SmallAnt/PointCrow Feud

The feud between YouTube speedrunners/Twitch streamers SmallAnt and PointCrow was widely known by their communities between 2022 and 2023. Their fanbases, notably, played a large part in it.
As of September 2023, they have made up. In 2024, they began to do collaborations again.
==History==
PointCrow and SmallAnt were associated with each other since the end of 2019, after PointCrow first started his YouTube channel in the same year. Their first known video collaboration was about a year later, a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild race, posted by SmallAnt in November 2020. Because SmallAnt was already a well-known content creator, many fans discovered PointCrow this way.
They became rivals, referring to each other as such and in talking to and about each other, both in videos and on Twitter. They did more race challenges together, including Minecraft and Pokémon map randomizer mod races. However, because SmallAnt consistently won, even when he was the underdog (such as in the BoTW race, when he had 5 times less hours in the game than PointCrow), fans of SmallAnt as well as other users in PointCrow's chat began to harass PointCrow, saying that he was "SmallAnt but worse" or "SmallAnt but he loses" and not as good as his friend in his chat and YouTube comments. This became recurring with their collaborations.
One competition between the creators played a large part in this: a Pokémon map randomizer race posted in October 2021, in which PointCrow thought he was softlocked and thus reset, thinking there was something wrong with his version of the game. Their rule about softlocking also seemed to be at odds, as both creators had a different idea of what constituted as a necessary reset. In the YouTube video, SmallAnt edited in that part of his video to say that PointCrow reseted in a few sections that turned out to not be softlocks. Though both creators tried to clarify in the YouTube comments that the cheating accusation was a joke, it seemed that significant damage had been done. According to a YouTube commentComment by SmallAntFanAccount on Smallant tears up on stream after explaining the PointCrow situation : "Many people are asking for a summary so I made one. it's probably not super accurate but i tried to cover as much as i could. SmallAnt and PointCrow started a friendly rivalry and collaborated in several videos. But when SmallAnt made a Pokémon video with him, they had a miscommunication. There was one rule in this Pokémon challenge which was “No Resetting unless you are completely soft locked or hunting for a legendary”. PointCrow and SmallAnt seemed to have different definitions of Soft Lock. PointCrow resetted in a few “soft locks” and SmallAnt edited in a part of his video saying “PointCrow resetted in a few sections that were not indeed softlocks” or something like that. This led to viewers constantly harassing PointCrow over that miscommunication. PointCrow was constantly being compared badly to SmallAnt. People were saying things to crow like “He’s a lesser version of SmallAnt” or “He’s just SmallAnt but he loses every time” because of that one video. PointCrow then asked SmallAnt if they could end the rivalry completely. SmallAnt then said he would do that. Then In a speedrun tournament stream a couple months later, it was a crowd control race meaning you could donate money to control the game. It was between a NRG member and a CLG member. The NRG member was PointCrow and the CLG member was Cheese. SmallAnt then donated to Cheese and controlled his game so that he would win. SmallAnt did his best to explain saying “He wasn’t donating to cheese so that crow would lose, he was donating to cheese so that Cheese/CLG would win. This made crow mad thinking ant donated to cheese so that crow would lose. He then continued to get hateful comments, and crow asked ant very seriously again to end the rivalry. Smant accepted that. But then they both released a video of the same game at basically the same timeline. This lead to more hateful comments towards both creators saying one of them is a copycat. It just kept getting worse from there. I can’t recap all of it, it was so much information but if you want the full story please watch both VODs. The original vods were taken down (see my reply to this comment for why) and unfortunately as of right now there are no vods on YT of them. I will edit this comment once someone uploads the vods. CrowAnt’s original vods (broken links, removed from YT) -PointCrow’s side VOD: https://youtu.be/yAAswuARV5A -SmallAnt's side VOD: https://youtu.be/9qnC5wIC6jQ Credit to crowant on YT for uploading the vods." Accessed February 17, 2024., PointCrow approached SmallAnt shortly after this, wishing to end the rivalry, which SmallAnt accepted.
A month later in November 2021, PointCrow participated in a tournament stream that was crowd-controlled, wherein chat donations could control the pacing of the game. Representing NRG, PointCrow raced against Cheese, who was representing CLG. During the stream, SmallAnt donated to Cheese, controlling the game so that Cheese would win. SmallAnt later explained that he didn't donate to make PointCrow lose, but rather to get Cheese/CLG to win; however, both PointCrow and fans felt differently. Later, when SmallAnt released his "Pokemon Diamond but every battle my team is random" video ten days prior to PointCrow's "Pokemon Shining Pearl but they randomly evolve every level", both got accused of copying each other, both from their fanbases and each other. Some comments imply that SmallAnt may have known that PointCrow had already been working on his video prior to making his own, but because his video was released earlier, fans got the impression of the opposite.
Additionally, SmallAnt played a Pokémon mod that PointCrow had commissioned, but failed to credit PointCrow properly, due to not putting it in his stream's layout, and making his chat emote only, when the credit for the mod was a chat command that people were unable to comment. Unfortunately, this caused the rift between them to grow further.
Fans harassed PointCrow for months in comparing him to SmallAnt, until he had to ban SmallAnt's name from his chat entirely. In a VOD posted in February 2022 (though it may have been streamed earlier), he said that he stopped doing streams with SmallAnt at the time due to this type of attention.
As discussed in their VODs about the situation (deleted as of February 2024), SmallAnt's response to PointCrow's concerns about their overlapping fanbases was along the lines of saying he was unable to control PointCrow's Twitch chat or what his chatters did. Despite this, SmallAnt's behavior and online treatment of his friend seemed to in fact encourage this rivalry and disregarded PointCrow's feelings. PointCrow ended up blocking SmallAnt on Twitter and Discord in order to relieve himself of the stress from being associated with him. When SmallAnt found out, he attempted to reach out through one of PointCrow's Twitch moderators, who told SmallAnt that PointCrow needed space. When SmallAnt provided this, after a few months, PointCrow took offense that SmallAnt did not attempt to reach out to him again.
The feud became more publicized as PointCrow discussed it again on stream, saying that SmallAnt had "fucked [him] over" and that they were not friends anymore. In May 2022, due to being unable to contact PointCrow privately, SmallAnt publicly apologized on stream, saying that he had never intended to step on PointCrow's toes or hurt his feelings. PointCrow watched this response on stream as well and did not accept the apology, calling SmallAnt manipulative for crying. As of February 2024, both VODs are now deleted.
Their collaborations stopped, and neither made any public statements about the other for over a year (with the exception of SmallAnt discussing how PointCrow's copyright strikes from Nintendo for his modded Breath of the Wild videos was "limiting and unfair" in April 2023). Many fans expressed sadness and disappointment at both the fallout, and witnessing it publicly. A sizable amount of fans were not happy with PointCrow's public accusations towards SmallAnt and the emotional extent to which he reacted; however, a large consensus was to accept the reality of the feud but continue to enjoy both creators' content anyway. Particularly on Reddit, many fans attributed the true source of the conflict to be their respective fanbases/Twitch chats, due to the toxicity that affected PointCrow in particular.Is anyone able to fully explain what happened between PointCrow and SmallAnt1? on /r/PointCrow, February 27, 2022. Accessed February 7, 2024.Are SmallAnt and PointCrow still friends? in /r/Smallant, December 8, 2022. Accessed February 17, 2024.why isn’t pointcrow friends with smant anymore what happened? in /r/PointCrow, April 3, 2022. Accessed February 7, 2024.PointCrow’s framing of the situation and how anyone would respond in /r/Smallant, May 27, 2022. Accessed February 17, 2024. Despite the fallout, they continued to collaborate with mutual friends, such as Alpharad, cjya, and pChal.
In September 2023, PointCrow stated in his Discord server that he and SmallAnt were friends again; they had re-followed each other on Twitter as well at the time. At the end of the month, a video of PointCrow's friend joking about the fallout was posted on YouTube, in which he laughed with good humor about it. A few days later, PointCrow streamed himself playing SmallAnt's Pokemon Escape Room. SmallAnt was in the chat and talked to him freely, and PointCrow openly praised SmallAnt for his creativity in the Escape Room.
In December 2023, Smosh co-founder Anthony Padilla posted "I spent a day with PRO SPEEDRUNNERS (SmallAnt, PointCrow)" with both sitting together in the thumbnail. In the video, PointCrow and SmallAnt discuss their own experience and expertise with speedrunning, before frankly discussing the background surrounding their fallout.In February 2024, they streamed their first competition together since 2021, an Infinite Craft race, 2 days in a row for 8 hours straight each. A day or so later, SmallAnt made the thumbnail on stream and posted the video shortly afterward. They seem to have other projects together in the works.
==Citations==
Category: 2021 Events
Category: 2022 Events