There's a website and Twitch/Facebook channel by the name of BullyHunters, where female gamers can call upon "Bully Hunters" to hunt their bullies in-game (because, you know.. it happens in every single round /s). Their inaugural broadcast was a little over an hour ago.
Full discloure: I didn't watch it (wasn't aware of it until the hashtag started blowing up on Twitter), but here's a short summary of what happened, according to the hashtag link above as well as r/LiveStreamFails:
Yesterday, a female mental health researcher raised some concerns over the validity of the statistics that BullyHunters was raising ("3 million women have stopped gaming altogether because of harrassment"), and asked if they would share their source for the data: Platinum on Twitter:
Seems legit.
But wait, anyone who has played CSGO in the past 2 years may have raised their eyebrow. "Isn't that the old glock sound?", you say? Sure is.
Another question that may have entered your head: "How is the bully hunter going to join mid-game in that mode?"
Yet another question: "How can she even hear her opponents voice chat??"
Surprise, it's staged! "therosethorn" was one of the gamers subjected to the bullying, but she called upon "BULLY HUNTER_77" for help.
Oops.
Twitch chat quickly became aware of what was happening and they cut the stream short and deleted the VOD (though clips were saved before they were able to).
So, what's the takeaway here? I'm honestly not sure, but I have to agree with the second Tweet here: Angela Night on Twitter:
But be sure to preorder the Special Edition BullyHunters headsets from SteelSeries!