Valkyrae is lawyering up over fake Stake captions

Valkyrae is lawyering up after a slew of Stake-branded X posts slapped fake captions on top of clips from her podcast.

“I get people are just trying to make a few bucks with the logo and stuff but the hate I’ve received because of lies has been insane,” the streamer, who has more than 4 million subscribers on YouTube, tweeted Nov. 29. “Some of these clips are from when I shared a non consensual sexual experience and out of context, I’m perceived as a whore.”

She gave a specific example where someone took a clip of her talking about going with her female friends to an onsen (hot spring) in Japan, and pasted a caption over top that suggested it was a sexual encounter. Clips like this have been circulating all over X (formerly Twitter) lately–and posters aren’t just stealing content from Valkyrae. Most of the clips have outright fake, ridiculous captions that purposefully erase the original videos’ context and are geared to go viral on X, a site that is becoming increasingly riddled with spam, sexual harassment, antisemitism, and racism.

Some clips are also branded with the logo for gambling site Stake, and X’s Community Notes writers have repeatedly called out these posts as being undisclosed advertisements. It’s not clear if Stake is actually involved in the posts and/or sponsoring the people making them, or if posters are slapping its logo on clips as a joke, an attempt to get the site’s attention, etc. Stake has not issued a public statement about the deluge of posts bearing its name.

Whether the posts are sanctioned by Stake or not, Valkyrae is (understandably) not happy about them, and in a followup post, she said she’s made an appointment with a lawyer.

She didn’t specify what kind of legal action she wants to take, but did invite anyone else who’s had their content used in a similar way to contact her: “If you have had your content clipped out of context sexualizing/defaming you while monetizing with a certain logo plz dm me screenshots and the account @.”

Anyone who’s been online knows it’s a more hostile place for women than men; this is just the latest example of a female content creator being targeted. In recent months, streamers like QTCinderella have spoken out about the rise of deepfakes, and the University of Zurich just released a study showing that YouTube‘s decision to hide public dislikes had a significant positive impact on female creators.