Ninja’s Slur Prompts Twitch To Clarify Community Guidelines

Toxicity in gaming is rampant, and no game is void of it. Even more troubling is that popular streamers apparently know no bounds when it comes to racial slurs or hate speech, and as many gamers have experienced, gaming has a community rich with people who feel way too comfortable speaking offensively in gameplay and towards other gamers.

One of the industry’s most popular and profitable streamers Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who teamed up with Drake recently to smash a ton of records, is now under fire for using a racial slur in one of his streams.

Blevins dropped a racial slur into the middle of a song that wasn’t in the lyrics, leading to an apology from the Fortnite celebrity.

With more incidents popping up, Twitch’s community guidelines are now under a spotlight, more specifically, their “hateful conduct” policies.

“Hateful conduct is any content or activity that promotes, encourages, or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment, or violence based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, medical condition, physical characteristics, or veteran status, and is prohibited.”

The language used by Blevins would certainly fall under “race, ethnicity”, but a Twitch representative explained that context and intent are investigated when Twitch streamers are reported. The guidelines also state that the team “consider a number of factors to determine the intent and context of any reported hateful conduct”.

So, there is a difference in the incident with Blevins and that of Matthew “Sadokist” Trivett, who was suspended after using racist language and telling someone to kill themself in a brutal verbal attack on another member in the community.