The Shady Side Of Amouranth
While Twitch is primarily known for gaming streamers such as Tyler "Ninja" Blevins and Turner "Tfue" Tenney, they are far from the platform's only entertainers. The arguable queen of non-gaming Twitch feeds is Kaitlyn "Amouranth" Siragusa. She cosplays, paints, and just generally chats with her fans, and she seems to have fun doing that. However, while Amouranth has made a career out of filming her life for hours at a time, she hasn't always been the most wholesome content creator.
Odds are you are more familiar with Amouranth's reputation than with Amouranth herself. Her behavior has won her the ire of many viewers and Twitch admins, and she has been banned numerous times. In light of this, as noted by Sportskeeda, many Twitch users have demanded that her Twitch account be scrubbed from the internet. However, Amouranth's wardrobe and provocative posturing are only the tip of her iceberg of scandals.
If you dig a little deeper into Amouranth's history, you will see just how deep the rabbit hole of questionable behavior goes. This is the shady side of Amouranth.
Twitch suspensions leading to more subscribers
Whenever Twitch bans a streamer, the company typically sends two distinct messages. The first is aimed at the content creators themselves, telling them to stop breaking the rules; the second is that audiences usually realize they should find entertainment elsewhere on the platform. Ironically, one of Twitch's earlier attempts to curtail Amouranth and her fanbase had the exact opposite effect.
As reported by Game Rant, Amouranth's first notable ban occurred in September 2019 when she stopped to pet her dog during a stream. After this fatefully mundane decision, Amouranth stood up, but her pants refused to travel with her, so they dropped and revealed a distinct lack of underwear. Since nudity is pretty high on Twitch's list of offenses, Amouranth was promptly suspended.
However, this incident didn't deter viewers. Instead, newcomers joined her subscriber count and eagerly awaited her next video. During her forced hiatus, Amouranth's following grew by 410,568 new followers (per Game Rant), turning her into one of Twitch's fastest growing streamers.
According to Amouranth herself, Twitch's ban over her wardrobe malfunction did more for her popularity than anything she ever did by herself. That's the Streisand Effect for ya.
Few businesses tolerate Amouranth's antics
Amouranth's true love is cosplay, and she can often be found wearing costumes on and off-stream. However, the time and effort that goes into her cosplay comes at a cost, and it's not uncommon for local businesses to foot the bill.
Amouranth has an unfortunate tendency to tick off service industry workers in her vicinity. In one infamous instance, according to viewers, she spent a whopping ten hours at a salon. After all, the secret to perfect cosplay is perfect hair. As time went on, the stylist's patience ran thinner than a balding hairline. The salon's management eventually decided enough was enough and she was banned from the premises for a year.
Not all businesses suffer for Amouranth's cosplay, though; sometimes they are simply on the receiving end of a cosplay-themed joke. For example, she once pulled a prank on a series of stores by wearing a french maid outfit (the skimpy kind that comes with fishnet stockings) and pretending to dust. Employee reactions ranged from dumbfounded stares to outright anger. According to the Daily Star, some workers accused her of being a prostitute and using their businesses to solicit work. Amouranth was also reportedly asked to leave an arcade while wearing the getup because it wasn't "family appropriate" (per TheGamer).
Relative slaps on the wrist from Twitch
Like most streaming platforms, Twitch tries to moderate itself and maintain a squeaky-clean image. This means no abusive language, hateful content, or nudity. That intention is all well and good, but it only works when a company enforces the rules with a consistent (and iron) hand. You can't play favorites.
Amouranth's popularity skyrocketed after Twitch punished her for (unintentionally) breaking the no-nudity rule. While an unintended side effect, at least her fame came about because Twitch tried to enforce said rules, right? Well, some have argued that this punishment seemed half-hearted when compared to other streamers.
Take streamer Kiaraakitty, for instance. During a hot tub stream, one of Kiaraakitty's guests had a bikini wardrobe malfunction. Bikinis and Twitch just don't get along, do they? Instead of hitting Kiaraakitty with a regular three-day ban, Twitch decided to nuke her channel and slammed her with an indefinite one. It seems as though the company realized its mistake and quickly overturned its decision, but it briefly looked like Twitch was more than ready to lock Kiaraakitty out of streaming ever again because of something that wasn't her fault.
According to outlets such as GameRevolution, some viewers and fellow streamers feel Twitch is giving Amouranth preferential treatment.
Hot tub meta profiteering
One of the more recent trends to hit Twitch is the "hot tub meta," in which streamers chat with fans while wearing bikinis, and Amouranth has been an active participant. In fact, according to CNET's research, she was the most popular hot tub streamer by several hundred thousand hours.
Even though Amouranth didn't create the hot tub meta, she was still one of its earliest adopters. You might assume that since she jumped on the jacuzzi train pretty quickly, she would be all for a video category that lets her wear bikinis without getting in trouble, but that is far from the truth. She has actually been highly critical of the hot tub meta, at least from an economic standpoint.
During an April 20 stream, she stated, "It's probably damaging for Twitch's ad revenue" (via Dexerto). While Amouranth didn't expand on her position, Dexerto's Michael Gwilliam postulated that advertisers might not want their products associated with streams of women in bikinis. This seemed to predict Amouranth's eventual punishment from Twitch: the temporary demonetization of her channel. To add some ironic icing to this streaming cake, Amouranth expressed her opinion while literally in the middle of a hot tub stream — and while riding an inflatable banana, no less.
It seems odd that Amouranth would willingly take advantage of something that she believes will threaten her livelihood, but the short term monetary gain was apparently too good to pass up.
Ludwig Ahgren lost a brand deal because of Amouranth
In the world of entertainment, reputation is everything. If you go ballistic because your assistant stocks your trailer fridge with the wrong soda, people will think you are hard to work with. If you keep getting banned for suggestive content, people might think you're an adult entertainment worker, and some uptight businesses might not want to associate with you — or the people who associate with you.
Ludwig Ahgren is a popular video game streamer, and he likes to rub elbows and take pictures with his fellow internet celebrities. Unfortunately, this shutterbug behavior got him in hot water with an unidentified partner brand, and they decided not to work with him because of two recent pictures. Ludwig claims that the offending pictures were of Ahgren's clothed butt (he lost a bet with Disguised Toast) and Ahgren standing next to Amouranth at the Logan Paul vs Floyd Mayweather exhibition match.
The photograph with Amouranth confused fans because she wasn't wearing anything provocative. Sure, her dress was bedazzled, but it was still venue-appropriate. So what did the brand find objectionable about the picture? Amouranth herself, apparently. Ahgren claimed the company thought she was an adult film star, and therefore any pictures with her made Ahgren "not brand-safe enough to work with [the] company."
Even though Amouranth isn't directly to blame for Ahgren's lost contract, her reputation might be the culprit.
Liar liar, sweatpants on fire
It can take a lot of hard work to stay fit. Amouranth frequently exercises, and she takes great pride in showing off the fruits of her labor. She also likes to occasionally give audiences front row seats to her workouts. You may wonder: if she is just flaunting or offering exercise tips? The truth is, she's annoying gym owners.
During one noteworthy stream, Amouranth worked out in a gym while wearing what was essentially sexy Captain America exercise clothes, complete with a shield she brought with her. She recorded her workout session so audiences could see her every move. The problem was, her viewers could also see everyone else in the gym, because her phone's camera faced a mirror. Numerous gym employees continually asked her to stop streaming. And each time, she said she wasn't, all while looking at her phone. She couldn't have been more obvious, even if she winked at her audience.
Eventually, the gym's owner handed Amouranth an ultimatum: stop streaming or face the cops. Amouranth created a third option and left in a huff. When she picked up her phone again, she ended the stream with (joking?) accusations of racism. Amouranth remarked that was told to stop streaming "because [she's] white."
To be fair, one employee offered Amouranth the option to stream against an opaque wall so the video wouldn't feature any other people's reflections. Had Amouranth taken that option, she probably could have stayed.
She invented the post-hot tub meta trend
Trends feature two reliable factors. One: When a trend ends, another begins. Two: There is always someone responsible for popularizing a trend. Amouranth didn't invent the hot tub meta trend, but she invented the one that came after. The result was such pure, undiluted Amouranth that she immediately paid the price.
In late June, Amouranth and fellow streamer-in-crime IndieFoxx invented what Kotaku dubbed the "ear lick meta," which took over hot tub streams in popularity. If you haven't heard of it, consider yourself lucky, because it is much stranger than it sounds. Essentially, several streamers placed fake ears on their microphones so they could simulate ear play for tips.
What started as a series of suggestive ASMR broadcasts culminated in a truly surreal stream in which Amouranth bounced around on a bed while wearing a Spider-Gwen costume and horse mask, making horse noises and aggressively loud slurping sounds.
The video was so extreme that Amouranth was quickly banned for it. IndieFoxx told Polygon that she was banned as well for "sexually suggestive content," although her streams seemed slightly less theatrical.
She once streamed all of Phantom of the Opera
The best way to judge a person's true character might be to give them a "Get out of Jail Free" card. Do they go about their days as normal, or do they flaunt their immunity-from-consequences with impunity? Amouranth makes her home comfortably in the latter.
During one infamous broadcast, Amouranth worked on her cosplay and chatted up her audience like normal, but she spiced up the broadcast with a very copyright-infringing "Phantom of the Opera" stream in the lower-right corner. As in, she played the movie in its entirety without any transformative elements.
How did Amouranth get away with such blatant disregard for the rules? Apparently, Twitch admins had (accidentally) disabled the ability to report her streams, so nobody could do anything about it at the time. The platform's statute of limitations must be pretty short, because she hasn't been punished for it since.
Usually, Twitch doesn't tolerate streamers who use their platform to give audience a free pirated show. In early 2021, the platform banned the Twitch partner Leo, also known as "Slick," after he asked if he could watch movies on-stream. According to Ginx.tv, Slick had apparently streamed some films prior to this ban, and Twitch finally had enough. It's surprising, then, to see that Amouranth broadcasted a movie (and a famous one at that) without so much as a slap on the wrist.