Asmongold might genuinely be on a self-improvement kick—even if ‘might’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Despite living in what I’ll describe as a hazardously unclean environment, the hyper-popular streamer has experienced a mental wakeup call after Twitch banned him for some overtly racist comments about Palestinians.

Asmongold stated that he’d been “slowly devolving into the most mean-spirited, rude, nasty, callous, psychopathic version of myself”, which seems like a spark of self-realisation, but as my fellow PC Gamer writer Andy Chalk pointed out last week, he did promise on his subreddit that he’d “react to a DEI=DIE gaming video first day back to stream”.

Listen—I live in doubt that we’re going to see a genuine 180. At the very least, it’s going to take a while. But I do want to give kudos where kudos are due—Asmongold is absolutely cleaning his house.

Announced via a post on X, and a horrifying before-and-after shot, the streamer proudly displayed a kitchen that probably doesn’t smell like a landfill baking in the sun—genuinely a strong first effort. While there’s every chance he brought in people to professionally clean it, even that’s a step forward, given his internet superstardom has given him enough funding to do that once a week.

When asked if the spider in the ‘before’ image was a wolf spider, Asmongold replied: “We had a mutual agreement that he could be in the house as long as no wasps. Two f*cking wasps got in so he got evicted.” Fair enough, slackers don’t get squatter’s rights—it’s a shame we lack the technology to give spiders the power of speech, because I’d love to interview this one.

On a more serious note, Asmongold has also started actually going after racism on social media, denouncing a pretty rancid “anti-DEI” podcast for making a reprehensible comment using the ethnic slur “spear chucker”, as highlighted by Youtuber Mightykeef, who rightly states: “This isn’t a constructive comment or criticism. He’s simply being racist to be racist.”

Asmongold replies: “While it’s not one of the ‘mainstream’ racial slurs, advanced racism enjoyers use it quite regularly. Comment was made in poor taste, obviously racist.” Which naturally drew a bit of shock, considering he’d been banned for slinging around phrases like “inferior culture”, to which he adds: “Wouldn’t that make me an expert?”

In a different comment, he notes: “I’ve been on the Internet over 20 years. I know every single racial slur, dogwhistle, or derogatory term that has ever been invented for a group of people. I’m making the comment because a lot of younger guys online genuinely don’t know, it is for educational purposes.”

I want to be clear—I remain sceptical. This is someone who is on record as saying he’ll lean into the exact kind of anti-woke culture war nonsense that spawned the cartel of people in that podcast the moment his ban is lifted. Asmongold is pretty directly responsible for perpetuating the hand-wringing that gives people who use slurs like that oxygen.

But I also don’t wanna turn up my nose at him too hard. Actively calling racism out (and cleaning his sink) is definitely an improvement, and if the result of this entire debacle is that one of the most popular streamers on the platform—internet king to a fleet of young, impressionable men—brings them along on a deradicalisation journey? Well, my feelings don’t matter in the face of a net good, do they?