Streamer Amouranth’s abuse allegations expose the dangers of incelism and ‘Twitch thot’ harassment

By Malavika Pradeep

Published Oct 17, 2022 at 12:49 PM

Reading time: 3 minutes

Email Facebook WhatsApp X Flipboard

Copy Link

Image courtesy of Amouranth from Twitch

In a deeply-concerning livestream, American Twitch star, cosplayer, and ASMR YouTuber Kaitlyn ‘Amouranth’ Siragusa revealed that she is married and accused her husband of making a series of abusive threats against her.

The recent video, although not available on Amouranth’s Twitch channel, has been circulating on various social media platforms—showing the distressed streamer addressing the abuse she has allegedly endured, and continues to be subject to. In one clip, the 28-year-old can be seen speaking on the phone with a man she says is her husband and questioning his threats to kill her dogs if she didn’t do a 24-hour-long stream. After a long pause, the man demanded Amouranth leave the house, proceeded to call her a liar and denied all claims that he threatened to kill her pets. It’s unclear if he was watching the creator’s livestream himself.

In a second clip, Amouranth claimed that her husband has been forcing her to broadcast content against her wishes and quoted a therapist who described his behaviour as “a form of psychological abuse” and said that she has been living in a “fancy prison.”

“He was changed for a bit and then the hot tub meta arose,” Amouranth said in her stream, adding that he then coerced her to “commit to the grind because it was a good financial opportunity for us” and continue posting several hot tub videos against her will. For the uninitiated, hot tub streams typically feature female streamers clad in swimwear—broadcasting directly from their bathtubs or makeshift swimming pools. Popular on the platform’s ‘Just Chatting’ directory, hot tub streamers can be found lounging in their tubs for hours chatting to their audience about a wide range of topics.

In yet another clip shared in a Twitter thread, Amouranth claimed that her husband controls her finances and even threatened to leave her with only $1 million if she took action against him. “All the fucking accounts are two-factored into his number and he has all the login information,” the streamer said. “It keeps you there with the fear and the threats… and then he’s nice again and says everything is going to be okay.”

In a subsequent clip, she also showed viewers a series of text messages where her husband called her a “dumb fuck” and made other abusive threats like dumping her luggage and merchandise off a hotel balcony and deleting her social media presence altogether. As noted by Kotaku, this is the first time Amouranth has publicly discussed her marriage. In the livestream, she also reportedly mentioned that this was due to what her husband said were commercial reasons—as he felt that the news of her marriage would “ruin the business model.”

“You want me to tell them I’m single,” Amouranth said at one point. “It’s about to be true, you piece of shit.”

Shortly after the series of clips gripped social media platforms, several female streamers including 39daph and Valkyrae tweeted their support for Amouranth. On the other end of Twitter and Twitch, however, the 28-year-old’s recent claims highlighted the addressed-yet-ignored dangers of the incel community and the problematic label of ‘Twitch thots’.

“Amouranth has had a husband this whole time yet I’ve been gifting 1000s of Tier 3s EVERY MONTH? How do you charge back on a credit card?” a user tweeted. Meanwhile, American YouTuber, podcaster, and streamer KEEMSTAR—infamous for his terrible takes on controversial public figures despite his own terrible online incel history—wrote in a now-deleted series of tweets: “Clearly husband is abusing. She showed the text. But Amouranth herself has scammed so many guys online, claiming she was single for years. These Twitch streamers don’t care about their viewers. They all just use you and your low IQs to fill their pockets.”

In the Twitter thread, KEEMSTAR continued: “Also Amouranth for years [got] praise for being a genius business woman. [Based] on this new information, the hidden husband behind the scenes was the one making all the business moves. So…”

Some netizens have also taken to Twitter and attacked Amouranth for livestreaming her claims for ‘clout’ and dehumanised her for having an OnlyFans (OF). With comments like “Remember when Twitch was a gaming platform and not for some girly drama?” “Makes sense. She’s on OF after all” and “Why would she wear that top? I can’t concentrate on anything she’s saying,” doing the rounds, Amouranth’s abuse allegations add to the increasing list of toxic controversies and labels female streamers have long found themselves linked to on the male-dominant platform.

In the past, viewers have coined the sexist and degrading term ‘Twitch thots’ that refers to a subset of female streamers who are defined purely by their ‘promiscuous’ looks. Although the label is problematically used alongside ‘booby streamers’ on both Reddit and YouTube, it is associated with two major female creators on Twitch: namely Alinity and Amouranth.

Back in 2018, a YouTuber reportedly accused Amouranth of lying about her relationship status and “pretending to be single so men would donate large amounts of money” to her on streams. At the time, the female streamer had a sum total of 525,000 followers on Twitch and was quickly labelled as “one of the biggest Twitch thots” across the internet. She even witnessed a surge in insulting tweets and said that she had been doxxed following the rumour.

In the case of hot tub streams, the creators involved have further been accused of stealing viewers by taking advantage of “horny nerds” on the platform. Even today, these niche streamers are routinely shamed for being “scantily-dressed” and “acting provocatively” in order to increase their viewership and subscriber count. The discourse has also spurred another conversation as to what constitutes a ‘real gamer’.

Despite all of these controversies, however, in July 2022, Amouranth became the most-viewed female streamer of the year. With a whopping 8.2 million hours of watch time, the star defeated Pokimane and Valkyrae to also hold the title of being the only woman in the top 100 streamers of 2022. Today, with a whopping 5.9 million followers on Twitch, Amouranth’s allegations are yet another addition to the idea that female streamers must stay single in order to ‘sell’ the fantasy that their viewers can one day date them.