Psychologist calls for change as deadly attacks on female streamers rise dramatically
Unsplash.com: Towfiqu barbhuiya / Valkyrae, AmouranthIn March 2025, there was a notable rise in aggressive behavior toward female live streamers from male viewers.
For instance, Twitch streamers Cinna, Emiru, and Valkyrae were broadcasting from California’s Santa Monica Pier on March 2 when a male fan asked for Emiru’s phone number.
Emiru, seeming visibly uncomfortable with the man’s request, joked that she “didn’t have a phone,” and the group moved on — but moments later, that same man lunged toward the women, threatening to “kill” them.
That same night, a group of masked men broke into the home of famous streamer Amouranth, allegedly pistol-whipping the influencer and demanding that she lead them to her $20M crypto wallet.
Later that month, Emiru was the subject of another discomforting interaction with a male viewer who’d followed her to a restaurant where she was streaming with fellow content creator ExtraEmily.
In a clip captured during that stream, Emiru can be heard telling off the viewer, saying that he “can’t keep doing this” and asking him to leave.
On March 13, Fortnite streamer ‘Chica’ shared footage from her doorbell camera, which showed hammer-wielding thieves breaking into her home. While they left her residence with keys to several luxury vehicles, they couldn’t start the cars due to their built-in anti-theft security measures.
However, the most harrowing of these events happened to a Japanese WhoWatch streamer named Airi Sato, who was stabbed to death by an older man while broadcasting outside in Shinjuku on March 11.
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The man, 42-year-old Kenichi Takano, claimed that Sato owed him 2 million yen (approx. $13,500), telling police he “made up my mind to attack her as she wouldn’t give my money back.”
The incident left female streamers terrified to step outside for fear of being attacked by viewers who’d donated money or purchased subscriptions to their content — but, as seen in the cases of Amouranth and Chica, they often aren’t safe even if they’re inside their own homes.
While these back-to-back instances sparked a momentary panic online, they’re far from the first cases of stalking and violent behavior to happen to female influencers. Perhaps one of the first famous examples of violence toward a female creator took place back in 2016, when American singer-songwriter and internet personality Christina Grimmie was shot by a male fan at a meet-and-greet.
However, there’s been a recent trend in increasing violence and harassment toward women. So, Dexerto reached out to Clinical Psychologist Dr. Carla Shuman to get an expert’s view on why there’s been a sudden increase in stalking toward female content creators — and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.
Psychologist explains the minds of online stalkers
Over the years, we at Dexerto have covered numerous instances of female broadcasters getting stalked and harassed by male viewers… but the sheer number of incidents that occurred in March 2025 left us wondering: “Why?”
According to Dr. Shuman, it might seem like female streamers are more often targets of this behavior due to their presence on social media, which affords parasocial viewers a near-constant perceived ‘access’ to these content creators.
“There’s something about social media that seems to create a familiarity with people, one that we don’t have if we were talking on the phone or even if we just met them briefly in person,” she told us.
“People can become very knowledgeable about others very quickly through platforms like Twitch. There’s also a false sense of intimacy, because I’ve noticed that users of this platform tend to spend a great deal of time online, which further heightens their sense of familiarity and comfort toward others.”
Streamers often broadcast themselves for hours a day, most days of the week — it is their job, after all — and because of this, viewers might form a ‘parasocial’ relationship with these influencers.
As defined by clinical psychologist Adam Borland, PsyD, parasocial relationships are “one-sided relationships or bonds with people you don’t know.” This can include celebrities, or, in this case, streamers, who make themselves available for large portions of time and even directly chat with their viewers during their broadcasts.
Because of this, Dr. Shuman says some male viewers might interpret this as the streamers taking a romantic interest in them… which can lead to some disastrous misunderstandings on their part.
“Some of these men may perceive the women as being interested in them, even though the women have only been kind and helped them to create content or have reciprocated in some way,” she explained. “Friendliness falsely leads them to believe the women are interested.
“Why does it happen more on this platform? I believe that users spend a great deal of time on their platform. The live streaming videos really perpetuate the sense of familiarity. People get to know each other very quickly and develop intimacy, whether it’s real or not.”
However, Dr. Shuman says that stalking itself hasn’t necessarily increased due to streaming platforms like Twitch and the rise of social media sites like Instagram — instead, she says that this is just the latest method stalkers are using to terrorize their victims.
“In my professional opinion, stalking over this platform is just the latest way of stalking,” she said. “People are spending a lot more time online with [live streaming] because it does create a sense of friendliness and intimacy. This is especially true for people who are lonely and who may have less social interaction.”
That being said, stalkers who harass influencers might feel like their behavior isn’t harmful because it isn’t in-person, since they’re merely contacting them online. In fact, Dr. Shuman says that in her clinical experience as a psychologist, online stalking is often minimized due to this very reason.
“Stalkers become fixated on certain people, as they do in most other formats, and they don’t perceive their behavior as aggressive because it isn’t in person. The false sense of, ‘I’m not hurting anyone, it’s still online.’ Many people don’t see aggression as being real unless you’re hitting a person, even though in fact, there are many forms of aggression. Online aggression can be very scary for female victims, especially.”
As for what could possibly be done to mitigate online stalking and harassment, Dr. Shuman didn’t have any concrete answers, but suggested “messaging, warnings, or education” to help people understand the boundary between real-life and ‘parasocial’ relationships.
“Live streaming is still an interaction with another person, and the person is still a person. There has to be a way to help people understand that they still need to be held accountable for their behavior,” she concluded.
While stalking and harassment continue to take place toward content creators of all kinds, actions are being taken to prevent such behaviors. For instance, FBI director Kash Patel promised to crack down on swatting, a dangerous ‘prank’ that has affected numerous streamers regardless of gender over the years.
Unfortunately, even those who are placed behind bars can still terrorize their victims from the clink, as seen in the case of GTA streamer ‘Sodakite,’ who showed viewers a slew of emails she’d received from her stalker who was imprisoned for murdering his own mother.
For now, stalking is a crime that is difficult to take action against, as many female streamers have spoken out about in the past. These streamers have said that they often aren’t taken seriously by police after reporting their stalkers to law enforcement, with UK streamer Sweet Anita penning a chilling tweet after receiving death threats from a man who’d chased her through the street with a knife:
“If anything happens to me, I really hope that I’m the last canary in the coal mine. The law needs to change. No job should have such a high risk of rape, assault or death, especially not livestreaming.”