker who took his anger to destructive levels. On June 13, 2023, Justfoxii tweeted about an incident from the previous month in which a fan committed an act of arson by torching her car. The horrifying photos kind of speak for themselves.

a twitch viewer came to my house and set my car on fire.. pic.twitter.com/4ILEkS21yb

— justfoxii ♡ (@KyleeCarterrr) June 14, 2023

In a video she uploaded to her YouTube channel the same day, Justfoxii detailed the night in which she received a call from her mother regarding the criminal act. Her mother had been home at the time of the vandalism, and called Justfoxii to tell her, "Someone caught your car on fire, I'm so sorry. I have to go, the police are here." When Justfoxii finally watched the recording from her home security camera on, she was greeted with the sight of the front of her car engulfed in flames.

Fox19 released an article regarding the case on June 1, 2023, identifying the culprit as Farhan Jami. Farhan has since been placed under arrest by Ohio state police and charged with aggravated arson. Farhan has pleaded not guilty to all charges. As for Justfoxii, she took a lengthy break from content creation following the incident.

In 2022, Amouranth dealt with a particularly obsessed fan. This fan, as Amouranth recounts in an interview on the H3 Podcast, flew to Texas and expected her to meet with him. This stalker had been a longtime fan of Amouranth, his obsession building to the point that he would set up his own streams dedicated to watching and mimicking the streamer, even bathing in a barrel while the streamer was lounging in her hot tub. According to Amouranth, this was due to a believe that he was engaged to the streamer, which led the fan to sell his house and other possessions so he could go to her.

On March 3, 2023, Amouranth posted a tweet showing that her stalker had struck once more. In an image attached to the post, the stalker can be seen attempting to break in. He apparently tried to gain access to Amouranth's home by following a housekeeper inside, later leaving a package and key on Amouranth's doorstep when this attempt failed.

While I was on the boxing press conference Mondayâ€" my team notified me that my stalker from last year (the one from Estonia) was back and was trying to break in again. 

He started by trying to sneak in behind one of my house staff â€" but had the door shut in his face.  He then pic.twitter.com/LK9xbbXjGa

— Kaitlyn (@wildkait) March 2, 2023

Fortunately, this would apparently be the last time her stalker would have a chance to torment the streamer. In a more recent interview with the YouTube channel CyberNews, Amouranth revealed that the police had finally arrested him. As Amouranth explained, she thinks that these online stalkers genuinely confuse seeing streamers online everyday with some form of intimacy, which leads them to believe they have special privileges.

On August 28 of 2022, VTuber Alia, otherwise know as Waffuls, informed her fans of her own stalking situation through a TwitLonger post, detailing a terrifying scenario in which she actually met her stalker. 

In an incident that she described as being "stream sniped irl," a stalker had flown out from the United States to the streamer's home city in Canada, then confronted her at her place of work with a simple "woof." This odd greeting was in reference to a message he had previously sent the streamer, in which he described himself as a "lost dog finding his way home." Fortunately, Alia was able to stall the stalker long enough for police to arrive and take him into custody.

For Alia, the most shocking part of the situation was just how the stalker had managed to track her down in the first place. According to her, the stalker had gleaned where she lived from years-old Instagram photos, culling snippets of information regarding the city she lived in and the hotel she worked at. "[One] photo was of my cat that went missing and I was posting her on all social medias with my city's name in the description," Alia explained. "The other photo was of a stray dog that was laying outside against the hotel doors." Alia expressed her hope that her experience might at least act as a warning to those who face similar situations.

Sweet Anita has unfortunately had to deal with multiple stalkers over the course of her streaming career, with one in particular causing her both psychological and physical harm. On November 8, 2019, Sweet Anita post on Twitter to tell her fans that a stalker had been sitting outside of her house and had actually attacked her on one occasion. Despite police involvement, her stalker was released and continued to bother her, making multiple threats during her livestreams that he was going to kill her.

He has also gone from planning a short visit my town, to moving to a place 4 minutes from me permanently. I'm very used to the lack of protection from the police at this point, I guess I'll have to get used to seeing him around too.

— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) November 8, 2019

This continued until April 8, 2020, when Sweet Anita disclosed to her fans that her stalker had been detained by police after trying to accost her once more outside of a shop. Her stalker is now legally unable to come into contact with Sweet Anita and has even been banned from visiting the town where she lives.

However, Sweet Anita later had to deal with another obsessed fan. On May 22, 2022, Sweet Anita went to Twitter and asked her fans how to book security for TwitchCon events. As she explained in the tweet, the streamer had been bombarded with messages from a viewer confessing their love for the streamer. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the situation was that her fans had crowdfunded tickets so that the obsessed fan could attend, not realizing how dangerous this person might be.

STREAMERS how and where do you book security for twitchcon events? I had a crazed homeless guy join my discord and my comunity is full of really kind people so they all crowdfunded for his living expenses and twitch tickets etc not realizing he's sending messages like these pic.twitter.com/jyvRg4LiIb

— Sweet Anita (@sweetanita) May 23, 2022

In a 2022 interview with Anthony Padilla, Valkyrae was asked about the most bizarre fan interaction she'd ever had, and the answer she gave was certainly shocking. According to Valkyrae, a fan of hers decided to fly out of state to the 100 Thieves Compound. For those not in the know, 100 Thieves is a lifestyle brand and gaming organization — of which Valkyrae is co-owner — and the compound provides offices and equipment for streamers to create content under the brand's banner. The stalker intended to meet Valkyrae there, though was turned away by staff at the compound, with the staff warning Valkyrae about this unwanted visitor after he showed up. 

In response to this, the fan decided to stay at the airport and wait for Valkyrae. "He ended up staying at the airport for multiple days," Valkyrae would go on to state, "recording videos of himself saying, 'I'm not leaving until Rae picks me up. I know that she wants to see me.'" According to Valkyrae, the fan stated that he was going to be incredibly sad if the streamer didn't attend Coachella with him. He further insisted that Valkyrae herself had told him that she would go with him, though Valkyrae had never met this unnamed fan before.

Despite this, Valkyrae has taken this experience as a teaching moment. She uses it as a reminder that anyone could be watching you through your streams and that viewers can build a parasocial mindset with any content creator they choose to watch.