Man dies live-streaming on Australian platform Kick

Profile image of Raphael Graven

Authorities are investigating the death of Jean Pormanove, an online streaming identity regularly seen in videos being beaten and humiliated.

French shock streaming identity Raphael Graven, who went by the name Jean Pormanove online, has died during a livestream. His body was found by authorities in a rented property in Contes, north of Nice.

An investigation has been launched into his death, with Graven known for appearing in videos where he was physically assaulted or humiliated by co-streamers as viewers watched the activity take place live.

The platform Graven was known to use was Kick, a competitor to the Amazon-owned Twitch. It is a live-streaming video platform registered in Australia that shares revenue with its content creators. The co-founders of Kick are Australian billionaires Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven, alongside Tyler Faraz Niknam – a streaming personality better known as Trainwreckstv.

In a post to X, formerly known as Twitter, Kick Français expressed sadness and extended condolences to Graven’s family, friends, and the community. It has banned all of the co-streamers that participated in the livestream pending the ongoing investigation. 

We are committed to fully cooperating with the authorities in this process” Kick Français posted. “Our priority is to protect creators and ensure a safer environment on Kick.”

Kick Français is undertaking a review of its French-language content.

The streaming platform cannot claim ignorance of the activity taking place on the site. As X user @KLRski has reported, the Kick Français had promoted Graven’s livestreams in its X feed:

French media has also shown excerpts of the videos where Graven is seen on camera suffering blows, insults, and strangulation. In one video he is seen being shot at with a paintball gun.

There remain questions as to how real the videos are, with two of the co-streamers seen abusing Graven claiming that all of the scenes are staged and that they followed a script.

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