La Mort en Direct

Recently, Jean Pormanove, a Frenchman whose real name was Raphaël Graven, was streaming live on Kick, an Australian-based live video platform. There was nothing abnormal in this—Pormanove was a regular streamer—and sometimes, he would be shown doing normal things, like playing video games. The videos in which Pormanove appeared, however, were often notable for their violence: two other streamers, known by the aliases Naruto and Safine, would do things like throttle him, hit him over the head, or subject him to electric shocks, sometimes as part of what were styled as extreme challenges, other times seemingly gratuitously. This most recent stream had been going on for twelve days or so. At one point, Naruto could be seen reading out a message that Pormanove purportedly sent to his mother, in which he claimed that the game was “going too far,” and that he felt like a “prisoner” within a “shitty concept.” In another clip, according to CNN, Pormanove’s mother could be heard berating her son. “They are treating you like shit,” she said.