The Pokimane Atrioc dispute returned this week as Imane “Pokimane” Anys revisited the 2023 deepfake controversy involving fellow streamer Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing. Pokimane spoke about the subject on a livestream on 25 October 2026, and she followed it with a written statement on X on 26 October. She said seeing Atrioc’s name or face still causes her a lot of discomfort and anxiety, and she described a fight-or-flight reaction. Atrioc responded on his own livestream, saying her feelings were valid and that he regretted his actions, and he later withdrew from a planned TwitchCon panel, according to TechTimes.
Pokimane Atrioc and the 2023 livestream
The Pokimane Atrioc dispute began in January 2023, when Atrioc accidentally revealed a browser tab during a livestream that showed a website featuring explicit AI-generated images of female streamers, including Pokimane. Dexerto reported that Atrioc faced widespread backlash after the reveal, and that he later apologized and spent thousands of dollars helping to remove deepfake content from the internet. The reporting establishes that he accessed the website, rather than that he created the images himself, TechTimes noted. Atrioc stepped away from streaming for a period after the incident, and he returned in March 2023, saying he had been working with a company to shut down websites hosting such images.
Speaking about the Pokimane Atrioc dispute on the 25 October livestream, Pokimane said the feelings had not faded with time. She told viewers that seeing Atrioc’s name or face without warning brings the discomfort back, even with blocked and muted terms set up to avoid it. She said, “It just signals to my brain like, ‘You are not safe here.’ Like, ‘No one will protect you,'” and added, “It just really puts me in fight-or-flight.” She also said her first instinct had been to ignore the feelings and process them on her own, and that trying to deal with it alone had not helped.
Pokimane Atrioc and why she stayed silent
In her statement on X on 26 October about the Pokimane Atrioc dispute, Pokimane wrote that people seemed to have forgotten that the specific page shown on Atrioc’s stream was of her. She wrote: “When he was first caught looking at paywalled, deepfake content of female streamers, it seems people forgot that the specific page shown on his stream was of me.” She added: “I didn’t say much at the time because I was so uncomfortable, publicly humiliated, and I didn’t think it needed explaining because it was so obviously wrong.”
The Pokimane Atrioc dispute also covers money spent on removing the material, Pokimane said. She acknowledged that Atrioc had offered 3,000 dollars toward efforts to remove the deepfake material, Dexerto reported. She said she had personally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting the same issue, a figure she shared publicly that has not been independently verified in the reporting cited by TechTimes. She added: “Regardless, no amount of money undoes what happened.” She stressed that she was not trying to end Atrioc’s career or dictate whom other people could associate with, but wanted to share how the incident continues to affect her. She wrote that as Atrioc became more involved in events and with people close to her, she grew particularly uncomfortable.
Pokimane Atrioc and the response this week
Pokimane said the Pokimane Atrioc dispute flared again after Atrioc’s presence at the wedding of fellow streamers Ludwig and QTCinderella, an event that placed him close to people in her own circle. She said there had been a lot of cognitive dissonance in seeing friends put in close proximity to him, and she asked aloud whether they shared her view of what had happened. She said that, as far as she knew, nobody had checked in with the women affected about how his renewed presence in shared social spaces made them feel. She wrote: “Other people forgiving him is their choice, but it doesn’t mean I can’t share my perspective on it as well.”
Atrioc answered the renewed Pokimane Atrioc dispute on his own livestream. He said: “Those feelings are totally valid. I’ve never disagreed with that. I feel terrible, I can’t undo it. I’m trying to use my actions to show that’s not who I am.” He pushed back against the idea that others should face criticism for continuing to associate with him, including Ludwig and QTCinderella, who invited him to their wedding. He said: “I don’t appreciate being used as a weapon to attack someone. I do think those people should be allowed to invite me to something.” TechTimes reported that he subsequently withdrew from a planned TwitchCon panel after the renewed Pokimane Atrioc dispute, and Dexerto reported that he added he had dropped out of a planned appearance at TwitchCon this year.