While streamers often focus on playing games or chatting with their audiences, some content creators like to livestream while they’re out in the real world. A streamer might broadcast their travels abroad or offer their unfiltered point of view of a convention. But the trend of in-real-life livestreaming has at times veered toward more unsavory actions and even outright crimes. One 21-year-old creator, Jack Doherty, attracted a firestorm of controversy on Saturday after crashing his expensive sports car while streaming and texting, all on a Kick livestream. After the accident, Doherty continued the broadcast, showing his audience the aftermath live.
Kick has long been a controversial streaming service, launching off the promise of free speech for content creators — as well as encouraging lucrative gambling streams. The platform aims to compete with the Amazon-backed Twitch, offering generous profit-sharing ratios and a relaxed moderation policy.
Those policies have led to Kick being submerged in constant controversy, with streamers recording harassment, disruption, and other unethical scenarios on the platform. While many of these incidents have sparked public outrage, few have gained as much attention as Jack Doherty’s crash. During the weekend livestream, Doherty was driving a sports car and frequently looking at his phone to read the chat. While multitasking, he lost control of his McLaren and hit a guardrail. Doherty subsequently filmed himself getting out of the car and surveying the damage. His passenger, a cameraman, is visibly bleeding in the footage. Doherty escaped unscathed, he said, and no one else was involved in the accident.
In response, Kick permanently banned Doherty, with a spokesperson telling NBC that the platform “does not condone illegal activity, which is why we swiftly took action to ban this creator from the platform.” Doherty, who has been an online influencer since he was a child, has a well-documented past of controversies on both YouTube and Kick. He is currently being sued for assault and battery regarding an alleged altercation at a party that involved his bodyguard.
Kick is already in hot water with the public due to a recent altercation at TwitchCon, where several Kick broadcasters were filmed harassing or assaulting Twitch streamers. Kick CEO Ed Craven took to X to share that Kick had suspended multiple accounts for violating Kick’s in-real-life streaming policies, writing: “The actions of a few individuals don’t reflect the broader platform, and multiple accounts have been suspended for violating our IRL streaming policies.”
