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Internet star HandOfBlood: He has been shaping the German web video world for over a decade
Photo: Sebastian Wolf / DER SPIEGEL
SPIEGEL
: HandOfBlood, how much influence do web stars like you have on society?
HandOfBlood
: This is highly underestimated.
Many young people's view of the world and humanity is shaped by influencers, and some even follow the news about influencers.
Back in 2016, I said in a speech at the Web Video Prize that the scene bears a lot of responsibility because it helps define the zeitgeist.
Not just in terms of what to buy, but also in terms of how you behave, how you discuss, what your values are.
At that time, YouTube was particularly influential for young people; today it is more like Twitch and TikTok.
SPIEGEL
: There are said to be people who spend more time with their favorite streamer in a typical week than with their friends.
HandOfBlood
: If you always watch the same star after work, a parasocial relationship develops - a friendly relationship, but one-sided.
As a viewer, you feel drawn to this person and trust him.
It's like meeting your best friend every day.
Thanks to this parasocial relationship, we influencers can make a lot of money by authentically promoting things or by subscribing to our Twitch channels by people who think we're cool.
In return, we have to accept that we have to be role models, whether we want to or not.
SPIEGEL
: In your scene there are arguments that never seem to end, like the one between the opinion blogger KuchenTV and the streamer Shurjoka, who has been repeatedly and violently attacked online for months.
Little about it seems exemplary.
HandOfBlood
: Boulevard and drama are a great topic for generating relevance and reach.
However, the mechanisms behind it are often very toxic.
It's often not so much about who is right and who is wrong, but rather about the question of how you can create videos or streams that attract as much engagement as possible.
The dispute between KuchenTV and Shurjoka, with several videos from him and several hours of streams from her, is difficult to keep track of.
This is a type of discourse that is absolutely destructive.
From both sides.
And other influencers then spread this out into the world through reactions.
SPIEGEL
: What bothers you about the current debate culture?
HandOfBlood
: It feels like there is no more differentiation, no dialogue, no “benefit of the doubt”.
It seems to me as if many influencers just want to self-righteously convey their narratives and would prefer to only receive confirmation in return.
We're not living a healthy relationship right now.
It is one of the cornerstones of our democracy that people have discussions and sometimes agree to disagree when someone has a different opinion.
Isolation only leads to us drifting into divided bubbles.
And yes, I am aware that I saw things differently a few years ago.
SPIEGEL
: Is it a problem that scandals in particular promise clicks?
HandOfBlood
: Certainly.
But it's not just clicks that are a big motivator.
Anyone who is drawn into an alleged scandal as an influencer often sees themselves motivated - apart from clicks - to play along with these games, because otherwise they leave the interpretation sovereignty to others.
For example, I was just accused of wanting to resolve a private argument with the streamer Mahluna in an adult way and not saying much about it publicly.
This was seen as a silent acceptance that her allegations were true.
Where would we end up if that were the benchmark from now on?
At the same time, other influencers who have been waging mudslinging publicly for months should please clarify this privately.
SPIEGEL
: Many of today's outrages start with short clips from hour-long streams posted by third parties, which sometimes seem much more harmless in the overall context.
Keyword Gronkh and “Hogwarts Legacy”.
HandOfBlood
: With snippets like this, I see it as our influencer's job to model media literacy for the young audience by saying "Pay attention to the context" and doing it ourselves - instead of directly hitting it with our own narrative.
SPIEGEL
: Are you actually someone who likes to argue?
HandOfBlood
: Not at all, I need harmony.
But it is also important to me to have and represent a strong opinion.
SPIEGEL
: When you look back on your career: Did you criticize other stars more often, or were you criticized more often yourself?
HandOfBlood
: Good question, wow.
I think I still criticized others more often.
Especially in the years 2014 to 2017, I pointed the finger at others a lot.
SPIEGEL
: Back then you liked to mess with web stars who made videos for children and young people and held products up to the camera.
Bibi and Julienco, for example, described you as “advertising whores”.
And in 2015 you attended a concert by YouTuber Liont - just to cause a stir.
HandOfBlood
: Going to the concert was a wannabe Bushido move, I've since apologized to Liont for that.
These years were my Sturm und Drang phase.
I also enjoyed being this little rebellious new dude on the scene who disrespects others who he believes aren't authentic.
Because I often became insulting when criticizing, I actually disqualified myself from any serious discussion that could have arisen.
SPIEGEL
: At the beginning of your career you portrayed yourself as the "Spast von Spandau" and used terms like "disabled" as insults.
HandOfBlood
: As stupid as that sounds and without it being an excuse, it was a different time socially.
Of course, there were people back then who were much further along than me and who found me unpleasant because of something like that - which I can understand today.
I now pay attention to my vocabulary so that no minorities are affected.
SPIEGEL
: You just played through an extra difficult variant of “Elden Ring” with Papaplatte.
At the end you proudly said: "Fucking loser, we fucked all the bosses in their asses." You think that's okay?
HandOfBlood
: Sure, that sounds rude and rude.
But here I was, insulting virtual opponents after trying to defeat them for six hours.
This makes your head dull.
Such sentences are really rare for me these days, and I don't have to be ashamed of them, I think - that's my sense of humor.
SPIEGEL
: You are now 31, advertise for the Sparkasse, change your gender in the live stream and have a rainbow flag in your username on X.
How did this change come about after your “Sturm und Drang phase”?
HandOfBlood
: On the one hand, I have often been hostile to others.
As a result, I was often treated with hostility.
And everything I said from then on was taken seriously by my community, and rightly so.
At some point I asked myself if this was the right way to constantly stress yourself out beyond gaming videos.
On the other hand, eight years ago I met my friend Tamina, who also makes web videos under the name Mienah.
She broadened my horizons.
Not in the “you have to see things this way” way, but rather through their lifestyle, which was automatically relevant to me as a friend.
Through her, I also learned how much women in the industry have to struggle with sexist prejudices.
That triggered my sense of justice: How can it be that you read comments that are sometimes super disgusting almost every day just because you are female and like making YouTube videos or livestreaming?
SPIEGEL
: This sense of justice, where does it come from?
HandOfBlood
: My guess is: I moved around a lot as a child because my parents separated when I was very young.
So I felt like I was the new guy in every village and every club.
And I really did a lot: football, tennis, archery, athletics, canoe polo.
At the same time, I didn't really grow until I was 16 and before that I was always the smallest in the class.
I often had the feeling that I had to fight my way through or prove myself.
Even in the family there is a double standard when you are here on the weekend and there during the week.
There was always a lot going on and a lot under scrutiny.
SPIEGEL
: There was a lot of judgment about you recently because of Mahluna.
With a view to her environment and the time around 2020, she wrote about a “cult-like group of friends” that “cancelled out anyone who even remotely did anything with people who didn’t correspond to their worldview.”
HandOfBlood
: The whole thing had to do with different perceptions.
And of course it is challenging when personal friendships mix with professional ones, as happens with influencers.
All I said publicly about the topic was that there were a lot of untruths.
Mahluna and I then sat on our asses for three hours, talked a lot, sorted out a lot of misunderstandings and apologized to each other.
SPIEGEL
: Would you handle the situation the same way again in retrospect?
HandOfBlood
: Looking back, I would probably have done me personally, my brand, a favor if I had fired back consistently, with evidence, evidence, and hostility.
But this would have resulted in a drama and everything would have turned destructive, which Mahluna certainly wouldn't have wanted.
I wouldn't have this stamp of cult leader for that.
Because you would have had a public counter perspective.
What individual communities made of the topic really irritated me.
Even when Mahluna said that everything had been sorted out and that we were on good terms, the circle jerk continued online.
SPIEGEL
: Why is the image of the cult so captivating?
HandOfBlood
: I guess because three or four years ago I still lived out a certain idealism about what moral standards should be in our industry, almost every day.
If something problematic happened, I addressed it and expressed it.
Although back then it was more rational and objective than in the years we talked about before.
And yes, I certainly put a lot of passive pressure on colleagues with whom I was actually on the same wavelength and who saw things the way I did.
SPIEGEL
: Have you tried to “cancel” people?
HandOfBlood
: Well, I actually always spoke for myself and decided for myself: I don't want to do anything with certain people because I can't identify with them.
I think that should be clear.
SPIEGEL
: In 2020, the streamer MontanaBlack moaned and grunted after strange women in a live stream in Malta.
At the time, they publicly asked, “Why is something like this allowed to happen on Twitch?”
HandOfBlood
: That was a situation that made him a person for me that I didn't want to be associated with.
With whom I neither wanted to be at an event nor appear in videos together.
Because I find this behavior deeply reprehensible and, in my opinion, something like this should not be tolerated by our society.
And Twitch as a platform has to face questions about how they plan to moderate such incidents.
SPIEGEL
: Over time, you fought more against sexism than against questionable product advertising?
HandOfBlood
: Compared to some of the scandals in the scene today, what Liont, Bibi or Julienco used to do is childish shit.
Around 2020, I was definitely already speaking out against sexism in the industry, as I still do today, just as I advocate for the LGBT+ community.
I have also called out transphobic statements made by other influencers.
But there were also things that I saw critically without commenting on them: during the corona pandemic, the issue of gambling, for example, trading in Pokémon cards, seemed sensitive to me.
SPIEGEL
: Did you find Pokémon card content problematic?
It felt like half the scene was made.
HandOfBlood
: The Pokémon cards were often about rich influencers who celebrated the thrill of randomness behind outrageously expensive booster packs.
I didn't like the fact that these gambling mechanics were demonstrated and trivialized so excessively in front of young and financially less privileged target groups.
But at times I also asked myself whether I was being too strict with my moral standards.
My short circuit was to cooperate less and less with other influencers and concentrate on my content.
SPIEGEL
: When did you realize that I had lost my way here?
HandOfBlood
: I had a drastic experience in 2021 when the streamer Danny asked a streamer he didn't know via voice chat in the game "Rust" if she wanted to sit on his face.
Afterwards he was laughing with his homies.
Back then, I wanted to objectively explain to younger people on Twitter why this was problematic, and I got the shitstorm of my life because of it.
Danny's community wanted to defend him, probably as a defensive reflex according to the motto: Now the critical HandOfBlood comes and wants to cancel him, we won't allow that.
And then my tweets were followed by toxic Twitter bubbles.
SPIEGEL
: Did you suddenly feel like you were being pilloried?
HandOfBlood
: We're talking about over 100 Twitter mentions per minute.
Because my address was also leaked, I had civilian police protection for a time.
There was also call ID spoofing: colleagues received calls that appeared to come from my old number, answered them and were threatened by strangers.
None of the other big influencers showed solidarity with me during this shitstorm.
Then I realized: I was fighting a losing battle here.
Since then, I haven't pointed a finger or shown hostility towards other influencers.
SPIEGEL
: This January something unexpected happened: you sat down with MontanaBlack at the Baller League, in front of the camera.
HandOfBlood
: In the past I wouldn't have been at an event like this.
But in the last three or four years a lot has changed in my head: I've come to the conclusion that if you really want to change something, you have to go into other bubbles.
This is the only way to reach people beyond your own community and to discuss values or convey them to one another.
At the moment it's usually the case that you only give monologues in the live stream and ultimately only receive confirmation in the comment column.
People only talk about each other instead of with each other.
I'd rather go to MontanaBlack and talk to him in detail - without being very accusatory, on a factual level.
If our scene, but also society, needs to learn one thing, it is how to meet each other as equals again and address things with respect for each other.
SPIEGEL
: Some people online mocked that you were only looking for contact with MontanaBlack because, like him, you are now primarily a Twitch streamer?
HandOfBlood
: That's bullshit, I don't need it for career reasons.
Also, for pure profit, it would probably be best if I actively cross-promoted with Monte.
Instead, I revealed to him and the audience my opinion, which was different from his.
I think a lot of people - other communities, but also colleagues - are missing an update from me because I've almost locked myself away in the past few years.
They still roughly remember "HandOfBlood says on Twitter: Monte sucks because..." and then, hard cut: Now they're sitting together.
Of course they don't know what was going on in my head in the meantime.
SPIEGEL
: Why is it that only a few stars commit themselves to certain values as clearly as you do?
HandOfBlood
: I think many colleagues have the feeling that they get nothing out of it if they position themselves.
When in doubt, they lose target group shares and cause themselves stress.
But I get a lot of satisfaction when I feel like I'm doing the morally right thing.
Others could feel the same way.
If someone tries to use their reach for something good, you as an audience or colleague should be fair and be able to recognize that.
But you don't have to immediately make a judgment about something new.
SPIEGEL
: Should there be a statute of limitations for scandals involving internet stars?
HandOfBlood
: Within the framework of understandable changes, yes.
What a person conveys today should be more important than picking on old miseries.
SPIEGEL
: And do you believe that some scandal streamers will become good role models?
HandOfBlood
: If I can change, anyone can.
I've also used homophobic slurs before.
I once thought that depression was a fad.
I made jokes about vegetarians.
From that point of view, I really screwed up a lot.
But I stood up for it, and people can then understand it - and forgive it.