Arex · @ArexBold
22nd Mar 2022 from TwitLonger
My experience with Bahroo
Before I get into the stuff I had to deal with Bahroo I want to address a couple of things:
I've never had to speak out like this. I feel like these days you can't solve things privately anymore. I’ve tried resolving things with him privately, but he wouldn’t listen to me and gaslit everything I said which made me silent. Tried talking to him twice by the way. Like talking to a wall.
It took my friend Sam(Strippin) to expose Bahroo's lies for him to finally "apologize". I want to point out that until that moment, he was on stream and victimizing himself despite knowing what he had done to Layna. I feel he often uses these opportunities to manipulate the situation. He was asking his viewers to give support to his tweets while sobbing and actively hiding every single tweet that was negative so that other followers wouldn't notice what was going on. But then he got caught by someone big enough to make him shake, that he ended his subathon to address it. His "apology" was pretty much sorry I got caught, here's some money back to make things go away, and let's all move on and forget about it because I'm going to stream tomorrow. This behavior is awful but this is not something new with Bahroo.
What I'm about to go into next is WHY I wanted to distance myself from him which I feel is important for context leading up to the recent awful things he did to me.
Bahroo and I used to stream together often. We were seen as close friends and I considered him one at one point. There were early red flags with questionable things he said or did but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt because I thought he was the victim.
He would often leave me on read, would ignore things I said and would only invest into talking about himself or if he wanted something. He didn't seem too interested in me. Big streamer, busy guy, yeah yeah. Whatever. I didn't take it personally.
Time went by and we got closer but being his friend was exhausting. It started to seem very one-sided and it drove me into an awful mental state. He often bullied me or tried to make himself look better at the expense of my faults to entertain his stream. It didn't feel like friendly banter at all. I felt like I couldn't be myself when doing anything with him. I had to be careful with what I said or did. Otherwise it would make him upset.
Late 2018 I started to get really big off of Pokemon Lets Go on Twitch. I was doing some crazy content while trying to catch a super rare version of a Pokemon. He had even made a bet I couldn't do it. I was getting thousands of viewers, something that had never happened before. As my channel was finally gaining some traction he started to raid me way more than usual and wanted to get on Discord calls constantly. He had never done this in the past:
https://gyazo.com/a39d5e99091f8a7c82c75492a83e314d
It was so weird and sudden. During the calls it seemed like he wanted to be the center of attention and try to control the chat by doing his trigger words that induced spam of his emotes.
I was finally in the spotlight for once in my career and he wanted to redirect the attention to himself rather than be supportive. This made me feel awful and it felt like this behavior was overlooked because he was a big streamer.
It took a total of 10 days and I finally caught the super rare Pokemon and my numbers started to go way down (which was understandable) but something that really stung was he immediately stopped showing interest in hanging out on Discord calls.
I felt kinda used... It seemed like all he cared about was trying to advertise himself and his emotes in front of all the new people that were watching me and then once people moved on he saw no value anymore.
At one point in time my whole chat consisted of Bahroo's subs. It was if someone copy pasted his chat on top of my Twitch channel page. I was dominated by his influence and I just sat there and dealt with it. I felt like my stream was a waiting room for his stream and it made me not want to stream at times.
I had to deal with his anger issues over petty things. He would vent to me frequently about his problems and even started to say some messed up things about people I knew and even some that I was friends with. He had even expressed wanting to hurt 2 streamers and wished an artist harm. Could only share these 2:
https://gyazo.com/0e6fd7cca03b38e08cc1f2b1c23db1c6
It seemed like he never had anything good to say about anyone. He often talked bad about people and it seemed like he was often angry. I had heard that he was talking about me behind my back which really hurt. I ignored it because I felt pressured to be his friend and he constantly made me feel bad for him.
I tried so hard to help him by giving him constant mental support, cheering him on, helping him with advice, and overall to just be there for him. But it just seemed like he wanted pity. It was really sad.
He kept saying depressing things and I tried so hard to put his mind in the opposite direction. I gave so much of myself to help this guy because I just genuinely cared and kept feeling bad for him. I wasn't expecting anything in return. I just wanted to be a friend to him because for some mysterious reason he didn't seem to have many.
He had this obsession about wanting to know which artist did X work for me and he would frequently ask about my emotes or designs:
https://gyazo.com/e1ab9b631b9d8c99d7f257997dc3f38a
Before I knew it, he was hiring those artists and getting similar things done. I didn't mind the behavior at first but then it started to get excessive. I noticed he did it with other streamers as well so I kind of dealt with it. He also didn't seem to like it when I confronted him about this issue.
All these problems started to build up over time and I wasn't enjoying streaming anymore. I felt pressured by too many things involving him that I took a couple of weeks off to get away from it all. Depression hit me really hard.
In 2019 I visited him at his place (2nd time) because he invited me over again. He made plans with other streamers when we were supposed to do things together. Even his viewers were confused why I was sitting in the living room doing nothing. When he finally decided to do things with me, I wasn’t allowed to react to his chat. I reacted to one person and he DM’d me this immediately:
https://gyazo.com/49a095bb32858a230e50935fd11c4375
For someone that I thought was my friend, this seemed controlling and weird.
Later that day I was streaming alone in his living room. Bahroo was sitting behind me watching and then proceeded to insert himself in my stream because he wanted to beat something I was struggling with. I wanted to try to do it on my own but he insisted and his community started to demand it so I gave in. It all seemed hypocritical to do after what he DM’d me earlier that day.
Again, all his behavior that I had to deal with up to this point is by no means illegal and some might even see it as not a big deal but it made me feel awful which is why I just wanted to get away from him. It felt like a one-sided friendship and I was being mentally abused and used.
2020 was the year that things started to get really awful between us. I was keeping my distance even more because he kept doing shitty behavior. He could tell that I was keeping distance from him so tension continued to rise. I didn't want to associate myself with him anymore.
Then in June 2020 when a bunch of streamers were being canceled left and right, he started talking with me. He was being overly polite and very talkative with me trying to start conversations about people getting canceled which then lead into this:
https://gyazo.com/1becae63ccc1ce24fa87eb0e6d9d0842
I purposely wanted to show this because yes I did say that because I was an idiot and trusted him again. Then he kept coming to me more about other people being canceled and it started to irritate me because it seemed like he was getting impatient. I really needed time to think and this wasn't helping. He would show up to my stream more so he could subtly remind me. I again told him I needed time:
https://gyazo.com/56f66fa15c1db69966e43f15e8274287
Then a week later he made a cryptic tweet:
https://gyazo.com/be97eaf58efb6add877c135388662b64
Was he talking about me? Or was he having more problems with people? I don't know but I wanted to get away from him so badly. Too many red flags. Over the next week he started to come in my stream and act like nothing was wrong. We were NOT on good terms at all. But he just kept doing it. I had enough and I felt even more uncomfortable since that tweet. This was while I was streaming and I messaged him:
https://gyazo.com/9fc785fc5f803d1d9ff41c4a62655789
All he cared about was if I was going to out him. I burst out with a scream and ended my stream. I felt betrayed again. Why did I keep giving this guy a chance?
I was done. From there I refused to talk to him and swore to never associate myself with him ever again. But I had to take time off streaming again because I was a mess from all this bullying.
He soon blocked me a couple of weeks later:
https://gyazo.com/c9e37f7f71096a897a431dc8271445b5
Once I came back to streaming, I made a public statement:
https://gyazo.com/ab4aa46212f934d44ee701c32bcfee8b
I wanted to move on and just heal man. This was my answer to it.
Over the next couple of months I avoided anything that involved him. Even communities he hung around. I wanted nothing to do with him but unfortunately he wouldn't stop bothering me.
I planned a game night with another group of friends but instead of asking me he proceeded to ask my other friends to join which not only made me feel uncomfortable but some of my friends as well. He blocked me on Twitter a couple of months ago so what was he trying to achieve? Was he trying to pressure me in public?
https://gyazo.com/b89b24fc5d7b66e84b4e008d54556eba
Then later that day he sent me this on Discord:
https://gyazo.com/45e6d0c9a86f0dcac6fcabe21c2a0eeb
What is he talking about? My friends and I had already planned a night together and he came to that ridiculous conclusion. It felt like he didn't want me having fun with anyone. This made me extremely uncomfortable and I did not want to plan any more game nights ever again.
Then one day on his stream(a few months later) I was brought up by his chat and immediately he shut down the conversation with this (video and unmute):
https://imgur.com/a/RccCysh
As I stated above, he blocked me a while back yet he chose to lie about it to his viewers. I sucked it up and said nothing. I just dealt with it. A few weeks later numerous people were talking about him in my chat and they wouldn't stop. I decided to stand up for myself and said, "I'm surprised a lot of people still don't know but me and Bahroo are not friends anymore. Recently he lied about me on his stream and I'm disappointed. I don't care if you use his emotes but please don't talk about him in my chat." And that was that. I tried to be as respectful as possible.
Then a few weeks later Bahroo's manager reached out to me to put the issues between me and Bahroo to rest and insisted on getting on a call about it. I asked for details first and it was about a clip of me and what I had said above. I told her I couldn't take care of this right now and I would get back to her in a few days. Then she checked in again and I told her I wasn't ready yet. At the time I was trying to take care of my pregnant wife and constant news of my dying grandmother back in the states. A week went by and she got a little pushy. And then 2 days later I was hit with this:
https://gyazo.com/1fd13c37c22fe0e58c7d3ca2f7abee31
In which I responded with:
https://gyazo.com/102a71b8b9d0a46d198b790a36ce4ae2
Then, I was ghosted. Never heard from her again.
It was a bully tactic and yes, it worked. Despite him having no grounds to actually take legal action against me this still shook me to the core. I wanted to call it out so badly but I stayed silent in fear of him coming after me again. I've seen him crush so many people that have spoken out against him. I felt isolated.
My mental state got worse over time as I started to see small bits of rumors about me. Even when I was the PogChamp emote for a day on Twitch(which he banned in his chat), people seemed confused and I was made out as a bad guy. Soon after, I wasn't myself on stream anymore and people could tell I was not happy. I became so self-conscious about everything and it ruined my head even further that it snowballed. It got so bad that yet again I took another huge break 5 months ago that lasted over a month.
This is me setting the record straight because he keeps getting away with this shitty behavior and nobody calls him out. The guy is an entertaining streamer to many but the fact that he hasn't learned anything in the past years just disappoints me as someone who used to be a friend of his.
I hope that this helps shed some light on all the things that were swept under the rug for so long. I was going to keep all this in forever but when he started to mess with my friends and continued to show bad behavior I couldn't keep it in anymore.
He can try and claim he was misled by Bunny when he made lies about Layna, but to me that was his own wrongdoing.
I don’t want him to be canceled. I just want him to man up and change.
One last comment: Please stop fighting for content creators you know nothing about. This is why parasocial relationships can be so dangerous. Someone with the right influence and wrong intentions can wield it like a weapon to keep people silent.