Ashok Gupta
During a livestream on April 22, 2023, Twitch star Zack “smongold” got into a heated conversation with one of his viewers. It all started when the streamer was browsing the top posts on his official subreddit and came across a submission that revealed McDonald’s was opening a “fully automated restaurant” without any staff.
After sharing her thoughts on the matter, the Austin, Texas-based personality then turned her attention to a viewer who called her “r**arded”. This led Asongold to look into the Twitch chat log of the viewer, where he found that the latter had shared some strong opinions about him in the past.
When Esmongold noticed that viewers were criticizing the channel’s moderators, saying they were doing a “great job” of keeping the “echo chamber” of content creators in check, he responded with:
“So, this is a person who… And by the way, doesn’t that mean it’s not an echo chamber? Because I’m talking to you directly and it’s clear you disagree with me? So, you Can clearly see that this person probably has mental challenges because they think having ‘WASD’ in Diablo 4 is a problem. So, I can’t wait to see how I’m wrong.”
Asmongold debates with Twitch chatter and claims he was timed out for sharing a “stupid opinion”
Asmongold was two hours into his livestream on April 22, when he discussed McDonald’s opening a fully automated restaurant. The streamer claimed that this was going to be the future and elaborated:
“I mean, I think it’s the future. Right? I mean, people are asking for a higher minimum wage and it’s like, if you’re a McDonald’s… then clearly a… like, if your Somebody has to have a robot or something; there’s a break-even point with spending money on employees. And, if one employee has to spend a certain amount of money, it’s cheaper to do it with just one robot. So, here it is! Laughs.”
Moments later, the One True King (OTK) co-founder noticed a Twitch chatter that disagreed with his sentiments. He wrote:
“Your mods do a great job of maintaining your echo chamber, giving some fucking pathetic b**c people time for their different opinions. Sorry a** mod. Bro, you’re too harsh.”
Timestamp: 02:54:00
Assongold responded by claiming the audience was “challenged mentally” because of their views on the mechanics of Diablo 4. He then refreshed the chat log and saw that the latter claimed he had been timed out for having a “different opinion”. After watching it, the 32-year-old streaming personality replied:
“No, you’re time’s up for stupid opinions. And you’re time’s up for spamming, too. It’s one thing to say it once or twice. It’s another thing to say it, like, what? Ten times? What You think we didn’t see it the first time? Time’s up for you to be upset and silly! It has nothing to do with having a different opinion. That’s why you didn’t time out the first time. It was the 20th time.”
At this point, a channel moderator by the name of Jibu decided to permanently ban the viewer. Asmongold laughed and remarked:
“Just got banned! What did he say? Oh my god! Oh, he’s banned! People… get the hell out of here! And that’s what happens with my opinion. Look, there are people who Let’s talk. They’re so silly! Like, it’s amazing!”
Fans react to streamer’s clips
The YouTube comments section featured over 355 fan responses. Here is an excerpt from some of the relevant passages:
Asmongold is considered by many to be the most popular MMORPG content creator on the Amazon-owned platform. He has been livestreaming on Twitch since 2016 and boasts of over 3.3 million followers on his main channel. Interestingly, he has been streaming only on his alternative channel Zackrawrr for some time now.