The German gaming streamer Erik “Gronkh” Range commented on the Twitter shitstorm on the evening of February 3rd, which raged because of a statement about “Hogwarts Legacy”. He had by far the largest stream in Germany on Friday evening.
What was the shitstorm on Twitter about? Gronkh has been slammed by some people on Twitter for the past week after a clip from one of his streams was shared on Twitch (via Twitch).
In the clip, he said he didn’t care about JK Rowling. And asked if that made him a bad person.
He had previously announced that he would be playing and streaming the controversial Hogwarts Legacy. He wanted to channel the money that would come in via Twitch donations and donate it to specific organizations.
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Gronkh says clip was taken out of context – Rejects JK Rowling
That’s what he says about the Shitstorm: Gronkh explained the clip was taken out of context. He doesn’t care about JK Rowling, he rejects their views and statements.
Someone sent him a letter with arguments in favor of JK Rowling – to this situation he replied with the statement “JK Rowling does not play a role in his life”, please do not send him e-mails.
But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about trans people and their difficulties. But on the contrary.
The people from his stream who were watching him and for whom he made the statement knew that too. He spoke to this community at that moment: They would know his views.
Gronkh admits that he often expresses himself in such a way that there is room for misunderstanding. In this case, he also believes the clip was maliciously taken out of context. The 45-year-old thinks that certain people on Twitter promised to achieve a particularly large reach with him as a big name and to draw attention to this topic.
Gronkh is not boycotting Hogwarts Legacy, but has already turned down advertising campaigns
What does he say about Hogwarts Legacy? Gronkh says he understands when people want to boycott the game. He himself has not yet played Hogwarts Legacy, nor has he made a big statement about it.
However, he refused to take part in a promotional campaign for the game. Gronkh had already canceled the campaign before the shitstorm broke out against him. Even if he had considered participating and donating the money to the campaign.
He cannot understand that he of all people had to serve as a supporter of “Hogwarts Legacy” during the shitstorm – apparently this is due to his wide reach.
He will not buy Hogwart’s Legacy either, he will be given the key.
At one point, Gronkh was somewhat unhappily interrupted because he was being given a lot of subscriptions:
Gronkh believes: Shitstorm has done the cause a disservice
How does he see the shitstorm? Gronkh repeatedly emphasizes that he does not see himself as a victim in the shitstorm. Ultimately, people bringing this up would have done a disservice to keeping Hogwarts Legacy down.
Because of the shitstorm, Hogwarts Legacy received a lot of attention: Hogwarts Legacy was on the front page of the online edition of BILD for 2 hours.
Gronkh also notes that after a few hours, the discussion on Twitter was infiltrated by trolls posing as trans people under false flags and fueling the discussion with provocative statements. Gronkh said he always looks at the timelines of such posters and there are often indications that they are “right wing trolls” or “siff trolls”.
At one point, Gronkh says he couldn’t sleep that night, just scrolled through Twitter and saw people texting each other. It hasn’t been about him or the topic for a long time now, people just yelled at each other. He finds “not expedient.”
On the contrary: Gronkh emphasizes that in his stream you have always tried to talk about things calmly.
Lots of approval, sympathy and subscriptions for Gronkh
How was the mood in the stream? Gronkh was supported and showered with positive emotes from the start of the stream. Even before the stream started, many users said on Twitter how much they appreciate Gronkh and that they were sorry for how attacked the streamer seemed.
As during the shitstorm, he received a lot of sympathy.
After Gronkh had finished his statement, a huge flood of donated subscriptions poured into the chat, which repeatedly triggered special effects and alarms and thus interrupted the stream.
The Twitch streamer Tanzverbot alone donated 570 subscriptions to Gronkh by 7:55 p.m. – that’s over €2,000.
Gronkh kept urging the chat to calm down – but viewers wanted to do something good for him with more and more donations.
With a peak of over 42,000 viewers, Gronkh’s stream had about twice as many viewers as usual.
More on the incident:
Twitch: Gronkh asks, “Am I a bad person if I don’t care about JK Rowling?” – Trending on Twitter