Ramsey Khalid Ismael — better known as Johnny Somali, the infamous American streamer arrested in Japan, Israel, and South Korea for his provocative behavior — has been imprisoned in South Korea.
I didn’t know that this guy kissed the Statue of Peace aka the Comfort Woman Statue in Korea for clicks. That’s pretty foul. That statue is dedicated to all of the women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese in WW2. They have one in the DMZ. The tour guide told us how it depicts women who fought their whole lives for justice for what was done to them. It’s a striking piece of art.
Enjoy prison, you clown.
And to compound what happened to them, they were shunned by society at the end of the war as if they were spoiled goods. It took 50 years or so for the public to understand the depth of what happened to them and to begin showing compassion. The statues exist in part to commemorate what happened to the women, and in part as a sign of remorse for how they were treated by their own communities afterwards.
They have one in the DMZ. The tour guide told us how it depicts women who fought their whole lives for justice for what was done to them. It’s a striking piece of art.
I looked it up and it sits facing the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, a constant reminder to Japan about what they did.
Yes. The forcing of Korean captives into Japanese soldiers’ “comfort women” is a common sore point in geopolitics between both Koreas and Japan. Japan has refused to give a real apology, and occasionally South Korea and Japan have visible clashes over the topic.
It would be really fucking rich… If they live-streamed him doing prison labor for 6 months.
I’d even pay to upgrade him to a north Korean prison labor camp
I don’t think I’ve ever watched a streamer before and would happily change that to watch this.
he’s been banned from pretty much all streaming platforms, including Twitch, Kick, Rumble, and Parti.
When you manage to get banned from both Kick and Rumble you really should be re-evaluating your life choices…
I’ve never even heard of those platforms 🤷
They’re “alt” platforms for people who feel like Twitch and YouTube are too “woke and gay” and they’re run by crypto gambling companies
I appreciate the explanation but I’m fine with being ignorant on this one. Never understood the appeal of streamers in the first place
I’m surprised Odyssey isn’t on that list then.
They’re like the difference between Patreon and OnlyFans. Patreon has stricter rules about what can be posted. So all of the people who needed to post things against Patreon’s rules ended up on OnlyFans. If you’re too extreme for Twitch, you end up on one of those alternative streaming sites. And he was too extreme even for those alt sites.
Rumble started as an alt-right streaming site, after Twitch started banning Nazis for hate speech. They got butthurt that they weren’t allowed to spew hate speech, and started their own streaming site instead.
Kick is a weird one, which basically started by recruiting established streamers. They sniped established streamers from Twitch, with the promise of better pay-per-view. They have a significantly lower user base compared to Twitch, but supposedly pay those streamers more. Aside from that, it has a lot of gambling streams. Lots of Twitch streamers tend to view Kick as a sort of morally grey area, because there is speculation that the entire site is basically a gigantic online gambling ad.
I haven’t heard a lot about Parti, but it seems to be a sort of last-ditch landing ground for people who have been banned from other platforms. Jack Doherty was one of their biggest streamers for a while, after getting banned on Kick for fighting a dude on stream. He got stream-sniped, and in response he basically sic’ed his security team on the stream sniper. They chased him down and beat him in the street, live on stream. Kick banned him, while Parti kept him on. He was banned from Parti not too long ago, though. Not sure why.
If I remember correctly Rumble was started as a “conservative streaming platform” after YouTube and Twitch start deplatforming some right-wingers for hate speech, encouraging violence, etc.
Kick is a little weirder. They came onto the scene booking big multimillion dollar exclusivity deals with a ton of established streamers, and wasn’t started explicitly as a politically motivated streaming platform. They operate entirely off of AWS, pay streamers significantly more while having fewer real viewers than Twitch, so they are quite clearly not profitable at all, and notably have a lot of gambling streams (and explicitly permit gambling streams in their terms) so there’s a lot of speculation that they’re owned by one or multiple of the big gambling platforms and it’s operated as an advertisement for online gambling.
Both platforms have developed deserved reputations of being reluctant to punish illegal and immoral behavior by streamers, and many streamers are reluctant or fully morally opposed to streaming on/supporting either platform.
One streamer my wife watches exclusively streams on twitch and his wife exclusively streams on Kick, and every time he mentions it you can tell by his change in tone that it’s something he doesn’t agree with, and can hear the distaste in his voice when he mentions that it’s on Kick, but can also tell he does it to support his wife
Parti I don’t really know but I think that might be another “conservative” one? I honestly can’t remember.
so there’s a lot of speculation that [Kick is] owned by one or multiple of the big gambling platforms and it’s operated as an advertisement for online gambling
It’s not speculation. Kick is backed by the online crypto gambling platform Stake, which you may know as the site that streamer BossmanJack loses all his money on in those viral clips.
I was going entirely off of memory so I couldn’t remember if it was confirmed or just strongly implied in publicly available information
those are apparently degenertes platform where twitch streamers go to become obscure.
Being kicked from platforms was for this particular specimen exactly the sort of vindication this user was searching for, by banning him they had acknowledged him and given him content.
Wow, I can think of quite a few more personalities and “influencers” and authors that I’d love to see go to a prison labor camp.
Benny Johnson, LibsOfTikTok, Bannon, Roger Stone, founder of the “Proud” Boys, Curtis Yarvin, Nick Fuentes…
The current US president also counts as a “personality” and “influencer”
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While I respect that everyone should have freedom of speech and expression, this guy was a complete moron:
Ismael was certain he wouldn’t be imprisoned, saying in a stream: "I know for a fact that I’m not going to go to jail. Not one day in jail. I’m going to laugh my ass off when all these motherf***ers are saying I’m going for 30 years, 20 years, five years, 10 years. I’m not even going to do one day, bro. They’ll give me a fine and say, ‘Don’t come back to Korea.’ You’re the one that’s going to look so dumb when I don’t get any jailtime or anything. Bro, I’m going to laugh like a f**king villain.”
Like, my God. “Don’t go shake those venomous snakes. They’ll bite you.” “No way, bro. They won’t even bite. Watch.”
Maybe he was getting legal advice from ChatGPT.
He did the same shit in Japan and only got deported and banned. He simply assumed Korea would be the same. Good to see Korea don’t play.
You’re absolutely right!
He needs to respect the laws of countries he visits. That comes before any expectation of “freedom of speech”. (I refer to speech specifically because a lot of Americans seem to act like their constitution is the gold standard that the entire world should adhere to, but not everyone agrees)
America itself doesn’t even adhere to it.
This is very true. I’ve got business past and present in many countries, and the US is by far the one we have to be the most careful to cover ourselves when dealing with.
What they’ve done is move all the stuff that a lot of countries’ governments would handle impartially through regulation or legislation, made them private civil matters, and called it “Freedom”. This incentivises people to file suits for anything they can think of, and those on the receiving end can end up bankrupted even when the courts rule in their favour.
Especially when it comes to hate speech and inciting violence, etc. Even America has restraints on inciting violence, but other countries definitely restrict things like hate speech, while the conservatives in America just go BUCK WILD with the hate speech and then have meltdowns when private platforms boot them for violating the TOS and they cry about their “free speech” and how “conservative speech” is being restricted, LOL.
It’s weird how conservative speech always needs to involve hate as its core tenet. These assholes are never kicked from these platforms because they were discussing tax policy or deregulating big business.
If he had bothered to read his passport it says plainly that you are subject to all local laws, and that their penalties are probably worse, but the US doesn’t care.
I mean, I’m not going to go anywhere foreign and deliberately violate their laws.
He’s obviously a sociopath.
Kudos to South Korea for doing what Japan wouldn’t. Maybe that’s what happens when the Japanese “justice” system, based on confession instead of evidence, meets a sociopath that lies faster than he blinks.
Japan could have put him in prison without trial until he confessed. They chose not to prosecute, presumably because they didn’t want him in the country for even longer.
Can any South Koreans with experience of ‘prison with labor’ weigh in? What can he expect to experience in there? How do you think he’ll come out of it? Will he have learned his lesson?
Not South Korean, I was stationed there for a bit and my flatmate was a Korean who went to prison for 14 days or so for some minor infraction.
He came back a bit traumatized by the ordeal. From what he described he could only sit on the ground. He’d wake up, go somewhere, and just sit all day. I think he was fed while sitting too somehow? At the end of the day he went back to bed and repeat it all again when he woke up.
He swore he’d change his ways and not break the law anymore so maybe it worked?
How likely is he to run into Koreans very upset with what he did?
clavicular is up there too.
Never heard of this guy. But let me see if I have the basic jist of the story just from context of the headline, and that photo.
I’m going to guess he’s some 19 year old, who feels he owns the world. He feels he’s the main character, and totally untouchable.
So he goes off to these foreign countries, acts like an ass, and now he’s shocked to find out that other countries ALSO have rules, and laws, and also think he’s an asshole breaking their laws.
So basically this story’s TLDR, if I have everything right is basically:
FAFO
Way to find out that being the hero of your own story doesn’t give you plot armor.
Or maybe if quantum immortality is real, he’s off in his own universe where it worked out for him while the rest of us take the “fucker’s getting what he deserved” branch.
Having read half-ish of his wikipedia article, the only thing I’ll correct you on is his age, 25, otherwise that’s on point.
Even worse, jeez.
hes desperate for clout, thats why the grift, but theres already too much competition out there.
I vaguely remember seeing this when it came up earlier, and my impression was that the guy basically ran around doing offensive things and then making money by streaming video of it, so there’s maybe something of a broader misincentives issue.
I mean, we probably wouldn’t be talking about him right now if it didn’t work in terms of getting eyeball time.
Finally a good news story.
This won’t shut him up. He’ll be back doing stupid shit as long as enough people watch him do it.
Six months hard labor in a country where, when his warrant was put out, more or less engaged in a nation wide manhunt to get the fucker who gave a lap dance to a statue of a child that was constructed to remember the systematic rapes the imperial japanese military commit.
I sincerely doubt he has the kind of mental or physical fortitude required to come out of that unchanged. Do I think he will be a better person for it? No. This is punitive, not rehabilitative. But I sincerely doubt he will fuck around to anywhere near this degree ever again.
Probably shift more towards trying to pull an ishowspeed and talk about how he has changed and is nothing like he used to be and blah blah blah give him money.
Can we get a live stream of him doing hard labor? That would be amazing!
That would get clicks and drive some real revenue for sure 😁
Donated sexual abuse and human trafficking victims
engaged in a nation wide manhunt to get the fucker who gave a lap dance to a statue […]
That seems extreme.
[…] of a child […]
oof
[…] that was constructed to remember the systematic rapes the imperial japanese military commit.
damn it man
This is a person who fairly regularly gets punched out on stream. I genuinely think he doesn’t have the mental capacity to change from this 6 month sentence, possibly even before he started getting punched out.
He’s the kind of asshole that will come out of it saying something stupid like, “It was nothing! I ran the place!” He’ll just roll it into his career, move on to another platform, and continue to be a big piece of shit.
US Congress, or bust! 😶🤢🤦🏼♂️
I am surprised it’s only 6 months.
He is a us citizen at a time when the us is aggressively fucking over all its allies. His streamer name being “Somali” makes him an unlikely flashpoint, but 6 months means he can be ammunition for the 2026 elections without anyone actually feeling the need to do anything because he’ll be out around the time votes are being tallied.
So Korea gets to make an example without being made an example.
I’ve never heard of this person before but he sounds like a trash bag.
Not exactly. Trash bags are useful
Fact. Should’ve been “bag of trash”. 🤌🏼
Uplifting news
There’s some people that the planet just doesn’t really need
