The successful Fortnite YouTuber and streamer Bryan “Ricegum” Le is currently public enemy number one in the Fortnite community on reddit. Let’s take a closer look at this.
Caught cheating: The YouTuber “Ricegum” is at this moment the top topic on reddit, although not in a way he would like. Someone uploaded a screenshot where Ricegum celebrates a victory with his hand raised. The same image shows that he still has his hands on the controller from a different camera perspective. The image is from a six-week-old video of Ricegum. The thread has over 38,500 upvotes. That’s a lot even by Fortnite standards.
At this moment RiceGum knew he fukt up. His hand is off the controller but not on the hand cam. This post is late but better late than never. from r/FortNiteBR
Why stream with a hand cam at all? Apparently Ricegum uses a hand camera because he wanted to prove that he is really playing himself and is not a faker. The allegations against him have been circulating for some time.
Does he really have a “Ghost Player?”
How does the community react? The community is laughing hard and sees this as proof that Ricegum has a “Ghost Player” playing for him.
But is that really the case? Ultimately, the screenshot proves nothing. It is quite possible that the hand camera has a delay. Therefore, this is not conclusive evidence. However, it does show an interesting conflict within the player base: The Fortnite community on reddit apparently has a major problem with some of the most successful Fortnite YouTubers.
Why is Ricegum so controversial? Ricegum is one of the most successful YouTubers in Fortnite. However, he is accused of relying on PR stunts and clickbait. In the eyes of many, he is not “legit,” i.e., real. Ricegum invented the “Strip Fortnite”: a trend where a woman undresses for every kill the player next to her achieves.
PR stunt with pro team: Recently, Ricegum conducted a kind of collaboration with the professional eSports team “Faze.” There he pretended to be a professional player training with the team. The video was titled “Why I’m Quitting YouTube (Professional Fortnite).” Of course, more videos about Fortnite were released afterward.
Conflict Entertainment vs. eSports: The reactions to Ricegum are similar to those of reddit towards “Ali-A.” There is a conflict between the community that respects the “strong” players like Ninja and critically views “entertainers” like Ricegum and Ali-A. A conflict that will certainly accompany us in the coming years.
