React Wars

>
>
> The React Wars
> --------------
>
>
>
>
> A brave soldier in the React Wars
>
>
> ### Performers
>
>
> Chair Co-Hosts
> • Jinx• Cr1tikal (formerly)• Hasan Piker• AhRelevant• Denims• Keffals• SSSniperWolf• xQc• Destiny• Aba
> React Harders
> • Jacksfilms• Idubbbz (formerly)• Jay Exci• MauLer• Fringy• DarkViperAU• Cr1tikal• Destiny• Mutahar• h3h3 (formerly)• bald people
>
>
>
>
> ### Location
>
>
> Twitch
> YouTube
> TikTok
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?"
>
>
>
> - Hasan Piker, EFAP 161
>
>

**The React Wars** were a series of conflicts over the ethics and transformative nature of react content, primarily focused on a lack of transformative reaction

## History

### Jay vs Hasan

In July of 2021, Jay's video on the strange house that went viral got picked up by the algorithm a few months after it was uploaded, leading to it being covered by Cr1tikal. Jay took some issue with Cr1tikal's coverage since he mainly just thanked subscribers while he let the video play in the background without providing much commentary, but he decided to leave it be. After watching Dunkey's video on the same house, Hasan Piker was recommended Jay's video by his chat, and so watched that as well. He left to go make himself food for a third of the video's runtime, then let it play mostly uninterrupted while providing very little transformative commentary, then stopped the video right before the part where it promoted Jay's content.

Since this was the second time something like this had happened with the same video, and it had gotten to the extreme of literally leaving the room while just playing someone else's content, Jay did a stream reacting to Hasan's reaction, and left to go take a shit before coming back and eating a piece of cardboard while letting Hasan's stream play in the background. Jay was fine with Hasan reacting to the video but simply asked that he actually add a substantial amount of commentary instead of just letting it play, and give credit to the original video

### The Death of Hasan

Hasan responded to Jay's "drama" stream, and was baffled that Jay just left the room while his stream played until he had it explained to him that it was to mimic him having done the very same thing. Hasan agreed that Jay and anyone else who did not want him playing their content on his stream were entirely correct and that he doesn't play people's content after they've asked him to stop, not understanding that he shouldn't be acting under the assumption that they are okay with it until they say otherwise. Hasan and his chat accused Jay of only responding to him for clout, and argued that simply playing the video while he left the room was justified because Hasan streams for a very long time, comparing Jay's request to forcing an Amazon worker to pee in a bottle. Hasan spoke as though he was doing Jay a favor, citing that Jay had admitted his stream gave the video a huge spike in views, when said spike was 200 on a 400,000-view video. Jay's demands for Hasan's content were so extreme that they proved fatal, and Hasan died. He's alive now though

Jay did a stream responding to Hasan's response with MauLer and Fringy, articulating why they felt he didn't really understand the point behind Jay's original criticism. Several members of Hasan's chat came into Jay's chat urging him to calm down and stop shouting, with one chat member saying Jay should have been nicer and copyright struck Hasan's channel instead of starting drama

### The Incel *Star* *Wars* YouTubers Who Are Wrong About Anything weigh in

On EFAP 147, MauLer, Rags, and Fringy, having previously spent EFAP 143 breaking down the history of transformative content and ending it with Cr1tikal's coverage of Jay's video, were joined by Sitch and Adam to take a look at the entire timeline thus far of Hasan's coverage of Jay. They were amused by Hasan's reason for leaving Jay's video playing while he left the room being that his mom wasn't home to make him chicken nuggies, but were especially taken aback by his treatment of snaffuu, whom he banned for saying he should have put the channel name onscreen out of frustration for that being too obvious, despite Hasan himself not having actually done so. EFAP watched in horror as Hasan's chat celebrated the downfall of their former comrade, going so far as to revel in the fact that he had been banned after financially supporting Hasan for 11 months

Sargon of Akkad joined this stream for an hour while they were reading superchats, thus making the statement "Sargon of Akkad showed up" technically true

### The Man of Steal

For EFAP 148, MauLer put together a selection of Hasan's best moments in regards to his takes on transformative content and responding to criticisms from his own audience for himself, Rags, Fringy, Metal, and Dev to respond to, with the help of Skeletor to stop them from getting a copyright strike. Hasan addressed who his chat described as "incel *Star* *Wars* YouTubers who are wrong about anything" by saying they are complete dogshit, though he doesn't know who they are and has never watched them. He then said they were correct, just like everyone else

MauLer let Chat decide what the title of the VOD for Hasan's best moments should be, and Chat voted on "Man of Steal"

### Jay's Video #ReactGate

A few months after the initial Hasan stream, Jay released a full scripted video going over the topic of react content, which essentially acted as a more structured, more well-argued version of Jay's cardboard-eating stream, accompanied by more side examples in addition to Hasan. This video really got the ball rolling on the discussion of transformative react content, with other creators outside of Jay's usual sphere weighing in

### AhRelevant and Denims Enter the Ring

The two most prominent people to weigh in on #ReactGate were Twitch streamers AhRelevant and Denims, going up to bat for Hasan. Ahrelevant ended up seething and shouting at people who agreed with Jay to blow themselves, barely able to grasp the arguments being made and claiming that YouTube videos just exist for Twitch streamers to fill time with when they want to stop putting in effort. Denims would regularly try to rationalize Hasan's arguments to the point of making up entirely new arguments that Hasan never made, accusing Jay of being uncharitable towards Hasan for not doing the same, while also being as uncharitable as possible towards the arguments Jay was making.

Denims ended up having a livestreamed debate with Jay, moderated by a streamer named ChudLogic. In her stream leading up to the debate, she once again played an episode of *Hell's Kitchen* while barely making any commentary and even periodically leaving her chair, mocking the idea that Jay might criticize this for being non-transformative... because it was. Once in the debate with Jay, Denims more or less agreed with every point Jay had made with barely any pushback, in stark contrast with her demeanor in her original stream. This led to the debate being fairly short, and Jay coming away from it thinking everything had been settled. After watching this on EFAP 180, MauLer and the gang concluded that this must have been her good counterpart from a Mirror Universe

### Keffals Leaves the Room

Keffals responded to Jay's video about Hasan stealing his art by stealing that art, to mock Jay for taking issue with his art being stolen. This stream, which was literally just Jay's video, was naturally hit with a DMCA strike, which Keffals took issue with on the grounds that she is transgender

### Jay vs DarkViperAU vs Cr1tikal

DarkViperAU was working on a similar video critiquing react content for being non-transformative, but decided that the topic was important enough to speak out on now rather than waiting until the video was ready to be released, and so released the script for it ahead of time as a Google Doc on Twitter. DarkViper took a far stronger stance than Jay, calling all streamed react content wrong on the basis that the streamer doesn't know ahead of time whether or not they will be able to transform it, and denouncing any content that reacts to the entirety of a video regardless of how transformative. He also asserted that all react streamers are doing what they do because they know they can get away with it, and are purposefully doing something morally wrong for financial gain. Most egregiously though, he compared the act of reacting to someone's video under the assumption that they would be okay with it to assuming someone else's consent for sex, and claimed that react streamers are the type of person to roofie someone's drink at a party. He doubled down on this when asked about it on Twitter, stating that it was hyperbolic but not by much. Jay responded that while the analogy is technically correct in that both scenarios are assuming someone's consent when it is not actually given, the analogy is needlessly extreme since sexual assault does far, far greater harm to a person than copyright infringement, and the inflammatory nature of the analogy distracted from other better-argued points in the document.

Cr1tikal uploaded a video responding to DarkViper's document, taking issue with the comparison to sexual abuse criminals, and arguing against some of DarkViper's points. DarkViper responded to this video, accusing Cr1tikal of misrepresenting him on purpose by taking him out of context and making unfounded claims because he knew he could get away with it due to his large audience. He also argued that the point about assuming sexual consent was meant to be simply an analogy and not a literal comparison, and that Cr1tikal was focusing on it far too much since it was only a single part of the document and he never said the words "abuse" or "criminal." Jay countered that while Cr1tikal did misrepresent a few of DarkViper's points, it was more likely an honest mistake than intentional malice, and that the drink-roofieing comment came off as more than simply an analogy since he doubled down on it on Twitter, and if that wasn't what he meant then he should have clarified it

### Cr1tikal's Chad Move

Cr1tikal released another video on the topic of DarkViper's video, correcting some of his previous takes. He cited Jay's video and stream as what changed his mind on the subject (Jay found this out from his mom), and saying that from then on he would no longer react to entire videos on stream and instead only react to the first few minutes of them to get an idea of them, and make edited videos on them if they were worthy of a full reaction, a step further than even what Jay wanted out of react content. Cr1tikal mentioned having felt guilty about his lack of reaction to Jay's house video, to which Jay hoped he wasn't beating himself up too badly over it since it was an honest mistake and not very egregious. Jay called Cr1tikal's response a Chad move.

### Hasan's Response

Upon being told by Jay that he hadn't understood Jay's original point against his react content, Hasan blocked Jay on Twitter. Hasan then posted a "the myth of consensual sex" format meme, portraying himself and the people whose content he reacts to as the consenting parties despite the fact that the people he responds to did not, in fact, consent to it, and people like Jay as the outsider butting in, even though Jay was in fact one of the people whose content Hasan played on his stream.

Hasan addressed the topic once again on stream, saying it was absurd it was still going on since he'd already apologized a year ago (it was 5 months), still not understanding that the thing he apologized for and promised not to do anymore was not the thing Jay took issue with in the first place. He accused Jay of assembling a team of Nazis from the Killstream (a stream Jay has never been on and did not even know existed until Hasan accused him of collaborating with them) to react to his stream for 8 hours (when he had previously conceded that the 8-hour runtime was likely devoted to more topics than just him), presumably in reference to the EFAP stream that Jay had no part in. He accused Jay of holding onto a grudge for making "another video" a year (5 months) later, when Jay had always planned to turn the stream into a scripted video and only took as long as he did because he had other videos he wanted to make first. He bolstered the Killstream Nazis point by mentioning that Sargon (a man whose made enemies of both the Killstream and white nationalists alike) joined (he joined the stream for an hour after the Hasan section of the stream was already over). He called anyone who thinks Jay is good faith a psycho, since all of this came from a 5-minute video (it was 14 minutes, and not even the only video Hasan has done this with)

Many of Hasan's fans questioned why Jay was so bothered by being falsely accused of having ties to Neo-Nazism