Overview

Vaush Opens Porn Folder On Stream refers to Twitch streamer Vaush accidentally opening a folder containing adult material, including alleged lolicon and drawn bestiality imagery depicting horses, during a February 7th, 2024, livestream. The visible contents of the folder went viral online, inspiring reactions, memes and criticism towards Vaush, also inspiring some of his past controversies to resurface and an investigation in which 4chan users tried to find the sources of the images. In Vaush's response to the controversy, he claimed he did not know the images were lolicon and backed up the horse imagery by saying he has fantasies about having relations with women as a horse.

Background

February 2024 Folder Leak

On February 7th, 2024, Twitch streamer Vaush accidentally and briefly opened a folder on his computer titled "to be sorted" filled with pornographic images, which viewers quickly picked up on. While the exact contents of the folder are hard to make out, several of the images appear to be lolicon, while others involve drawn horses (censored screenshot shown below). Another folder labeled "taxes" is also visible.

The screenshot was shared on 4chan's^[1] /pol/ board that day in a thread that gained over 300 replies in two days. A clip of Vaush opening the folder was also uploaded to X^[2] that day by user @hayasaka_aryan, garnering over 11,000 likes in two days.

Related Controversies

Vaush has gone through several controversies involving his stances on CP that would later be brought up in relation to the folder incident. One of the most popular clips, which comes from a 2020 stream, involves Vaush saying he has "yet to hear a convincing moral or legal argument as to why possession of CP should be illegal" (shown below). In another clip, he says people who possess CP should not be charged.^[9][10]

Vaush's defense for the argument is that it's hypocritical to be against the possession of CP while other "commodities" like cobalt, diamonds and chocolate, are acquired unethically. He says that society does not condemn the ownership of other things garnered through unethical means, so it is therefore hypocritical to condemn the ownership of CP.

Context, for what it's worth. pic.twitter.com/HjSobRl6CZ

— Beige Goat (@beigegoat45) November 9, 2020

Developments

On February 7th, 2024, an anonymous user of 4chan's^[3] /pol/ board started a thread titled "Vaush porn folder leak thread #2: the great sauce hunt" in which anons searched for the sources for the images shown in Vaush's folder, resulting in over 350 replies over the next two days. Several of the photo's sources were purportedly found and shared, with some being lolicon imagery.

On February 8th, X^[4] user @femcelgirlfren shared a censored screenshot of some of the sources, writing, "pol found the sources of the images in vaush's porn folder, its confirmed half of it is lolicon and beastiality – he's going to jail now right? theres literal proof he has these images uncensored on his computer 😐" garnering over 800 likes in a day (shown below).

H3 Podcast Reaction

On February 9th, 2024, the H3 Podcast hosted episode 136 of their "After Dark" podcast on YouTube,^[7] in which they spent roughly two hours discussing the Vaush leak (shown below). During the stream, they joke about and criticize Vaush for the horse and loli imagery, with the host, Ethan Klein, also inviting him on to talk about the incident. The point of the stream was to look at the full clips of Vaush's past controversies relating to the link, such as the consistent joking about "horse c--k and Vaush's prior statements surrounding ownership of CP. Ethan argues that CP owndership and production should not even be compared to things like unethical cobalt mining, saying there is "no ethical way" to produce CP. The episode gained over 890,000 views in three days.

Vaush's Response

On February 10th, 2024, Vaush hosted a stream on YouTube^[8] titled "POST-H3 PODCAST AFTERPARTY" in which he responded to the leak and to the H3 Podcast's stream. Vaush expresses how he believes Ethan's arguments were made in "bad faith" and urges them to have him on, also sharing doubt that they watched the full relevant clips regarding his controversies.

During the stream, he claimed he did not know the images were depicting young girls, claiming he thought they were women with shortstack builds. He compares the characters to goblins.

looks like vaush's decision to handle his crisis management in-house is really paying off pic.twitter.com/kvFimxDvz9

— gato fumador (@KweenInYellow) February 10, 2024

In response to the horse imagery, Vaush did not deny his horse fetish, saying that he wanted to have intercourse with a woman as a horse (shown below).

Brother Ian finally standing up for the horse admirer community, too long have they been silenced snd suppressed pic.twitter.com/aUT2HkUkdO

— DestinyVaush_4ever 🌐 (@DestinyVaushCEO) February 11, 2024

Vaush's Response Video 'The Context Video'

On February 18th, 2024, Vaush posted a video to YouTube^[14] coming in at roughly an hour and 40 minutes in length responding to the controversies related to his folder leak, titled "The Context Video," garnering over 250,000 views in under 24 hours (shown below).

In the video, Vaush admits he's posted "stupid" things on his channel, especially early on and that he faults nobody for judging him poorly for them. He says he's addressing four groups of people with the video: Fans, haters, "drama vultures" and people who are "genuinely neutral" towards him.

The first controversy Vaush discusses is the viral clip where he argues that he's heard "no convincing moral argument" why CP should be illegal. He admits the clip is "pretty bad" and is from early in his career, saying it "does implicate" him not as a predator, but as a "debate bro." He explains that in the clip he was trying to make a simply understood point using shock value and an extreme example to articulate how people gladly buy products made with unethical practices but draw the line at CP possession, repeating how the argument is bad and "deliberately provocative" to a fault, claiming the argument is actually an "anti-CP" argument, but that the optics are bad.

He then responds to several specific clips in which he defends the argument in a similar manner, repeating that the argument is badly made and that it makes him look stupid. He shows a clip where heis talking to Mr. Girl in which he says Americans would go to a club for girls aged 14 to 17 if given the option, claiming that the clip is often taken out of context and that his point is that America's fetishization of young girls is bad. He then shows a clip where he criticizes Neflix's film Cuties, claiming it is often clipped out of context.

In response to a clip where he says "everyone" has masturbated to loli in the past, he claims it was just a cringe joke. He then responds to a clip where he says it is possible for adults and children to have positive sexual relationships together. He claims he's trying to explain the difference between act and rule utilitarianism in the clip, claiming he was arguing on the side of rule utilitarianism and that the action of the relationship would be immoral regardless of the outcome, positive or negative. He calls the argue "shock value nonsense."

Vaush goes on to give context to old Discord messages purportedly taken from the Destiny Discord, largely explaining that they're "pointless intellectual exercises" that use bad examples to make arguments.

Finally, Vaush discusses the folder incident. He explains that to keep his desktop clean, he keeps one folder called "to be sorted" he saves every "save as" image to before sorting, explaining that the folder has both adult content and SFW images. He claims he did not know that two of the images were loli when he saved them, saying he wouldn't have saved them if he knew that. He then talks about the horse images, claiming he's a "size queen" and likes big penises, so he saved the images.

Online Reactions

Pre-Vaush's Response

The incident inspired discourse on social media, including memes and accusations of Vaush allegedly being a pedophile. Some brought up his past controversies in connection to the folder incident in an attempt to strengthen their evidence. For example, on February 7th, 2024, X^[5] user @ConstructDandy posted a meme about Vaush's folder containing horse imagery, garnering over 800 likes in two days (shown below).

On the same day, X^[6] user @PapaUwUx posted a video edit compiling alleged Discord messages sent by Vaush in which he repeatedly talks about horse penises, relating this to the horse content in his folder, garnering over 2,200 likes in two days (shown below).

Post-Vaush's Response

Ethan Klein / Keffals

Following the H3 Podcast's episode on the incident and Vaush's response to the incident on February 10th, 2024, reactions to the incident increased. Klein began posting to his Instagram Story about the situation, criticizing defenders of Vaush.

On February 10th, leftist streamer Keffals began defending Vaush and criticizing the H3 Podcast for their coverage of the topic in a series of now-deleted X posts. In her original posts, Keffals accused Ethan Klein of "pedojacketing" Vaush, a term used to describe the act of falsely accusing someone of being a pedophile based on insubstantial evidence. Klein posted a response to Keffals on his Instagram story, questioning how people are defending Vaush (shown below). The posts were screenshotted and reposted by X^[11] user and drama commentator @bowblax that day.

Later that day, X^[12] user @Bowblax posted further archives documenting Klein's responses to other deleted Keffals posts about the situation, refuting claims that he didn't show the full context on his streams, questioning the use of the term "pedojacketing" and claiming that Vaush refused to come on stream to defend himself after his initial offering, also refusing to host Klein on his stream (shown below).

On February 11th, X^[13] user @nicholasdeorio posted a screenshot taken from Vaush's Discord server in which he explains why he rescinded the invitation, writing that he doesn't trust Klein to be genuine in the debate and calling him "snakish" in his DMs with Klein (shown below).

Search Interest

External References