Update: That didn’t take long. It appears as though DariusIRL has had his Twitch channel unbanned. You can follow DariusIRL on Twitch.
DariusIRL is a livestreamer on Twitch who was banned indefinitely for rapping along to a Blueface song which included the n-word in its lyrics.
Seconds after he rapped the lyrics, he made a point to stop and clarify that he’s black and that it’s not against Twitch’s Terms of Service for him to say this word.
Twitch has a Stance on N-Word Usage
The word that DariusIRL used on stream ended with an “a”, and he wasn’t using it in a hateful way.
The “, period.” in the above tweet from Twitch pretty clearly means “nobody can say it, regardless of their race”. But again, the tweet above is referring to the word that Twitch describes as “hard R“, and not the word that DariusIRL said on stream.
Speculation: It’s possible that the following series of events took place:
- Somebody who was watching the DariusIRL stream heard him say the lyric, then heard him say he’s black, and still decided to report him.
- Somebody working at Twitch reviewed this report, heard him say the lyric, heard him say he’s black, and didn’t believe him.
- Finally, Twitch banned him and stripped away his ability to grow his platform and earn an income.
Now, there’s always some possibility that he was banned for something else entirely, but this is just a testament to how atrocious Twitch is when it comes to enforcing their Terms of Service and handing bans, especially in regards to the poor communication they have with their streamers.
DariusIRL shared the email he received from Twitch, which said he was banned for “Hateful Slurs or Symbols”.
A common part of the mixed race experience in America, that you’ll often hear brought up, is how people can feel like they don’t really fit into either box. They don’t have the same cultural experience as their white friends growing up, and on the other side of the coin, it’s common for them to feel “not black enough” to relate to the other part of their culture.
Further reading:
Darius shared the following clip, which he describes as the cause of his ban:
Darius went on to post photos of himself and his family from when he was a kid, in order to help prove to Twitch that he’s “black enough” to not get banned from their platform for saying the aforementioned word.
If Twitch doesn’t see this and immediately reverse the ban, or clarify that he was banned for something else entirely, that’s a pretty rough look for them. He wasn’t using the word to attack or disparage anyone, and it was clearly a lyric from a song because he played a portion the song on stream immediately after.
This is such an egregious ban that it makes you wonder if Twitch has adjusted their internal policies towards black creators using the word, since it’s hard to imagine how they could have had this happen in error.
Hopefully, this was just a mistake and it will be quickly corrected. Do you think that Twitch owes DariusIRL an apology, or at least a better explanation?
We love darius irl