Paul Denino aka Ice Poseidon, is a popular live streamer that was born on September 29th 1994 in Palm Beach Florida. He is primarily known for streaming the video game RuneScape, and live streaming his life, also known as IRL streaming. Nowadays his focus lies with IRL streaming, and he was recently called the “pioneer of life streaming” by the Rolling Stone.

His streaming career started on the popular live streaming platform Twitch, but after being permanently banned for being swatted on an airplane after a supposed “viewer” of his live streams called in a hoax bomb threat, he made the switch to YouTube.

His live streams are mostly known for edgy humor and high viewer interaction.

Twitch

Ice Poseidon used to be a partnered streamer on Twitch before he was permanently banned. He became popular for his RuneScape streams in 2015. Legend has it that his online nickname “Ice Poseidon” was created with a random name generator when he was only 9 years old. After his RuneScape days he started IRL streaming (live streaming your daily life) by live streaming himself playing Pokémon Go out on the streets. In late 2016 he decided to move to California to boost his Twitch live streaming career. This coincided with the launch of the IRL section on Twitch, which allowed him to live stream without having to play games.

Banned from Twitch

After multiple prior suspensions for other unrelated incidents, Ice Poseidon was permanently banned from Twitch on April 28th 2017. His ban occurred after being swatted on an airplane in Phoenix Arizona, shortly after live streaming himself waiting for his flight to Texas to attend DreamHack. Ice Poseidon and another person travelling with him were removed from the plane by multiple police officers. The incident made national news and was shown on multiple news stations across the United States. The incident occurred after one of his viewers called in a hoax bomb threat under Ice Poseidon’s name. This wasn’t the first time a live streamer got swatted during a Twitch live stream, but it was the first time Twitch permanently banned a streamer for it.

YouTube

After his perma ban from Twitch, Ice Poseidon started live streaming on the new YouTube gaming platform. Before his Twitch ban, he only used YouTube to showcase highlights from his live streams, but he has since made it his main live streaming platform. Initially people had doubts, and thought his fan base known as the “Purple Army”, wouldn’t make the transition with him from Twitch to YouTube. Twitch after all, is the more popular live streaming platform. Proving his critics wrongs, his fans did make the transition, and he has attained higher viewer counts on his YouTube live streams than he did on Twitch.

Fan Base

His fan base, known as the “Purple Army”, is controversial to say the least, and is often described by other live streamers as “toxic” due to their political incorrectness. Most of his community is based around his Discord and Reddit community. One of the downsides of live streaming your life, and Ice Poseidon is the first to admit this, is that it is nearly impossible for him to hide anything from his community. He has to live with the fact that his viewers will go to extreme lengths to find out any and everything about him, often resulting in prank calls to public places that he is visiting.

Popularity

Ice Poseidon took the IRL live streaming section by storm, and is often referred to as the founding father of IRL live streaming. Rumor has it Twitch introduced the IRL section because of Ice. They saw the potential of his Pokémon Go live streams, and jumped on the opportunity to kind of in way, resurrect Justin.tv, the predecessor of Twitch. Using his own flimsy homemade mobile broadcasting rig, he quickly became one of the most popular live streamers in the world. His streams are filled with ‘edgy’ humor, viewer interaction (usually through text-to-speech messages), and stream sniping (viewers somehow finding out his location and showing up).