Akemi Kurai - a community retrospective by @RileyParka

Hello dear reader, it is with much regret that I find myself writing this. However, as is usually the case, it can be hard to find clarity when drama is occurring, or even to understand what the drama is about in the first place. That then is the purpose of this document; why I ultimately chose to leave Akemi Kurai’s community, pull support, and why I think you should too. Creator or viewer, I shall explain as best I can why I believe this person is best to be avoided.

I would like to make clear from the outset that I will not be sharing personal information, nor will I ever want to see anyone named or talked about attacked in any way unbefitting general discourse. Please understand, there is a right and a wrong way to handle these situations. Read this document, come to your own conclusions, and please leave it at that.

So, with that preamble aside..

Who am I? What is my relation to Akemi Kurai? How did I come to be here?

Good place to start. Ultimately I am nobody, at least in the internet sense. I have little social media presence, I prefer it that way. I do enjoy some V-Tuber content, and so I followed a few of these pages. I do not recall exactly how I found Akemi Kurai’s work, I believe that it was a tweet regarding her attitudes toward Transgenderism that made me look. I saw she was a small but growing V-Tuber and decided to check her out. Naturally, this led me to join her Discord server also.

I found I joined right at the moment she was looking for new Moderators to facilitate her continued growth. Makes sense. I applied, as I enjoy that sort of thing. To my surprise, she accepted almost instantly, pinging me in the chat and asking me if I would still like to do it.

And so I joined her moderation team. It was over the first few weeks I noticed much that needed fixing in her server, from bots and roles to channel format. See, she had rebranded some with a new model and much of her server had not been updated to reflect her channel changes. She was expressing stress at all the work she had to do considering her growth, so I reached out and offered to help, and I was given permissions to then edit and update things as I saw fit, as she expressed she was impressed with my suggestions. I did exactly that. Effectively taking over admin duties for her server.

I also offered general advice, and relating to streams and editing that she was also expressing concern with. After some time of this I floated the idea to her of assuming a community manager position, like a head-moderator, but giving her behind the scenes help with more than just that. She told me she was happy with the idea, and I might assume it right away, and so once again I did.

And so Community Manager I became. And it was there that I stayed until now.

So what went wrong?

Now this is the juicy part, and let me preface with ‘this includes concern about stalking, harassment, bullying, toxic behaviour and genuinely concerning mental instability’

I will start with some of the red flags as I saw them and then get into the really concerning stuff.

So, most of us found Akemi because of her Tweets, and she expressed in her streams she was actually quite connected with her fans and she had this sweet persona that endeared us to her, which I think is why people would stick around, but what started to make me feel need to take pause was instances like in her ‘Dark Souls Remastered’ stream, in which her chat being chat decided to poke fun at her. Now many streamers deal with this sort of thing in different ways. Some address it, some don’t, some let mods do their thing. What I want to note is that Akemi’s Twitter persona is of this ‘based’ and ‘uncaring’ tough girl who is fine throwing punches and making fun of others. Much of the issues later come from her own insecurities, and yet she would like you to think she has none. So during this stream she crashes out, and we can debate if it was valid, but neither myself nor the other mods had any issue except with a single chatter of hers (who was banned), and yet she decided to let the joking and good-nature banter make her shout at her viewers, and then be dejected, sad and quiet for the next few hours of stream.

This was a very awkward experience, and was not particularly enjoyable to watch. Attempting to bring this up with her was basically impossible, as she considered herself at liberty to act as she chose about it and if you don’t like it you could just leave.

Further to this happening, a chatter in her Discord by the name of ‘Rice’ (who later became her boyfriend) was given perms to post an announcement to the server, in which he instructed fans not to make fun of her, even in good nature, as she ‘has to deal with a lot already’.

Does this sound like a ‘based’ streamer to you?

Now that aside, it is hard to quantify in any way I can present to you as evidence, but this was the general vibe from chatting with her too, you would walk on egg-shells around her when she is in the chat, you make a joke slightly out of place? She’s going to snap at you.

It would also cause some inconsistencies too. Things she would say to others were not okay when directed at her, positions she would agree with typically she would not depending on who said it. Her view on NSFW was somewhat inconsistent and confusing. She made, unprompted, NSFW channels to share art of her own accord, and when asked said ‘because I like it’, and yet often times acted judgemental toward those posting in there, and would grandstand about lewdness.. While in the next breath promoting NSFW art of her model and asking for more and telling people ‘just don’t look’ if they don’t like it. A very confusing position that if I am being honest, seemed to be dictated solely by how her friends felt about it at a given time.

In the Discord server there existed a ‘VIP’ role, I likely don’t need to explain to any Twitch users what this is, but she would also give it to her off-stream friend-group, which is fine, no problems here. But her friends, specifically one by the name of ‘Rattrick Bateman’ would push rules to the edge, think themselves above them and have a disregard for how anyone else in the community felt with them throwing weight around within it, and it made it hard for any moderation team to do anything about it.

Akemi and VIP friends would routinely break rules that she would shout at others about, especially misuse of channels and spamming memes ect. Is it a huge deal? No. Of course not. But I am highlighting an inconsistency within her attitude, one that people can pick up on and it can put you off hanging around.

Now in my position as community manager it meant a lot of the server-side issues were given to me to deal with, and of course it was in Akemi’s purview to act as she wanted anyway, but she made many decisions, like deleting popular channels, or appointing her VIP friend to mod status on a whim, without considering any feedback nor mentioning it to staff or expressing anything of the sort. And so we would often be left wondering what was going on. Reaching out and asking is deemed aggressive.

One of her VIP friends, unknown to most of us, decided to share her experience getting a speeding ticket. Okay. Two chatters, one by the name of ‘Minnie’ (I will be mentioning this person again later) decided to engage in the conversation with them. Minnie offered legal advice, very benign comments, the other person mentioned how irresponsible it was to speed while the posted said they were pregnant. No rules were broken, nothing more than this was said. The VIP poster chose to leave. Bit of an overreaction, no? Well Akemi did not think so, she took to chat to berate them broadly for the treatment of her friend, and even called out Minnie, who objectively did nothing here for ‘unsolicited advice’. I took to chat to remind Akemi nobody did anything wrong, and their friend chose to share that story and to shout at chat for this was out of line, and fostering a bad attitude. This lesson did not sink in at all.

Also consider her treatment of her close friends, namely men. It is all well and good tweeting about mental health awareness for men, but how do you think she actually treats the men in her life? I’ll tell you

She had been making jokes from day 1 about getting a ‘manager bf’, a ‘haha’ reference to the Sinder situation, but as funny as it was it started to become less funny. She was pining for it. Eventually during one meeting call with her she went over with me several male community members she knew for some time, and ranked them at me based on various traits about them, including their wealth. Now this might seem innocent at face value, but this would come up quite a lot. How much money someone had. How willing they were to buy her things. To fund her lifestyle. It is my belief this is where much of her ‘based’ persona comes from. She likes to talk about ‘traditional family roles’, you know, the man being the bread-winner and the woman being the housewife. Do I disagree with this? No, but what you will observe with Akemi is her belief she is deserving of such simply by way of being a woman, that men should actively throw their money at her and take on this role because they just should. This is not really how this works in reality. I believe it true men and women play different roles in a marriage, but Akemi rarely thought about what she had to bring, but rather what others would bring to her.

Akemi views relationships as transactional

And so it is about what others do for her. Will you make her art? Will you boost her views and get her to partner? Will you mod her channel? Buy her food? This is the framing by which all her interactions go. And is how she would view me and the others too.

She is not ‘based’ in her view of relationships, she is using it as a marketable mask for being lazy, self-absorbed and ultimately self-serving, and using conservatism as a vehicle to push it and to be appealing to the kinds of men that want that sort of lifestyle.

Now I’m going to talk about Minnie, a chatter and figure in her community who I believe has been bullied, shamed and treated poorly by Akemi.

Minnie is a girl who has been very active in Akemi’s community, showing support, engaging with her server and being a notable figure in that growing community. Minnie would often post in many channels, from irl pics to politics to art and anime. She did nothing except engage with the community in a positive way.

And so where do the issues come in? Minnie was a popular community member and Akemi had decided to express to me that Minnie being popular was problematic because Akemi felt deprived of that attention. Yes, she had come to me, in private, and told me that something had to be done about Minnie, because she was talked to and about a lot, and Akemi felt the server should be focusing on her.

I would like to remind you at this point that this comes from a girl who portrays herself as a ‘based’ figure on Twitter.

Akemi routines played schoolyard games in chat with Minnie present, as a way of directing praise and attention to herself, deserved or otherwise. She would get angry when Minnie posted about herself. On the face of it, she would act like Minnie’s friend, and yet a clear resentment was festering and it was explicitly expressed to me. Her server had a ‘Quotes’ channel, the purpose of which was to screenshot funny moments in chat to preserve for prosperity. Cool in concept, right? Well, Akemi was upset that it was Minnie posting the most quotes (not even Minnie being quoted the most, just that Minnie was sharing the most), and so without any feedback, she deleted it. No archiving. No discussion. Just impulsive deletion. Moderation expressed some discontent with this, and I know for a fact nobody believed this was necessary. Akemi’s stated reason to staff wasn’t even hiding it either, she outright said that it was due to Minnie posting and an apparent ‘misuse’ of the channel. What misuse? In what way?

It had nothing to do with being misused. It had everything to do with Akemi’s jealousy.

Not only this, but she was well aware, as she encouraged herself, that Minnie and I (Riley) were getting along very well, and that Minnie and I had been very close, and so Akemi was very aware that bringing to me her insecurity about Minnie would put me in a difficult position.

I would read Akemi in chat grandstanding about how ‘posting yourself a lot is attention seeking’ and ‘it’s a need for validation’ and that she did not require her fans to ‘validate’ her at all and she was not ‘insecure’. And yet? I know this to be false, as she said so herself, she told me she wanted the attention, she said that Minnie sharing her selfies made Akemi feel pressured to do the same else Akemi would not be called pretty in the same way.

Does that sound like a person who is secure in themselves to you?

Minnie naturally realises that Akemi is pushing her out, simply for being a her and being given attention, and this rightfully hurts Minnie, who was under the assumption that Akemi and her might be friends. And this has impacted Minnie and caused her distress and the fact of the matter is much of the attitude Akemi had taken to her IS bullying and comes from a deep need to be the centre of attention that I believe is actually wholly underserved.

Up until that point I had taken issues to Akemi professionally, although it had been hard to get her to come to the table for anything serious, as despite saying she wanted to be a streamer it gave me the impression she just wanted to play games with friends and didn’t really want the rest of it that comes with it, which is fine, but for as long as she claims to want to be a streamer, there are some moments of business that must be had. She claimed this intimidated her, again, a bit of an indicator of her emotional maturity, but I acted with understanding and patience and tried to do as much as I could for her without her direct input for as little as she would give, including handling her editing by finding her editors and working with them.

Naturally these bubbling community problems had to be mentioned. And so I took them to Akemi, and I put it plainly, and I told her I believed she was in danger of alienating her community if we did not steer direction.

What do you think her response was?

It was to take all the critique of her, all the genuine issues to be discussed and to say ‘you are simping for your e-gf’ and to dismiss them. I suspect that she was pushing the closeness of myself and Minnie so she could offload any pushback for her treatment toward Minnie by blaming me and claiming that I was ‘simping’ (despite the fact she expects everyone to do that for her)

And because of this childish dismissal of these issues, I took the decision to leave. Her behaviour since I did so is worth talking about to, but before I do that..

A stalker? … huh?

I wish this part were a joke, but before I talk about the fallout of my leaving, I want to just bring up the fact that through discourse in her server with her, she has not been shy about admitting her less than moral tendencies.

She explained to us, in detail, how she likes to use small tidbits of info she has on people to stalk them and track them down. Such as an example she gave of an ex boyfriend who she tracked via a photo of him with a chess club, and so she looked up the chess club, and ended up with all the info on him and who else he was talking to, amongst other examples.

This was not explained to us as a joke, nor as a ‘I did this and I regret it’ but instead as a ‘do not fuck with me you do not know what I am capable of’ sense.

This has left Minnie very worried that Akemi will do similar things with her, as Akemi has shown no remorse for her behaviour and seems to actively encourage harassment of those she does not like or do not like her, she has said she has doxxed people, she has said she has tormented people.

Is this the sort of person we should be supporting? 

Look at her Twitter takes. Do I generally agree with the politics she is sharing? Yes. I am a Conservative Christian, I am being upfront about that. However, I do not believe wishing harm to those who disagree with me is a good thing. All too many times Akemi will go over a line in her response to someone, or her aggressiveness with her detractors, and she believes it is ‘based’ to do so, and yet there is such vitriol in it, and she is often quick to explain that no, it is not a joke, it is not in good fun, it is what she actually thinks. She wants people to die, she wants harm to come to people, she has no care for you unless you are part of her in-group.

It is hard to put into articulate words, but we have all met these kinds of people before, we all know a toxic person when we meet them, and it is my belief that this is what Akemi Kurai ultimately is

What do you suppose her reaction was to my leaving her community? To double-down of course, and to lay the blame for all her issues at me, after I had simply gone to her to advise her to steer away from her course.

She claims that I was trying to get her fans to leave. Not a single person can demonstrate this, because it never happened, and is purely a fiction she has created.

People reached out to me about it, I shared with them what happened. Nothing more, nothing less. I have nothing to hide and no issue sharing that. If anyone chooses to leave her, they do so of their own volition, and not of any pressure from anyone else, and I challenge anyone to show otherwise. If anything, I expressed to other concerned chatters that it is not their problem to worry about.

Of course some of her chatters have shared with me, in good-faith, things she has said since, she is pulling damage-control and trying desperately to shelve the blame onto others, and her VIP group is working overtime to shill and protect her too. As is exactly what she wants them for. This includes trying to make out that I had some sort of romantic intent with her, by saying that I would flirt with her. It is true that I said nice things to her, Akemi herself fishes for and encourages this, and she wants to be called pretty, and good at streaming, she wants you to be kind to her, and to come to her when she seems off. I was her community manager, and so I would often message her encouragement and attempt to help her through rough moments. Any read of romantic intent here is purely projection on Akemi’s part, and she knew that Minnie and I were close. It is a diversionary effort at best, and at worst just some strange desperation.

Her conservative persona is a grift, please do not fall for it

As I expressed, much of her views come off as a vain effort to pull in an audience receptive to it, as she herself is not capable of putting into practice any of the values she is putting forward as what she believes in, except that of being taken care of by others because she is a woman.

Her initial growth was spurred by such a Tweet, and so she is embracing that side purely to inflate her own ego and give her attention.

She expressed to her community before that at one point she was ‘woke’ because she felt it was the only way to fit in with the crowd she was around, but now she is embracing her true views. I ask that you are skeptical of this. How much of that wokism has she actually shed? Her persecution of her ‘enemies’ certainly uses the same play-book, and if she fit into the woke sleeve for validation before, how are we to know the conservative persona is not much the same thing, simply in the other direction? I would argue one can tell by the fruits of one’s actions. Akemi is controlling, manipulative and self-absorbed, she approves of stalking, bullying other women out of her community and cannot take any critique given to her.

Now I understand I have not provided you with a big breakdown of a collection of screenshots from the past month or so here, but I do not feel I need to, nor would it make the point any more clearly. Some may be deleted by now, others may choose to share screenshots of their own. That’s fine. Nothing I said I do not stand by, people may share what they may. This document is a warning, and I believe one’s true self will be evident, sooner or later, that is to say that the feeling I am portraying through this document will be apparent regardless of how much I include or don’t include.

If you are a creator, you will see the transactional nature of her relationships.

Like when she did a tea colab with creators including Celestium, and instead of having any gratitude for the opportunity, she expressed to me disappointment her own channel did not receive as many views as some of her other streams. I tried to explain the value in networking, but she was so caught up in the immediate popularity contest that’s all her vanity allowed her to see.

If you are a viewer, you will see how she treats her chat, and her community. And I think you will echo much of the same that you have seen here.

In the end, if she had been willing to apologise to Minnie, and simply do a bit of a reset with people and take some simplistic feedback it would have been fine. She is incapable of such. If you are one of her VIP friends, please help her to see how her community attitude is destructive.

I hope she can improve in these aspects, and that she might see the need to change her attitudes in future. It is not fun to watch creators fail, especially ones you put your own time into also. And so I want her to do well, and to do better.

Please hold her to better standards than she currently has.

If you must reach me for whatever reason my twitter is ‘@RileyParka’

Thank you for reading.