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Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter is one of the most popular female content creators on the internet today.
The streamer has recently been dubbed as the “Queen of YouTube” after emerging as the most-watched female streamer on the platform in 2021. According to Stream Hatchet, Valkyrae registered a total of 12.2 million viewing hours on YouTube in the first quarter of 2021 alone, with Imane “Pokimane” Anys coming in at second with just 6.8 million viewing hours.
Valkyrae initially blew up in popularity in 2018, hitting the 100k follower-mark in February of that year. Since then, she has been involved in multiple controversies that, to an extent, can be put down to her ever-growing status.
Top 5 biggest controversies that Valkyrae has been involved in
#5 The Valkyrae-sonii relationship controversy
As most fans will know, Valkyrae was in a long-term relationship with Michael “sonii” Sherman. The two were together for four years but broke up in January 2021. A couple of months after the breakup, Valkyrae claimed during a stream that she had previously been in a toxic relationship, leading a fan to assume that she was talking about sonii.
However, Valkyrae immediately hit back at the fan, claiming that she shared a “wonderful” relationship with sonii and that she was still in love with him:
“sonii was not. sonii did nothing wrong ever. How dare you assume it was sonii? I said 10 years ago. This was my ex-ex, from a long time ago that was I was talking about. sonii did nothing wrong. I love sonii. Please, please be kind to him.”
As it turned out, the rumors were simply due to a fan mistakenly assuming that Valkyrae was talking about sonii when she was not.
#4 The “Leslie’s life matters” controversy
During an April 2021 Among Us stream, Valkyrae made a joke at the expense of fellow streamer Leslie, who was repeatedly dying in the game. The streamer coined the phrase “Leslie’s life matters” with the acronym LLM as a joke.
Warning: Video contains explicit language
However, her YouTube chat began to making insensitive jokes about the “Black Lives Matter” movement. A part of her chat began to mock the movement, which led to Valkyrae reprimanding her viewers:
"Because I said Leslie's Life Matters? Oh my God, I shouldn't have said that, people are mocking BLM. I didn't even think of that. This is not a comparable , that's not a f*****g joke . I had just been talking about how Leslie had been dying a lot in-game . That's not something to f*****g joke about , do not joke about that . Stupid, I'm so disappointed. I'm sorry for saying that . I'm going to put it in members-only mode because there's still idiots here that think it's f*****g funny . You will get the karma you deserve in life. F**k off. That's not funny and that's not a joke. I hate that so much."
Valkyrae had earlier criticized some members of her YouTube community for being toxic, and was quite angry with the chat’s response to her joke.
#3 The RFLCT controversy
The recent RFLCT controversy has arguably steamrolled into the biggest faux pas that Valkyrae has been involved in. The streamer is officially a co-founder of the RFLCT skincare brand that promises to protect people’s skin from blue light damage.
However, the overall community responded sternly, claiming that RFLCT offers a solution to a made-up problem. Various experts also claimed that even the sun’s rays are more harmful than the blue light emitted from digital screens. Valkyrae was apparently also contract-bound, and was therefore not able to make the research behind RFLCT public.
Over the past few days, a range of other content creators, along with the overall community, has mocked Valkyrae for her involvement in “pseudo-science”.
#2 When Valkyrae defended hot tub streamers
The hot tub meta on Twitch has been one of the most discussed topics on the platform in recent months. Twitch has even introduced the Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches category so as to allow hot tub streamers to continue creating content that was not overtly suggestive.
Regardless, the overall community had claimed that hot-tub streams should not be a part of Twitch, which was created predominantly as a gaming platform. Regardless, Valkyrae defended hot tub streams when some of her viewers criticized the meta:
"Why are you so angry? It works for a reason. It’s free for you. You don’t have to donate or subscribe, like isn’t this a good thing. Like, isn’t that what men want to see for free? I don’t get what the issue is. If no one is hurting anyone, then what’s the issue? I don’t get it. What’s the issue? What’s the problem?! It doesn’t affect you in any way!”
Hence, Valkyrae did not address the fact that a lot of streamers in the past had been banned/suspended for less suggestive content, and instead defended the meta.
#1 When Valkyrae called out her friends for being “fake”
When Valkyrae initially responded to the allegations levied against RFLCT, she also criticized her friends. The streamer claimed that most people just assumed that the allegations were accurate, and that not one of them reached out to her regarding the lack of information on the website:
"Not a single one of my friends or anyone I know on the internet asked me, 'Hey Rae, what happened to the website? Why is there no information on the site?' Not a single person."
Valkyrae went on to claim that while people did reach out to her once she posted the voice memo, she thought that some of them were afraid of potential backlash:
"A lot of friends reached out after I posted the voice memo on Twitter, and also a lot of friends reached out when I said I was gonna be talking about friends on social media. I don't know, maybe some of them got afraid."
She later noted that all of her closest friends had actually reached out to her at some point or another, and that she should not have name-called people. She was most notably criticized by Felix “xQc” Lengyel, who claimed that it was her sole responsibility to make sure that everything with respect to the brand checked out.
