Twitch/karljacobs
- YouTuber Karl Jacobs has issued an apology after old clips of him resurfaced.
- Jacobs previously streamed with Ice Poseidon and used the streamer's offensive catchphrase.
- Ice Poseidon, a controversial streamer, said the drama was unwarranted.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
YouTuber Karl Jacobs, one of the most popular Minecraft video-game streamers, has apologized to his fan base after clips resurfaced of him live streaming with a controversial and unpopular creator.
Jacobs, who has 2.5 million Twitch followers and nearly two million YouTube subscribers, has climbed the Minecraft streaming ranks by collaborating with people like MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, one of YouTube's most popular creators. Dream, the top Minecraft YouTuber, also recently invited Jacobs to take part in his private server of the video game, raising his popularity even higher.
But over the last week, a past association with Paul Denino, better known online as Ice Poseidon, who has a long and controversial history online, drew ire from some fans.
One screenshot shared on Twitter appeared to show Jacobs spamming another creator's Twitch stream with "cx," a catchphrase of Denino's fans. Jacobs later explained that the catchphrase was "a way to reference when a video game character on the screen had a large nose," an allusion to Denino's own facial features.
Another resurfaced clip on Twitter showed the two creators on a stream together.
-paige (@feralpaige) April 29, 2021
Denino and Jacobs did not return a request for comment by publication time.
Ice Poseidon is a controversial streamer, but his content has changed
Denino, aka Ice Poseidon, grew from a small-time Runescape streamer on Twitch in 2015 to one of the largest so-called "IRL" (in real life) content creators in just a few years, bringing his camera to stream from the real world. He is known for cultivating a fairly toxic fan base that would often attempt to sabotage his streams.
Calling themselves the "purple army" and spamming their "cx" slogan in chat rooms, Denino had no control over the thousands of people who watched his streams regularly.
During the height of his popularity in 2016 and 2017, he would accost passersby on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles just to get a rise out of them for content. He was also an early adopter of using text-to-speech donations in his streams, with AI reading the messages aloud. His fans would often send vulgar messages to mess with him.
In one instance in a restaurant, a viewer came in and sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. He's also been swatted - or had the police called on him unnecessarily by viewers as a prank - multiple times in a barber shop, a parking lot, his own apartment, and while driving.
After he was swatted on an American Airlines flight in 2017, Denino was permanently suspended from Twitch and started streaming on YouTube for a year. He then developed his own network and streaming platform called the "CX Network." In 2018, his content was banned from the Livestreamfails Reddit page, which dedicated to chronicling streamer drama.
In March 2019, Denino's residence was raided by the FBI and he closed down his "CX Network" platform. In August of that year, he announced that he would stream on Microsoft's Mixer platform. He managed to rack up nearly 40,000 followers on the platform before it was shut down in June 2020. That month, Denino posted a video on Twitter asking for Twitch to remove his ban and allow him back on the platform.
"I am doing everything I am able to, to reform my once toxic community," Denino wrote in an attached Twitlonger blog post. "I am proud to say we have made some amazing strides in doing so."
Since then, Denino has been streaming on YouTube to fairly little controversial fanfare.
"You know I had a very bad sorta community at that moment, very toxic and all super against me and I was just like alright I've gotta just take a step back and restart because I've let things get out of hand," Denino told Dot Esports in an interview this year.
Jacobs' fans were not happy that he associated with Ice Poseidon
Though Denino has said he's turned a new leaf, many of Jacobs' fans said on Twitter that they were upset by the apparent association.
After viewers resurfaced the old clip of the streamer showing up on Ice Poseidon's YouTube stream, Jacobs said in an April 29 Twitch stream that he does not "condone anything they've done," and that "I just don't want anyone to associate that garbage with me because it's just not true."
The next day, he released a blog post on Twitlonger addressing the situation again.
"I don't endorse any of his actions, and I stopped watching his content a long time ago," Jacobs wrote. "I know that it is important to lead anyone that follows me as a mascot of positivity and comfort, and part of that is acknowledging when I make mistakes and apologizing for them."
-karl! (@honkkarl) April 30, 2021
Denino did not take kindly to Jacobs, responding on Twitter that he felt that Jacobs was "causing a witch hunt." He added that this situation has made him "feel so drained isolated and alone" and that he's "done more self reflection and change than anyone else in this industry."
Denino added that Jacobs appeared to be falling into a similar trap of a toxic fanbase, as he was forced by his fans to apologize.
"You are letting your fans who do not have your best interest shame you into apologizing for something you shouldn't have to apologize for," Denino tweeted. "I went through the same s---, heed my advice or your toxic fans will continue to push the boundaries until it's too late."
In an interview Sunday night with YouTuber Daniel Keem, who runs the DramaAlert channel, Denino said, "I don't hate Karl, but he just validated these weirdos that want to cancel somebody for no reason."