Over the past few years, there have been increasingly more attention towards issues around workplace discrimination and harassment claims in the tech industry, particularly amidstallegations against the likes of Activision Blizzard. Though as of late, the conversation appears to have extended beyond tech companies to platforms and content creators as well. Recently, popular YouTuber Squizzy has been accused of abusing their ex-partner.Squizzy, also known as, Hyojin Choi, is an Australian YouTuber known for short animation videos. Although perhaps not as big as other creators likePokimane and Pewdiepie, Squizzy has accumulated more than a million followers on the Google platform. However, despite the popularity of the channel, the content creator isn’t without controversy. Early this year, Squizzy came under fire and apologized for using racist slurs while on stream and drawing NSFW art for an underage YouTuber. Now, Squizzy’s ex-partner Punk Duck has publicly accused the creator of emotional and physical abuse.RELATED:Valkyrae Details Creepy Stalker SituationAdding to thelist of controversies around content platforms in 2022, Punk Duck shares his experience of going through years of abuse at the YouTuber’s hands in a document titled “My history with my abuser.” According to Punk Duck, the problems started out as emotional stating, “any time arguments would happen they would always be my fault” and that whenever he approached Squizzy things would “instantly turn into emotional manipulation.” Punk Duck goes on to claim that the situation extended to physical abuse around early 2020 citing an incident where he was allegedly hit so hard following an argument that his “head bounced off the wall.”
By 2021, the two eventually ended the relationship, though Punk Duck mentions that he feared Squizzy would retaliate in some form. While the YouTube andTwitchstreamer had privately apologized for the assault, Punk Duck questions the sincerity of it since the apology had come a day after allegedly calling him “childish.” He goes on to state that the apology feels like it was written by someone else. Nevertheless, at the time of writing Squizzy is yet to respond to these allegations.
Unfortunately, Squizzy isn’t the only content creator accused of abuse. The list of harassment allegations against content creators has been growing in recent years. For instance, a wave of sexual assault allegations against Twitch streamers became so prominent in 2020 that it prompted a#TWITCHBLACKOUT trendwhere people demanded Twitch take action. Squizzy is the latest to be accused of harassment, though it’s not the YouTuber’s first controversy and only time will tell how this will pan out. It also remains to be seen if YouTube will demonetize Squizzy’s channel or if the platform will take more stern action against the content creator.
