Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys and Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, arguably the two biggest stars on Twitch, are in the midst of a rather heated public falling out.
Some background for you: Earlier this week, Twitch permanently banned Demarcus 'JiDion' Cousins for encouraging his viewers to go to Pokimane's chat and heckle her. Naturally, this fell foul of Twitch's guidelines against targeted harassment, and JiDion was banned for 14 days... at first.
Just a few days later, JiDion released a video explaining Twitch had upgraded his ban to a permanent one. He also alleged that Pokimane pulled some strings to ensure his punishment was more severe. This has not been proved.
Now, Pokimane is claiming that Ninja somehow found a way to insert himself into the drama. During a January 17 broadcast, Pokimane claimed that Ninja had referred to her as a "bitch" on his own stream, and allegedly even texted his own connections at Twitch in an attempt to help JiDion swerve a ban.
Ninja maintains that his use of the word "bitch" was "referring to bitches generally". Remarkably, that defence doesn't seem to have worked with Pokimane, who asked: “I wonder if Ninja would have said 'bitches' if it was a large male streamer who was raided?"
The streamer added that Ninja continued to joke about the situation, and alleged that at one point he said he would do "whatever he could" to help JiDion.
As you can see in this clip of Ninja's stream, he does advise JiDion to stay out of trouble. He can be heard telling JiDion not to "ratio bitches", before hastily backtracking and stressing that he wasn't referring to one specific streamer. He also repeatedly tells JiDion he'll help him out, if he can.
"Why would Ninja help someone evade a ban for harassing me?" Pokimane asked. "I have no idea, I genuinely don’t know.”
Things took a turn for the worse following Pokimane's stream, as she and Ninja continued to argue -and even threaten legal action - over social media.
Pokimane shared a private message from Ninja's wife, Jessica Blevins, to show just how ugly things had gotten. Blevins warned the streamer the couple were getting their legal team involved, adding they now considered everything Pokimane had said and was continuing to say about Ninja as "defamation of character".
“You are spewing lies to tens of thousands of people," Blevins warned.
"I think Jessica is trying to say that ninja PRETENDED to text his Twitch representative, which I'm willing to accept and cannot disprove," Pokimane responded on Twitter. "I just wanted the clip out there to show what happened."
It's unclear if the drama is over at this point, but things do seem to have settled down for now. You have to hand it to Ninja, most people who "accidentally" referred to a woman as a bitch might just apologise and move on. Getting your wife to get the lawyers involved and threaten to sue the person you insulted instead is... a choice.
Featured Image Credit: Twitch via Pokimane/NinjaTopics: Twitch