Twitch Streamer 'Arcadum' Accused Of Grooming, Manipulation By Over 20 Women, Dropped By Talent Agency
Earlier this week, the streamer Arcadum, known mostly for his Dungeons and Dragons streams on Twitch, was accused by over 20 women of acts including grooming, sexual manipulation and harassment.
The allegations first came to light after fellow Twitch streamer Momo posted a link to a TwitLonger including descriptions of voice calls, as well as screenshots of DMs between the two, showing evidence of Arcadum manipulating and guilting her by using private details of her life.
Momo's TwitLonger inspired over 20 other women to come forward with similar accusations of manipulation against Arcadum. Streamer Lyra121 posted a TwitLonger describing how Arcadum would repeatedly make advances at her despite being asexual, using their friendship and his power to manipulate her emotionally. Another streamer, Cri45, shared a TwitLonger about how she opened up to Arcadum about past abuse and became friends with him, only to have him hit on her despite her obviously vulnerable state, using personal information to make her feel guilty about not wanting to pursue a relationship. Arcadum ultimately sent her on a "spiral of PTSD" as she explained in the TwitLonger.
Arcadum, who has over 250,000 followers at the time of writing, was quickly dropped by his talent agency Novo, as announced in a statement by the company's CMO Devin Nash yesterday. Arcadum made a quick response to the allegations on Twitter that same day, saying he would discuss them at length in a livestream today.
The allegations have sparked a lot of support for Arcadum's accusers, and an equal amount of disappointment from his fans, who took to his latest Twitter post to express their feelings about the news. A megathread was set up on /r/LiveStreamFails to keep track of all the accusations and relevant information surrounding the situation.
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Phhase
Damn. I hope Star_ is ok. I know they were friends.
Timstuff
Adult women being "groomed" is not possible and it is extremely disrespectful to all of the children who have actually been groomed by sexual predators. If you are an adult you are responsible for your own choices, but children cannot consent which is why "grooming" is the term used for what sex predators do to them.
I do not know the specifics of this case but if the woman said no and the man either got pushy or forced himself, that is harassment or assault. If the woman got bamboozled into a bad relationship by an manipulative pig, that sucks, but it is not "grooming," and there is no way in hell it should be compared to a child getting set up to be taken advantage of by a sex predator. You are an adult, not a child, and comparing your adult self to a sexually abused child to garner extra sympathy is never a good look.
Phhase
Semantics aside, it's still not good.
GamerDLM
Grooming can also by definition refer to preparing a person for a specific purpose or to fulfill a specific activity or demand.
In a legal sense (specifically at say a federal level for criminal law) it much more commonly refers to the focus on children or adults associated with the child.
Grooming can be applied to adults, the most easily cited example being workplace abuse. If a person uses positive reinforcement where the intent is to reduce the chance that they are reprimanded or reported for an act a person would generally find reprehensible (such as unwanted physical contact) that is an example of grooming. The act itself legally would be closer to battery but in a civil case the methodology of grooming can be useful as evidence of intent.
Specifically a common thread in all of the stories is that the guy was not in a relationship with them but still made aggressive advances in some cases physical, in pretty much all the cases emotionally manipulative communications.
Timstuff
That would be harassment, which we already have a term for, and harassment is illegal. Grooming implies establishing trust / rapport with someone with the intention of taking advantage of them later, which is why it's considered so heinous regarding child abuse. Unlike a child an adult knows when someone has crossed the line into harassment. Saying a woman was being "groomed" makes it sound like a man was offering her toys and candy and asking her parents if they could take her to a baseball game, which sounds silly with an adult woman, but are common tactics used by child predators.
The #MeToo movement is not doing itself any favors trying to conflate the language used to describe child abuse with the sexual harassment of adult women. Both are problems that deserve to be taken seriously but we should not be thinking of adult women in the same way we think of vulnerable children.
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Lexicanium Coeus
certainly bad that I only knew this through nyanners
EruditeEbert
Why do they always look like that
GenericFellow24
Niche Internet Micro-Celebrity "Don't Become a Sexual Predator Challenge" [IMPOSSIBLE]