The hot tub and VTuber Twitch streamer controversy explained

A Twitch streamer was subjected to death threats after hopping on a hashtag to attract more followers to her hot tub live stream.

VTubing is a trend in the live streaming world in which users stream virtually using digitalised avatars of themselves during their broadcasts.

To celebrate the rise of VTubing, streaming site Twitch hosted an event called VTuber Takeover where users could be found by including the VTuber tag on their live stream.

But, streamer Little Lianna got into hot water (literally) by incorrectly using the VTuber tag to promote her hot tub live stream.

The “highjack” sparked controversy among the Twitch community, with famous YouTuber Nux Taku calling out the behaviour on Twitter.

They wrote: “Twitch decided to make an event to promote vtubers, so not only does the vtuber tag get hijacked but WHY IS THIS EVEN ON THE PLATFORM IDKJAGSJSHSKS.”

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The post was liked almost 75,000 times and has over 4,500 retweets. Little Lianna herself saw the tweet and responded on her own account

She sarcastically wrote, “Im a vtuber now” and added, “thankfully it only takes a tag and an alert to ‘steal’ their viewers”.

Nux Taku’s followers escalated things and began sending the streamer threats of violence, leading the YouTuber to apologise and urge them to stop.

They tweeted: “People are sending a lot of hate and death threats towards the streamer in my tweet.

“This is unacceptable and I'm mortified that something like that would sprout from something I've said/done. This was meant as a critique towards Twitch not the streamer.

“Lianna I'm so sorry.”

Lianna wrote back: “Thank you for your apology, it felt like a direct attack on me a smaller streamer and the type of content I make as no one else using the tag received any of the hate I did.

“But I am the easier target obviously. Sorry this got so out of hand.”

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