Pokimane

About

Pokimane, real name Imane Anys, is a Canadian-Moroccan Twitch streamer and YouTuber best known for streaming League of Legends and Fortnite. After beginning her career in 2013 on YouTube, Pokimane moved to Twitch where she won "Twitch Streamer of the Year" at the 2018 Shorty Awards and accumulated millions of followers. Since 2013, Pokimane has been featured in several notable memes around the web.

History

Anys was born on May 14th, 1996. She began streaming in 2013 and grew an audience playing League of Legends and Fortnite. She uploaded her first YouTube video on May 12th, 2014, showing a clip of her playing League of Legends (shown below). In the following five years, she gained over 2.65 million subscribers on Twitch^[1] and 3.1 million YouTube^[2] subscribers. She won "Twitch Streamer of the Year" at the 2018 Shorty Awards.

Copyright Strike Controversy

On November 30th, 2018, YouTube removed a video by YouTube channel Bowblax about a drama between Pokimane and Keemstar on the grounds it used much of her unedited content. The drama was amplified when it was covered in a video on January 11th, 2019, by PewDiePie. PewDiePie argued that the YouTube algorithm pushed the video to people and that he could see why Pokimane wanted it taken down because it was amplifying her feud with Keemstar, but having it taken down only drew more attention to the drama itself. Furthermore, he claimed that Pokimane and other content creators who engaged in these strikes were hypocritical as they use other people's content without transformative commentary that would make it legitimate under fair use.

Pokimane posted a response where she explained her side of the situation, discussing how Bowblax had simply ripped off her content and that she had wanted the entire drama to be done with (shown below). The controversy was covered by The Daily Dot^[3]

Racial Slur Controversy

On March 3rd, 2019, Pokimane's stream of herself playing League of Legends was clipped to a section where she allegedly says, "Damn this n***** is getting fucked" (shown below).

On March 3rd, Redditor JohnCenafromts posted a clip to the /r/livestreamfail^[4] subreddit. 43 comments were posted that day with Redditors hearing both "anivia" and "n*****." On March 4th, Twitter user KEEMSTAR shared the clip on Twitter and Pokimane responded by saying that she said "anivia" (shown below).

It'sAGundam Sponsorship Controversy

On May 13th, 2020, Youtuber It'sAGundam uploaded a video describing Pokimane's fans who give her excessive amounts of money as being simps. He singled out a particular fan who tweeted "i got evicted because i was 4 months behind on rent so ya o.O idk ill see if i can sleep behind a starbucks so i can use the free wifi n donate the rest of my money."^[5] The video gained 150,000 views and 17,000 likes in three days.^[6]

On May 16th, reacting to It'sAGundam's video, Pokimane insisted that her fans were joking about sending her large amounts of money. She pointed out that the fan who said he was going homeless for her later said he was joking (shown below, left).^[6] Pokimane then encouraged the sponsor of It'sAGundam's video to drop him (shown below, right).^[7] After this, It'sAGundam's video ballooned to over 770,000 views and 93,000 likes in two and a half months.

Pokimane OnlyFans

Since the rise in prevalence of high-profile e-girls creating and promoting their own OnlyFans alongside their streaming content throughout the 2010s and 2020s, the question has been posed to Pokimane several times over the years as to whether she would ever consider making one or not, to which Pokimane always said "no."

After fellow streamer Amouranth famously created and promoted her OnlyFans until she reportedly started making over $1.5 million per month off it, the topic was once again brought up on June 26th, 2022, as she was taking part in a podcast with Mizkif, stating that she could probably make up to $10 million doing it, but then stating that if she didn't want to do it, she wouldn't, even if the money was good (shown below).

The clip and comment subsequently trended in the following days, generating widespread discussion, memes and media coverage reacting to the news. On June 29th, 2022, both Dexerto^[8] and Dot Esports^[9] wrote about Pokimane shutting down the idea of an OnlyFans account.

Search Interest

External References