In the weeks following Ewing’s live stream, the online conversation about deep games continued to grow.
Commenters went on to criticize how deepfake live streamers shouldn’t care, while others argued that it was all for attention. On top of that, it’s the men – online and offline – who aren’t deeply faked who seem determined to decide what is the appropriate way to respond. Blaire said the male friends apologized to her boyfriend, instead of her, for the trouble the incident had caused. Pokimane Comments denied that the photos she has posted justify her or anyone else’s treatment. “People can post whatever they want and that still means you still need their consent to do certain things, including porn them, and then profit from it. ,” she said during a live stream.
On Twitter, Higa criticized the critics. “The debate about our experience as women in this is, not shockingly, between men,” Higa writes. “None of you should care or listen to any male streamer about how we feel.” The situation made her feel “disgusted, vulnerable, nauseous and compromised,” she continued. “This is not your argument. Stop acting like that.”
Other streamers that have been targeted remain silent. There seems to be an unspoken understanding between them: damn if you do, damn if you don’t. Talking about the feeling of being deepfake comes with the unfortunate byproduct of adding fuel to the fire. For Blaire, self-defense led to more harassment. Some streamers choose to have an OnlyFans account, where they decide what content is posted and profit from that account. Although Blaire is a sex worker, this is not what she chooses to do. Instead, sexually suggestive images were created without her knowledge. “The easiest thing to understand about all of this is, ‘Hey, consent is important,’” she said, “and there are still people who will argue about that.”
In an effort to show viewers the impact these profound spoofs have had on her, a real human, she did something very human: She joined Twitch and live streaming himself, blushing and being vulnerable. “This is what pain looks like,” she repeats in the video, crying openly. “Having to pay to take these things down is not part of my job,” she said. “Being harassed, seeing ‘naked’ photos of me go viral is not part of my job… It’s not part of my job. And the reality is, it’s exhausting.”
Blaire’s earnest plea – the closest she can get to sitting in a room with thousands of people to absorb her presence as someone who is hurting – has caused some critics doubled down. Fellow Twitch streamers created reaction and joke content from her videos; hugely popular creator Ethan Klein of h3h3Productions streamed a segment in which he played “Chestnuts Roasted on Fire” on Blaire’s video, giggled and covered her face with her hands the whole time. He later issued a Sorry. Across communities on Reddit and Twitter, comments accused the women involved of exaggerating the impact of deepfakes, comparing the fake to an innocuous photoshop work. One user tweeted an image of a tablet at Blaire; The device displayed an image of her from her painful stream. Its screen was covered in semen.
“People get mad at you for reacting,” Blaire says. “And then other people are saying, ‘Oh, she’s garnering sympathy.’ It just never ends.
Arguing that deepfakes can’t do harm because they’re not “real” is as wrong as it gets. It’s stupid to claim that they have no major problems while those affected are telling you they are. Cailin O’Connor, author of Deepfakes can cause “the same kinds of harm as an actual piece of media recorded from a person”. The Age of Misinformation and a professor at the University of California, Irvine. “Whether they are fake or not, the impression remains.”
