I am an easy target, I am falling for everything today. Over thou head, squared.

You consider that begging? I got relatively little attention personally and I felt like pointing that out.

Jaime made a thread on reddit as well explaining the gripsed situation. In a much more coherent way I suppose, but still, everyone is praising him it seems like.

Where was the passion last week ya'll.

I would consider this mission accomplished, I hate that douchebag, and we were IRL friends at one point.

It appears that another streamer JakeUpton who was part of the "Gripsed Stream Team" until 2 days ago has disassociated himself from that project.

Pretty dishonest stuff. I unfollowed him on YT and twitch. He was always pushing his products on both of those sites, which is fine, but doing so in parallel with this seems wrong. His chapter in Excelling at Holdem isn't too bad, but I don't like to support people who are using unfair/scummy advantages to get views/followers on YT and Twitch.

If I played a random bovada homegame and all of a sudden 1k viewers popped up on stream, I for sure would be puzzled and would contact twitch about this instead of just claiming to be a top streamer with so many viewers.

Common sense just makes it impossible for gripsed to be not the viewbotter himself. Usually I'm 100% with the "innocent until it's proved", but using inductive logic instead of deducitve logic should be sufficiant in this case.

doublepost - my bad

What I am saying is much more subtle than what other's here are saying. The consensus here seems to be "break out the pitchforks!"

So let me keep it simple since the larger discussion I want to have here seems impossible in this climate.

All the evidence points to the fact that viewbots were in his chat on a few recent streams. Viewbots are not the same as chat moderation bots, which BTW everybody on twitch uses. This doesn't mean there have always been bots there, but recent streams do have evidence of bots.

But, there have been tons of cases where viewbots in a stream were not bought by the streamer himself but rather were "sent" there by somebody else. Is Gripsed innocent? He could definitely be behind it, but maybe not. I have no idea. But before I put the hatchet in somebody's back, I usually want some more evidence than I have seen so far.

OK, somehow this question has been lost in the haze in this thread.

A few definitions for those who are not as Twitch addicted as I am.

A view bot is a fake viewer who is programmed to go to a channel to beef up viewer numbers. View bots generally are not sophisticated enough to chat.

A chat bot is some kind of special view bot that can be programmed to post repetitive messages in chat to overcome the problem with view bots, which is "why are there 2K people in here but only 5 people chatting?"

A chat moderation bot is not like the two above. It's an automation tool to help a streamer. You program it with commands like "!subscribe" or "!twitter" to help you share information with real viewers in your stream.

I would like more information on the report of the second kinds of bots, the ones that are made to look like real viewers but are just repeating the same posts over and over. If anybody could add to that discussion, that would be helpful.

Please see my prior post. The fact that he has more than one chat moderation bot, while annoying to some, is not the same as viewbotting. I literally don't want to spend even 1 more post talking about those bots. Gripsed has more of them than other streamers, but they don't count as "real viewers" and everybody knows that.

I was trying to get more detail specifically not on his chat moderation bots (nightbot, gripsedbot, whatever) but rather on the reports I have heard of chat bots that were programmed to look like real users and repeated the same messages over and over, apparently even with the same typos sometimes. Any additional information that could be provided on that would be helpful.

Listen, first of all, do not think because I am making a point that is different from you or anybody else that it is personal in any way. This is not personal for me. In fact, I am trying to take the passion out of this discussion so that we can all be more level headed about this situation and get the facts.

For the record, I always enjoyed your stream. I think of you as real and funny and I definitely would watch again. I would even go so far as to say that I respect you, even still, after you jumped to such negative conclusions about me.

Also, even though I made it clear before let me repeat: I am not a mod for Gripsed. Neither Gripsed nor anybody else has paid me to write anything here.

And just to button it up, let me say this: many people are paid for doing various things for Twitch streamers. I am not one of them. I have never asked for payment for any help I have given to anybody on Twitch. I have my own reasons, and everybody needs money. I am not criticizing those who earn their living that way. I just want it to be clear that I help people because I want to help them.

I am adding a different point of view that is not popular. That is all. That is my poor judgement but I stand by my point.

I have probably been in 300 hours of Twitch chat with you, and it only took a few posts on 2+2 to have you question whether I am some "Team Gripsed" compensated attorney. I am not. You proved my point with that accusation. I know this guy may be guilty but people are too quick to jump to conclusions with limited data.

Evidence that has linked prior streamers to viewbots includes email receipts from viewbot services being displayed on stream. Gripsed may himself just come out and admit that he paid for this, maybe even claim he was duped. I have no idea. But I would like to see something more concrete linking him to this before I write him off completely.

I have a ton of respect for you as you know.

Please consider that we do not know if he has indeed contacted Twitch or not. He may indeed share the same sentiment you expressed in your first sentence.

But is it impossible to believe that some streamers, who have had tons of viewers in the past, would not be alarmed by a sudden influx of viewers? Forget about this specific case and think about that larger question. This can happen to anybody, but some people might not be as quick to doubt those viewers are real because of their ego or whatever other reason.

Once again, I respect your opinion but the common sense threshold is not high enough for me.

If one streamer can be assumed guilty then all streamers can be similarly indicted. This is the central reason why I am trying to slow down the rush to pin this guy to the cross.

I call for all of your money

Totally agree he is up like 50k in 6 years and calls himself a pro and sells at insane mark up while saying i would buy myself at that. Jaime has to be the worst at taking advantage The only person who doesnt seem to take advantage of new poker players is Jason. No donations. Sells t shirts etc.

I don't think that attacking Jaime, or any other streamer for that matter, is relevant here. The topic of markup is a different topic and opinions will vary. But this is the can of worms we open up with topics like this.

Hey all responding to some of this now and hopefully clarifying my position/some general knowledge. Apologies for the time in between posts. I have posted a bunch on Reddit so check out this thread as well if you are interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comme...sed_situation/

I don't think anything weird is going on with Youtube. His numbers seem consistent with the amount of content he puts out. Also the amount of views he gets in relation to how long his channel has been active seems to make sense. You can see that data here: http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/gripsed/monthly (the big down day is likely a Youtube reporting error)

FTHustla I owe you credit for making this post. I'm going to cross post my response to you on reddit here:

Why didn't I bring it to light sooner?
two reasons:
1. I wanted to make sure it was actually happening. Flukes can happen or something out of what logically makes sense once or twice. I wanted to make sure that was not the case.
2. I was scared. Like I mention in my OP I consider Gripsed a friend and we have spent a lot of time talking together. It's a gross feeling to have to denounce their actions like this. I didn't want to do it. I also don't gain anything from doing this. I am almost always ranking higher in the listing so my equity isn't being taken here. It's streamers that move from 3 to 4, 4 to 5, 5 to 6, etc that are getting taken from.

I owe you a ton of credit for coming forward with it because I'm not sure if I would of taken action if someone hadn't have brought it up first. That is really weak and pathetic and I have thought a lot about that over the last 48 hours. I will get better next time as a person and stand up for what's right sooner.

You definitely deserve credit for saying what others didn't.

Why did I create this thread instead of post in yours? Well it was a day old so my thoughts were going to be burried. I thought my thoughts would add a lot to the conversation and would help in getting people to understand what is happening. The second reason is that the discussion was framed in a way attacking Gripsed the human not attacking the Issue which is not what I wanted to get behind. So I decided to re-frame it slightly to hopefully have the most constructive conversation possible.

I didn't do this for an image boost if that's what you are thinking. I could understand why you would think that I'm trying to get the attention here but I'm trying to right a wrong.

Bullets: That accusation was the thing that caused me to speak up. Selfish and not right but true. You do deserve the credit for being first mover on this. I apologize for not making that clear in the OP of this post and others.
Jaime

When it comes to Lost in Poker however, I think the guy is completely blameless in all of this. He has been nothing but helpful to me and my roommates when it comes to Twitch poker. The guy would have no part in viewbotting and as such I think deserves no blame for watching lots of Gripsed.

This is pretty normal I think. There could be a correlation but more about engagement then viewers. Also Twitch viewers does not necessarily mean Twitter activity. I run these Retweet contests as well and get similar numbers.

It probably sounds a bit murky the way I originally framed it so I will cross post a similar question's response from reddit:

The donation thing is probably a bit grey for a lot of people that have never streamed but here is how it commonly happened. Donations would come in from Gripsed while we were both streaming on the same day. Is this allowed? of course it is! If streamers are going to accept donations with messages (like me) they can come from anyone. That said, no other streamers ever donate to others while they are streaming. The motives are clear in that it is an attempt to advertise himself and his channel. Is that allowed? yes. Is it good etiquette? No. It's circumventing a system that is designed for viewers and using it as advertisement. The opportunity for him to reach out to any of the streamers and try and do cross promo is there. We all have each other on skype/social media. It's basically forcing promotion without asking which is why it rubs me and other streamers the wrong way.
Again I wan't to make clear this is not against the rules.

1. Yes this is true. I know it is common for people not to agree with Twitch's response to these situations but they are really in a tough spot with contracts. Can refer to my OP yesterday to read more about it.

2. This is also true. The reason why it is hard for Twitch to do anything is some wealthy troll could have put this on. It's why I want to attack the issue here not Gripsed himself. I have a lot of reasons to believe he is the one doing this. The logic is a problem here: why would anyone troll Gripsed he is maybe the 7th or 8th biggest streamer and just been away for months? Why would they pay to troll him instead of being a **** head in his chat or on his social media first?

There is also a history of Gripsed doing blatant self promotion that wouldn't be considered good etiquette by any streamer. Posting in MY chat 30 min before I am live "hey guys I'm streaming right now twitch.tv/gripsed". Whispering people in my chat, donating while we are both streaming saying GL (to promote himself), asking for video collaborations in donation messages as opposed to personally over skype, etc.

These are not hard prrof but put together they make it extremely likely to me it is him doing this not a third party.

3. I would take 50 to 1 it is him or someone he told to do it (based on the above info and graph data.)

With all of that in mind, I still really hope this isn't a thread about not liking Gripsed. The issue is very important in our community and I think it is what should be targeted not whether he is a nice guy or not. As I said on Reddit and now here, if the issue gets fixed, I will be the first to support him. It takes a big person to publicly right a wrong like this and I am really hoping it happens.

See above. He crossed the line a few times but the line is grey for sure.

I agree with you mostly here except I think Twitch cares about viewbots quite a bit. Other then that it is very clear to me that he is doing this. I hope I take the flack and am wrong but the evidence is too strong.

You deserve a lot of credit. See my reply in your other quote above.

Another streamer here if anyone is wondering. I think the evidense is too conclusive for this to be a mistake.

Not sure if its true I used to watch his(gripsed) stream at day 1, it got more populated with stupidity and random chat that bugs me (staples, carvers and a few other streams like that too). Modding

I want to bring up postfloprepop you used to be a friend of gripsed and like 2 or 3 other mutual friends of mine.. all stopped talking to you for different reasons. You are just as shady and unstable as the next person (also your posts in the negative feedback section show that) and I wouldn't trust you over a homeless crack addict.

That being said, If he has done this... he is guilty so be it. But he has brought up many times before that he doesn't post much on 2+2 anymore. Think his last post was over 6 months ago?

Just started modding Cswidlers stream (shameless plug), and gripsed came in to say hi.. within 20 secs getting spammed.

Gripsed: put up another tweet for ya https://twitter.com/GripsedPoker/sta...85026206224385
Gripsed: you're gonna grand slam it today
Mattm89: Little gripsed hype shoutout!
ReasoNM8: just dont viewbo
ReasoNM8: viewbot
ReasoNM8: and it will be ok
CSWIDLER: yeeeeeeaaa baby
Adamyelland123: viewbotting for real tho
Adamyelland123:
Gripsed: roger that
MaintainTheBluff: viewbot hyyype
ReasoNM8: affirmative
ReasoNM8: ask gripsed for a quick boost to 3k
ReasoNM8: you may even get a few subs
Gripsed: sure wish it was that easy
ReasoNM8: well it's not that easy
ReasoNM8: you have to pay
Gripsed: unfrotuntely it's about investing 8+ years teaching ppl for free on youtube and then bringing the show to twitch
Er_mark_kerrigan: MrDestructoid MrDestructoid MrDestructoid MrDestructoid
ReasoNM8: yeah hahahah
Gripsed: but you know, he who speaks loudest must be correct right? that's how the world works?
Gripsed:


just some of the chat

Caught the tail end of CSwidler's stream on Sunday night I believe. Did not see this portion of the chat, guess it was probably after Gripsed was there.

All I have to say is thank you. I laughed so hard. Twitch chat is, at times, the funniest thing in the world. This is not really relevant to the viewbotting issue but it helps me to laugh off some of the jabs and barbs.

***********

As for the self promotion aspect of this, yeah it definitely reflects poorly on him. He kind of frames it as tweeting to support the streamer, but then he directs people to his tweet. So I can see how people would see that as over the line.

It is interesting though.... there are other people who spam their twitter or other social media in other people's streams all the time, but it's somehow accepted. There is a whole business around that on Twitch too. People are given the free pass if they are considered *significant* people in the poker or media worlds. I have never been a huge fan of double standards.

Well looks like a response is coming

I always guessed some kind of response would be coming eventually. As for what he could be possibly doing now, or what he's planning to say, it's anybody's guess.

I did think it was funny though to see you hound him in the chat like Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC on one of his predator hunts. Thanks for the laugh.

Actually can you tell us when this chat interaction occurred?

It would definitely be helpful to have a timeline of when he acknowledged knowing about this debate.

Like 10 minutes ago in the nut case wearing the mask stream

I may or may not like to stir the pot 🏿🏿

Thanks,

I went to the chat after I saw your post but didn't see either you or Gripsed in the chat, that's why I asked.

Now I guess we can all anxiously await his reply. :|

@jaime: If this is how you treat your "friends", I sure as hell wouldn't want to be any of them. You pretend it's about "the issue" yet all I read are personal attacks on Evan's character. So cut the crap. If someone is your friend, you take it up with them personally and in private instead of taking it to the internet troll streets.

@ghost_o_m: I agree, none of the evidence so far is damning enough to warrant this kind of backlash for gripsed. And if I were gripsed, I'd sure as hell not get involved in this BS nvg trollism. He's already damned and judged by the trolls of nvg, no matter what he says.

@4thehustla: You are one lowlife p.o.s. and you've proven that to me and various others time and again. I stopped counting the times I was asked to ban you from chats because you were whisper-harassing fellow viewers with your disgusting views. I put you on my personal ban list ages ago, that's how much I think of you.

As to the matter at hand: "serious" is what happened in Brussels (and all cites of real life war/conflict with real life physical victims). Get some perspective - seriously!

All stopped talking to me for different reasons, lol. How about this, I ****ed up your friends career because I felt like it. A few minutes of my time, while scratching my balls, wearing my boxers, I knew the repercussions of what i was doing. Tell your boy that, I ruined his life because I had nothing better to do. The power..... That must sting.

You say they cut ties with me? The ****ing nerve.....All clowns, except for griffin, me and him are cool forever.