Kai Cenat's 5 most controversial livestream moments

Twitch streamer and YouTuber Kai Cenat has seen a meteoric rise on the live-streaming platform in 2022. Beginning his content creation career on YouTube in 2018, Kai became known for his vlogs and prank videos. He moved on to live streaming content, creating his Twitch channel in early 2021, where he now streams Valorant and FIFA as well as a variety of other games.

The 20-year-old streamer has quickly become one of the most-watched creators on the platform, surpassing xQc for most subscribers at over 90,000. His success has earned him nominations at the upcoming Streamy Awards in the Breakout Streamer and Streamer of the Year categories.

Like any popular streamer, Kai Cenat's success has also come with a lot of public scrutiny, whether in the form of social media backlash from viewers or harsh bans from Twitch itself. In this list, we take a look at some of the biggest controversies the young streamer has faced on Twitch.

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Kai Cenat's most controversial moments on Twitch

1) Kai and Adin Ross accused of transphobia

In early November, Kai Cenat appeared on Adin Ross' channel during their typical e-date stream. They brought a couple of women into the Discord video call, noticing that one of the women was taller and had a deeper voice than they expected.

After having the women leave the call for a moment to sort out technical issues, Kai commented on the individual's voice being deep. In a clip that soon went viral, the two streamers asked to have the two women brought back into the call, but it sounded as if they both said "add him back."

On stream the next day, it was brought to Kai's attention that he was trending due to a r/LivestreamFail post of the clip, and was being accused of transphobia and intentionally misgendering the woman. He explained that it was a simple case of people mishearing what he said, claiming he said "add 'em (them) back."

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2) Kai Cenat accidentally leaked a woman's contact information, leading to online harassment

During a Valorant livestream, Kai Cenat got into a heated argument with a female teammate who made some racially charged comments. He exchanged Discord information with the player to continue the conversation but accidentally leaked her information, including her full name on his stream.

This led to multiple viewers in the chat harassing the woman on social media. To make matters even worse, another woman who shared the same name was also harassed, both receiving some incredibly vile messages.

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3) Kai revealed that he does not pay his Twitch moderators

Kai Cenat and xQc made headlines when the two incredibly popular streamers had a conversation about paying Twitch moderators. During the stream, both individuals stated that they do not pay their moderators, despite having the means to do so.

Twitch moderators are volunteers, and compensation is not to be expected. However, many successful creators, including YouTube Gaming streamer Ludwig, pay their mods.

This sparked a conversation around the Twitch community, as many felt that popular streamers who have the ability to compensate their mods for their time and effort should. They believed that this should be done, especially considering that moderating a big streamer's chat is a more arduous process than doing so for streamers with small or medium-sized communities.

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4) 30-day ban for alleged racist comments

In March this year, Kai Cenat received his third ban from Twitch. The suspension stemmed from a video that was posted by a fan on his Discord server, featuring Kai and his fellow AMP content creation group members. Kai reacted to the post on his stream, expressing his distaste for the video by calling whoever edited it a "monkey."

Although his previous two bans lasted one day each, a third ban warranted a lengthier punishment, with Twitch deciding to ban Kai for a month. The severity of the ban could also be attributed to the belief that the term "monkey" had a racist connotation. While that is a possibility, it could have more to do with Kai saying that "monkeys must die."

Following the news of the ban, Kai took to Twitter to say that he was done with Twitch streaming. Some in the community believed that the ban was too harsh, including OTK co-founder Mizkif, who offered to put him in touch with his Twitch representative to get the suspension resolved.

The popular streamer did not end up serving the full suspension. He returned to Twitch and rose to even greater heights in the following months.

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5) Accused of money laundering through subscriptions

Kai Cenat's rise on Twitch seemed too good to be true for a lot of viewers, especially those who had not heard of the streamer until he surpassed xQc for the site's highest subscriber count. As he rapidly approached the 100,000 subscriber mark, some in the community began crafting theories about how Kai Cenat's rise to the top was even possible.

Some members of r/LivestreamFail noticed that nearly half of his subscribers came from gifted subs and that a friend of his would regularly gift a large number of subscriptions on his channel. This led to rumors that he was taking part in a money laundering scheme.

Although not the most effective method of money laundering, there have been attempts of the same through Twitch subscriptions and donations in the past. One such case took place in Turkey, where a criminal organization used stolen credit cards to donate bits to streamers, who would exchange those donations for cash to be sent back to the organization.

Kai shut down these rumors on his stream, claiming to have no idea how money laundering works. Despite the rumors, there is no evidence that he is involved in any sort of illegal money laundering scheme.