Paul “Ice Poseidon” Denino, a popular Runescape streamer turned IRL, is currently fighting with his own fan community on reddit. Over the past few months, moderators on his subreddit, under Poseidon’s own direction, have removed threads deemed hateful or derogatory. In a tweet on Tuesday night, Denino says he has been “cleansing the community of toxic, hateful behavior” and that “hatefullness (sic) is not okay.” In response, his community has flooded the sub with as much targeted vitriol as possible or fleeing to another streamer, GreekGodX.
I first saw Ice Poseidon stream over a year ago. Walking around Los Angeles with a camera and backpack, he talked to strangers, hit on girls and mostly acted like an ass. Before getting banned on Twitch and moving to YouTube Live, Poseidon cultivated a community that enjoyed hearing his text-to-speech donations spam the n-word and other hateful rhetoric for the “lolz.” To try and categorize the whole lot is unfair, but Poseidon's viewers have always tended to be on the less politically correct side of the spectrum. On the subreddit dedicated to the streamer and his exploits, hateful posts about “Mexican Andy", “Cornbread” and other individuals met in the real world gained traction and upvotes. The community was toxic, if not vibrant, flooding Poseidon’s channel with a regular 10 to 15 thousand viewers a night.
Over the last few months, things have started to change for Ice Poseidon. Now, he averages around three to four thousand viewers a stream, a far cry from when he was on top of the IRL streaming mountain. It’s hard to find a direct cause for the sudden change, but there are a few factors we can look at. He’s regularly skipped streams for what fans might deem as unfair excuses, like “have to call my congressman” or because he overslept.
hey guys im going to take a some days off so i can feel passionate about streaming again. At the moment im pretty burnt out and feel the need to take some time away from everything to feel good about what i do again. ill see you guys soon.
— Ice_Poseidon (@REALIcePoseidon) December 2, 2017
Promises of spectacular events streamed for his community never happened, either due to Poseidon’s lack of work ethic or the incompetence of those around him. Project CX was supposed to be a massive party on New Year’s Eve, but Poseidon relegated all the work to an assistant who couldn’t find a venue on time. Instead, Poseidon took his NYE stream to a Hilton hotel room in New York City’s Time Square and fans who were promised an unforgettable night with their favorite content creator were unable to get past security checkpoints and left out in the cold. Those that did manage to get inside, like Twitch streamer Brittany Venti, left with bed bug bites to remember the night.
On top of all that, Poseidon’s fans have been actively attacking his girlfriend, Caroline, on his subreddit. Daily, dozens of pictures appear of her face with captions calling her a “leech” or “alien” in posts. She’s seen by the community as one of the causes behind the changes to the stream. She’s been caught on stream bragging about her inherited wealth, allegedly faking her car getting stolen and going to where Poseidon is streaming just to walk up to a fan and call her a “slut.” The community has been using her as a scapegoat for Poseidon’s sudden change, but it’s unfair or even unrealistic to put the blame on her.
Poseidon did an amazing job at accumulating a close community, but has sadly been unable to keep things stable. Building a platform on toxicity was bound to bite him in the ass someday, and it appears that day has arrived.
