Pokimane

WHATS UP GUYS ITS YOUR BOY COMING AT YOU WITH ANOTHER-

Oh shit, sorry, umm, I mean... hey guys what's up?

So the other day I was sitting in my parent's basement taking a break from boarding the windows shut to prevent any and all natural light from ever even once touching my skin, and I decided to go on my favorite League of Legend streamer's subreddit to see what was going on.

I was SHOCKED to see that a 1.2k, 866 comment post was informing me that friend of the stream and gamer queen Pokimane was This distressed me greatly, as she had always been my go to source for political information, and I felt completely betrayed. I clicked on the link, knowing that I was surely going to find a brilliant effort post breaking down in detail why she was spreading blatant misinformation, with detailed sources to back everything up.

That was.. not what I found. What I found was a screenshot of her insta post, with the quote "In the past 23 days, Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have been killed in any world conflict in each of the last four years." (and beneath it an admittedly very cringe comment about like not going to Starbucks or McDonalds or some shit).

Okay, I thought, the blatant misinformation must be shown in the comments, probably gonna be like the top one or something. I immediately started scrolling, and I found a lot of comments calling her cringe, naive and wide eyed, or talking about how boycotting Starbucks was great activism, or memes about how Starbucks and/or McDonalds had dipped in quality, but nothing much actually showing what the misinformation was.

So, I decided to do some research myself. I tracked the claim she’s making to this , which cites this statement made by the charity regarding the total death count.

The statement reads:

The number of children reported killed in Gaza in just three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world's conflict zones since 2019, Save the Children said.

Since October 7, more than 3,257 children have been reported killed, including at least in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel, according to the Ministries of Health in Gaza and Israel respectively. The number of children reported killed in just three weeks in Gaza is more than the number killed in armed conflict globally – across more than 20 countries – over the course of a whole year, for the last three years.

Children make up more than 40% of people killed in Gaza, and more than a third of all fatalities across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. With a further children reported missing in Gaza assumed buried under the rubble, the death toll is likely much higher.

What Save The Charity links to (and what was linked above) are death counts from , the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. That seemed reliable, but I knew 1.2k upvoting DGGers couldn't be wrong, so I kept digging.

AND THEN I FOUND IT. The disclaimer, even though they subtly tried to hide it. At the bottom of the infographic, it reads:

Disclaimer: The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures; the current numbers have been provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification. Other yet-to-be verified figures are also sourced.

And of course, when I went to the OCHA home page again, it also sourced the Palestinian death counts as coming from the Ministry of Health as well. And being a very smart and well informed DGGer, I knew of course that the Ministry of Health in Gaza meant the numbers were basically coming from Hamas, which of course meant we couldn't trust them. I took a deep breath and relaxed, knowing this whole research journey was a well tread path, me walking along the shoulders of the 1.2k DGG giants who had surely done all this research before me.

Now, all I needed to do was look back and see the death counts for previous conflicts, where the MoH had also reported their counts. I was going to be able to show that of course, when the UN was able to completely verify, they'd find the Ministry of Health numbers wildly inflated, and this - this inflation - would be the blatant misinformation that Poki had fallen for.

...Except when I did look, that's not what I found at all. I found this on the exact subject I wanted, and it turned out that the numbers were actually... fairly accurate? Quoting from the article:

In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.

In all cases the U.N.'s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.

— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.

— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.

— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.

of militants versus civilians killed in past wars, Israel’s accounts of Palestinian casualties have come close to the Gaza ministry’s. For instance, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the 2014 war killed 2,125 Palestinians — just a bit lower than the ministry’s toll.

In each of these, the UN total count and the count provided by the Ministry of Health is off by less than 5% one way or another. Even with the Israel account, the Ministry of Health is only off of their account by an inflation of 8.7%. Even if we were to triple this number, the highest margin of error we have, and assume that the Ministry of Health is currently over estimating the amount of children killed by 26.1%, it would mean there were still 2,582 children killed, which would still be more than the official count of children killed in every war zone combined in each individual year of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 (excluding the bombing campaign in Gaza).

So going through this whole research rabbit hole, it doesn't look like Poki was engaging in blatant misinformation at all. At worst, what it seems you could say is that she wasn't presenting the context that these numbers have yet to be independently verified, and even though these numbers have been very accurate in the past, there is a possibility that they could now be engaging out of the blue in such a wild misrepresentation that it is now inaccurate. Or alternatively, you could argue that although there aren’t official counts yet, there are other conflicts that might outnumber this.

Because of this, it unfortunately looks like the person that engaged in misinformation was not Poki, but this subreddit. OP for posting it, of course, but also the 1.2k people who simply upvoted because it agreed with their narratives, and instead of doing any research into checking whether it actually was "blatant misinformation", just memed about how she was a virtue signaling white woman who was clearly being misled.

We need to be better. We should be skeptical and fact checking on all information and claims, especially if we're going on a crusade against others for misinformation. It is an extremely harmful and negative thing to post this kind of stuff, it's exactly why we've been critical of idiots who posted shit like the hospital stuff, and it's not a behavior we can be engaging in.

Anyway, I got to get back to boarding my windows shut, playing Genshin Impact, and watching a YouTube video essay about how R. L. Stine's Goosebumps was actually a subtle critique of Late Stage Capitalism, so I'll end the post here.

What happened to Poki last night was infuriating. After all the harassment and hate she got in the past, for a while things seemed to get better for her, until last night. It's almost like the clock was set back a few years, and it's starting all over again. Ridiculous she still has to deal with this shit.

For those who don't know what happened. Some fairly big Youtuber got newly partnered on Twitch and in his first stream decided to pull up Poki's stream, started harassing her and have his chat brigade her chat. Resulting in her having to go into subscriber only chat. Meanwhile he's egging on his viewers, saying if she bans him it'll only make things worse etc. I think he also started harassing her through donations, at least said he was going to. When she does ban him his viewers start harassing Poki's chat through whispers, and she ends up ending her stream because of it.

At some point he starts commenting on her sex life. And basically doing the whole, anyone that defends Poki is a simp thing and you'll never get to sleep with her etc. Eventually finds out Poki tweeted her disappointment about the situation, he tried pulling her Twitter up on his stream but found out he was blocked so has his chat again brigade her Twitter, forcing her to go private. 

Then while still streaming he gets suspended by Twitch, for 14 days. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he'll change his ways as he changed his Twitter profile pic to a picture of Poki. I am purposefully not mentioning names because I'm sure OTV wouldn't want this to devolve into a hate brigade. But I think this deserves attention, and Pokimane deserves support. I just hope that person isn't allowed to return to Twitch in 14 days, they shouldn't even be partnered anymore after this. The sad thing is, Poki didn't do shit and will continue to receive hate on social media because of this incident.

And she already got a fair share of misogyny recently for the DMCA suspension aswell. People saying she got a shorter suspension than Toast because she's a woman, has boobs, etc. That kind of bullshit. Of course her suspension wasn't even shorter to begin with. And funny how those people were quiet when she got suspended, but Mizkif wasn't, when they were both streaming Avatar at the same time.

Sad that misogyny is still so prevalent on Twitch. And well, let's be honest, everywhere else aswell.

I saw a meme about Pokimane calling her fans broke for not buying her cookies, why is there an issue over this?

Are they actually repackaged Costco cookies?

Hi everyone - @ChrisChanTO here. We’re doing an AMA with some retired semi pro players, and Pokimane. We’ve recently started to collaborate by playing new games together (MXM), impromptu meet & greet at Twitchcon, appearing on BTR, working together on the cross dressing Scarra skit, and now launching a new merch line (VerifiedMerch.com). We hope as a group to collaborate more to bring you some more awesome content (at less of an expense to Scarra).

This AMA gives those who don’t have the stream donation bling to possibly get your questions answered here. Our guests will start answering questions at 2PM PST, but you can start posting /upvoting your questions now.

AMA participants:

• Imaqtpie - Domino’s Pizza streamer of the year

• Scarra - TheScoreEsports correspondent

• Dyrus - 3rd favorite streamer

• Pokimane - egirl streamer

• Based Yoona (Orlando) - CLG sub. Social media for BTR. Writer / director of the cross dressing Scarra skit.

We're also excited to be launching a merchandise line together in a store called on Cyber Monday. If you sign up on the website, you'll be entered for a chance to win an autographed shirt of your choice.

For a little preview of the shirt line:

For more updates on the Verified Merch store you can follow us at:

Thanks again, ask away!

EDIT: Hey everyone! Thanks for joining us today on the AMA, I wish we could get to everyone but that just isn't possible :( I think Scarra / Poki will continue to answer a few questions. If you ever have questions for me, you can find me on twitter @ChrisChanTO Thanks everyone!!!!

Link to one of the vids that pop up in my feed

So all these vids about pokimane have been poping up in my feed and I have no idea who she is and why everyone is suddenly talking about her. I’m even getting vids from The quartering, who I muted a few years ago showing up on my feed, so what’s going on with her and YouTube?