Destiny (Streamer)

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About

Destiny is the handle of former professional Starcraft 2 competitor, online personality, content creator, and Twitch streamer Steven Kenneth Bonnell II. Destiny has become well known for political and philosophical online debates, collaborating with other streamers and debaters, and talking about trending political content involving other streamers.

Online History

Destiny began his online career as a professional Starcraft 2 player. He initially began his streaming in January of 2011 on Justin.tv. He would later transition to Twitch in that same year to continue his streaming.

Destiny is notable for his political debates against far-right personalities. He would gain a significant boost in popularity as he debated with YouTuber JonTron regarding politics on his channel, where JonTron made controversial remarks on black crime statistics. His provocative and combative approach in these debates would often lead to suspensions on Twitch and Twitter. In the "Lefty Arc" (noted by his audience), Destiny would begin to debate with left-wing creators, such as Vaush and Hasanabi, to balance out his debates after years of debating right-wing creators. These debates, and other related drama, would cause a rift in relations with other streamers^[3] (examples shown below).

Twitch Plays Pokemon

On February 23rd, 2014, or Day 11 of Twitch Plays Pokemon, Destiny became a subject of controversy as his community brigaded Twitch chat and managed to not only capture Zapdos with the recently acquired Masterball, but also release Pokemon in-game, some which were held dearly by the gameplay community. This day would be known as "Bloody Sunday."^[1]^[2] In response to Destiny's actions, Destiny has claimed that people attempted to hack his accounts, spam report his account to Twitch, online slander, and sent unsolicited DMs.

Twitch De-partnership

On September 11th, 2020, Twitch announced that the streaming service will no longer partner with Destiny because of "encouragement of violence." This was due to comments made by Destiny regarding the Kenosha shooting, remarking that the rioting needs to stop and, "if that means white redneck f**king militia dudes out there mowing down dipsh*t protesters that think they can torch buildings at 10 pm, then at this point they have my f**king blessing."^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] Despite un-partnering with Twitch, Destiny continues to stream on Twitch, but has focused more on YouTube^[10] since the incident.

Jesse Lee Peterson Debate

On January 16th, 2019, Destiny appeared on conservative talk-show host Jesse Lee Peterson's show. He was interviewed by Peterson regarding culture, politics, and philosophy. This exchange would garner reactions from other large streamers such as xQc, Asmondgold, Sodapoppin and Pokelawls. This would also generate inside jokes such as JLP's quote "amazin'", "BETA", and "Do you love black people?" in Destiny's community.

Personal Life

Destiny attended the the University of Nebraska, majoring in music until dropping out in 2010.^[3] Destiny often mentioned his old jobs, mostly his carpet cleaning job, as a means of making ends meet. Destiny politically identifies as a social democrat.