Brazilian Streamer Jukes Banned for Using Racial Language
Beloved Brazilian streaming star Jukes may have landed himself in some rather hot water last week after a stream in which the former Cloud9 Academy jungler utilized some racial slurs. The incident occurred when Jukes was messing around with the wording of one of League of Legends in-game items, Black Cleaver, going through multiple other words such as “Spliegar” that sounded phonetically similar, including two uses of the n-word.
Cultural Clashes Meet on Twitch
The use of the word, while apparently of little consequence in Brazilian culture, has major racial connotations in the U.S., home of the streaming platform Twitch on which Jukes streams. It is highly inappropriate and offensive there.
While Brazilian fans have been quick to downplay the significance of the word and called it just wordplay, Twitch has taken the usage seriously and banned Jukes. There are no details on the length of the ban at this time. Neither Jukes nor Twitch officially commented on the matter. Jukes has gone dark since his last stream Saturday.
The situation is the latest instance of racial language usage by streamers on Twitch. Besides Jukes, TF Blade and dozens of other streamers have been banned over their poor word choice in the past year. While most of those have been involving US streamers, this is one of the rarer ones involving a foreign streamer. It calls into question whether or not Twitch should have alternate standards for other nations that may not view certain words or actions in the same light. It’s a tough issue for the streaming platform. While it’s not currently a large priority for them, it needs to be resolved soon.
We’ll continue to keep you updated as the situation develops.
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