PUBG participants reveal that toxic YouTuber normalised cyberbullying, expletives

Madan, also known as PUBG Madan, is a well-known name in Tamil online gaming community as he has close to 9 lakh followers for his two accounts in YouTube. He was made more popular by a YouTube channel which recently presented him an award. 

While live-streaming himself playing PUBG on YouTube, Madan hurled expletives and sexually explicit comments against his opponents, which were encouraged by his followers, most of whom were below 18. They frequently cheered him with digital money transactions every time he abused his opponents, other gamers said. 

“A new culture of hero worshipping in online games have emerged. Gathering and playing games is accepted but hero-worshipping leads to cyber bullying. PUBG Madan was involved in cyber bullying and normalised it,” said Vinod Kumar Arumugan, a city-based cyber expert. “Madan’s fans have enjoyed cyber bullying and have encouraged him by sending him money whenever he was involved in bullying. The issue will stop with Madan but another similar player like him will come up on fans’ insistence if Madan is not available and cyber bullying will continue. A collective approach involving parents, teachers, students and police should be undertaken and awareness should be spread to prevent cyber bullying in the future,” he added. 

Psychiatrists said that children can easily become victims of cyber bullying and parents should be aware of what their children watch online. “They should also educate their kids about dangers of online games, warn them against revealing names, personal identity and bank details,” said Dr Vasanth Ranganathan, Consultant Psychiatrist, Fortis Hospital, Chennai. 

Jeeva, an online streamer from Erode, who recently brought all necessary gadgets to perform live streaming in YouTube, said that his parents after seeing news about Madan asked him to stop streaming. 

Agog with the abusive and filthy language adopted by PUBG gamer Madan who has been eluding arrest, the Madras High Court deferred hearing his anticipatory bail plea to Friday after directing his counsel to fully go through the videos before seeking anticipatory bail. 

Justice M Dhandapani before whom the anticipatory bail plea came up made the observation after watching the video for a few minutes at the behest of the prosecution which stoutly argued against grant of anticipatory bail to the engineering graduate. 

Expressing strong resentment over the language used in the video, the court asked the counsel appearing for Madan as to whether he had seen the video in full before taking up the case. But with the counsel claiming that he had seen only part of it, Justice Dhandapani directed the counsel to watch the full video before placing his arguments in support of his client. The court then posted the plea to Friday for further hearing. 

While the counsel appearing for Madan contended that competition among such youtubers has resulted in a case being foisted against the former, the prosecution submitted that despite the ban on PUBG Madan continued to exploit the forum targeting students and youth through language abusing women and body shaming them. 

It also noted that a case was registered against the PUBG gamer on five different sections of IPC, Information Technology Act and Women Representation Act based on receipt of over 100 complaints.