Professional gamers reveal the worst things about their profession
“Elixa,” a 35-year-old Twitch streamer who also works part-time at Tesla, shared one of the worst harassment stories I’ve ever heard.
Twitch/Elix9
“Elixa” didn’t want to use his real name for this story, and I understand why. Over the phone, I heard how one YouTuber harassed him relentlessly — first online, then eventually in real life —just because Elixa often streams in full drag.
According to Elixa, it all started when one YouTuber made a call to his audience to “hate raid” Elixa’s Twitch channel, asking his viewers to visit, spam, and say “the most disgusting things.”
“I looked up the video [on YouTube] and I saw myself on his video while he was collecting donations,” Elixa told Business Insider. “He was pretty much asking people for donations so he could do this.”
Days later, the YouTube troll somehow learned Elixa’s real name, and began to send erroneous food deliveries to his workplace at Tesla.
“He’d be on the phone with the delivery person pretending to be me,” he said.
Eventually, the troll somehow learned Elixa’s cell phone number, plus the numbers of his fiancé and his fiancé’s family, which led to tons of prank calls and “disgusting messages” in the middle of the night. Soon after, the troll posted “all of my information, all of my fiancé’s information, his parents’ information, information about my little brother, everything” through his public Discord channel, which led to threats.
“Someone said they were going to send a pipe bomb to us,” Elixa said.
At that point, it got serious: Elixa and his family created a terrorism report with the government, and Tesla’s legal and security teams also got involved. Elixa and his fiancé finally got a pair of detectives to work on their case, who subpoenaed YouTube to get the troll’s information, and talked to the troll over the phone.
Since those detectives spoke to the troll, Elixa’s harassment stopped completely.
“He was really scared over the phone,” Elixa said, but apparently “he hasn’t stopped. He’s still doing this to other Twitch streamers.”
