A Cesspit of Controversy and Crime
The streaming platform Kick.com has positioned itself as a gathering place for creators suspended or removed from more reputable platforms. This has resulted in a concentration of problematic content, creating a digital environment rife with controversy. The platform’s most high-profile streamers have been involved in numerous incidents that endanger the public, including car crashes, street fights, and sexual harassment of strangers.
The issues extend to domestic abuse, mistreatment of the mentally ill, and shocking stunts like tricking a homeless woman into jumping off a dock or shooting strangers with paintball guns. In one viral example, a conflict between young streamers escalated to one shoving another into a moving train. This pattern of behavior is not an exception but a feature of the platform’s culture, raising serious questions about its moderation and ethical standards.
The Stake.com Connection: A Crypto Casino’s Ad Platform
To understand Kick’s business model, one must look at its ownership. Disclosures made to the iOS App Store revealed that Kick is owned by Kick Streaming Proprietary Limited, which is wholly owned by Easygo Entertainment. The shareholders of Easygo are Ashwood Holdings (owned by Edward Craven) and Bijan Tehrani.
Crucially, the crypto-based online casino Stake.com is also owned by Easygo. Public filings show that Kick, Stake, Easygo, and their related entities all share the same business address. This convoluted ownership scheme reveals a simple premise: two billionaires simultaneously own both the casino and the streaming platform.
This structure allows them to heavily promote gambling streams, circumvent advertising laws, and bombard a young audience with nonstop casino promotions. Kick operates as a “loss leader”—it doesn’t need to be profitable on its own. Its primary function is to serve as a massive, unregulated advertising arm for the far more lucrative Stake.com crypto casino.
A Tragic Culmination: The Death of Raphael “Jean Pormanov” Graven
The platform’s toxic environment reached a tragic peak with the death of French streamer Raphael Graven, known as Jean Pormanov. While the official cause was cited as dying in his sleep, the context surrounding his death points to a multi-year pattern of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of fellow streamers.
Graven, a vulnerable man with a known heart condition, participated in “challenge” streams where he was subjected to what can only be described as torture for viewership and donations. This included systematic sleep deprivation, physical battery, humiliation, and ingestion of toxic substances. The behavior was so extreme and prolonged that it undoubtedly worsened his pre-existing medical condition.
A few days before his death, Graven sent a text message to his mother, which was later read aloud on stream by one of his abusers: “Hi Mom. How are you? Stuck to death with his game. This is going too far. I feel like I’m being held captive with their shitty concept. I’m fed up, I want to get out, the other guy doesn’t want to, he’s holding me captive.”
Kick’s Complicity and the Call for Accountability
The abuse of Raphael Graven was not a secret. In late 2024, an investigation by MediaPart exposed the situation, stating, “On the Kick platform, French streamers engage in live physical and psychological humiliation every night to obtain donations from viewers. A well-established business of abuse, the primary victims of which are vulnerable people.”
Despite this, the official Kick France social media channel routinely promoted these broadcasts. After Graven’s death, they deleted numerous promotional posts, including one that used an image of an abused Graven to sell Kick merchandise. This direct promotion and monetization of torture demonstrates clear complicity.
Rumors suggest the channel was paid thousands of euros per hour by Kick for these marathon streams of abuse. Thankfully, a judicial investigation is now underway in France. This investigation must scrutinize the platform’s role, the contracts offered to these creators, and the negligence that contributed to this horrific outcome.
Beyond “Just Don’t Watch”: The System of Abuse
A common defense of such content is that “if you don’t like it, don’t watch” or “he could have left.” This simplistic argument fails to recognize the system of abuse built around profit. Vulnerable individuals are often manipulated through coercion, convinced that they are worthless without their abusers and that the torment is a necessary part of the “entertainment.”
When a platform like Kick allegedly offers lucrative contracts for “marathon” streams that feature open torture, it creates a powerful apparatus of coercion. The entertainment becomes humiliation, and the victim is trapped in a cycle of abuse for profit. This is not a matter of personal choice; it is a system of exploitation.
Conclusion: Kick Should Be Shut Down
Kick is not merely a platform with a few bad actors; it is a demonstration of societal rot where the periphery is normalized. Its business model, which funnels users to a crypto casino, incentivizes the most indecent and reprehensible behavior. The tragic death of Raphael Graven is the inevitable result of cultivating a space for the most toxic people online and propelling them to the forefront.
The pervasive culture of boundary-pushing for profit has created a net-negative impact on the digital world. The platform should be dismantled, and its creators should be forced to find platforms with superior moderation. The answer for those involved in the abuse and the platform that enabled it is clear: accountability, consequences, and jail time. The internet would be a better place if Kick was deleted.
