The story is frightening. For several months, on the Australian streaming platform Kick, a 46 -year -old man, Raphaël Graven, known as “Jean Pormanove” or “JP”, suffered various violence and humiliations. These were provided by two streamers around him, Naruto (or Narutovia) and Safine, while being broadcast live on their channel named Lokal, followed by thousands of Internet users.
Jean Pormanove died during one of these broadcasts, live on Kick, on the night of August 17 to 18, in Contes (Alpes-Maritimes). Because of these ill -treatment? Opened by the Nice prosecutor’s office and entrusted to the Nice judicial police, an investigation will say it. An autopsy of the body of the streamer is to be carried out Thursday, August 21 to determine the causes of his death.
Nicknamed “Coudoux”, another man, disabled and under curatorship, has also suffered abuse. As part of a first investigation opened at the beginning of 2025, both said they were consenting and these violence were registered according to them “In staging to make the buzz to earn money”indicates the Nice prosecutor’s office. A position recalled on August 19 by the lawyer of Naruto, who evacuated the “Responsibility (of his client) in this death”.
The four members of the Lokal collective aforementioned and involved in this case have several tens or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers on video platforms or social networks (Kick, YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, etc.). The broadcast on Kick of these torture sessions met with great success: some 15,000 spectators each evening. Some spectators made donations to pay them and encourage the pursuit of these live; Most of them insulted JP and Coudoux.
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Craft violence and thousands of views
In December 2024, an article from Mediapart had detailed this business of “lol” mistreatment. Like many, I only discovered this sordid drama until August 18, when the death of Raphaël Graven was announced. Indifference or chance: the best and the worst neighbor on the Internet, but our filter bubbles – empathy, disinterest, algorithms, etc. – expose us or protect us from many content. That others find and visualize easily.
Ironically: it is easily believed in conspirators who are bent on inventing pedo-satanists reigning over the world, but we never imagine what our landing neighbors can do. In this case, these mistreatment sessions are crimes of landing neighbors, a tinkered, craft, ugly thing, but generating a lot of audience and cash.
(TW physical and psychological violence)
“Battle of Cotoreps”: on the Kick platform, humiliations and live violence for audience boxes
Video survey to be seen in full on Mediapart 👉 https://t.co/pe8os8plza pic.twitter.com/aqjt2kygky– Mediapart (@Mediapart) December 15, 2024
We should collectively be ashamed of having known nothing. And, for some, not to have reacted or, worse, to have encouraged this mistreatment for long months. The failures are multiple. The Australian platform Kick (of which I did not know everything), guilty of letting such sessions differ; Worse, to relay them on his account and on his French social networks. The public authorities, however seized yet after the article of Mediapart: two police custody, the Arch out of topic.
But this atrocious news item especially reveals our own failures. Not only those of parents ignoring what their adolescents look at, but more broadly our fatalistic indifference in the face of such drifts.
Yet this daily humiliation made you laugh at the time lol pic.twitter.com/uhmmvsosos
– Deadness (@Dephaseur) August 20, 2025
Abstract crowd, real violence
In this case, the fascination for violence is largely facilitated by anonymity, social networks and the abstraction of digital. However, looking at two men – the one is disabled and the other visibly under control – being tortured is not neutral. Even if the Internet creates a form of distance, abstraction, each spectator is there to see real suffering and pay off.
There is nothing new there, but disiniential digital facilitates the act of cruel voyeurism and especially multiplies the curious. The crowd in what is most unhealthy. We know the crowd that lynches, we sometimes forget the one who looks, silently, carefully, greedily, a fight, a torture, an execution. This crowd still exists nowadays and it is therefore enough for one or two clicks to reappear with the pain of others (let us remember the “lol” videos where we showed children breaking their face). However, this crowd does not exist, it is a community that is created and disappears according to a video, a lively.
Collective faced and criminal tsunami
The initial digital promise, that of a network each connecting to all knowledge, has lead in the wing. It has turned into a receptacle of our shameful impulses (pornography, money, drugs, etc.) and is increasingly embodied a threat: various scams, extreme violence, prostitution … I have frequently learned that pedocriminals paid for rapes and other in line, in Asia or elsewhere. These unspeakable but silent crimes take place before our eyes and we refuse to see them.
In the case that occupies us, mobilization and indignation were within clicks. It was enough to relay an article and shout strong enough in the chamber of social networks so that it ceases. No one or almost did it.
People with disabilities indifferent to us
Added to this is an aggravating circumstance. One of the two tortured is disabled. He occupies the place here – we dare to say the fate – reserved for people with disabilities in our society. Most often invisible, visible when they are abused. We remember “dwarf throws”. We are here faced with additional violence.
The disabled person is an ideal victim. Little able to defend herself, she has sometimes unusual reactions (therefore interesting, if not funny) and, to exist, to make a place in the sun, to acquire the notoriety that will erase her handicap, she accepts blows and humiliations. This collective bankruptcy painfully questions our society: not very welcoming (it is an understatement) towards the disabled, indifferent to their sufferings.
And our humanity stretches a little more
This news item says a lot about the world in which we live without really wanting to. The development of the influencer economy and others is reflected in an increasing escalation to exist, that is to say, obtain views, clicks, money.
The digital world goes too quickly to be effectively regulated and crime is very quickly invited into each new breach. The helplessness of politicians is manifest here. Barely have they had time to understand a problem and attack it that another has arisen. Our justice is defaulting: the more or less active complicity of some 15,000 daily spectators will remain unpunished. Just like our silence which is a collective bankruptcy.
Can we hope for a start? I fear that we first look for scapegoats (the state …) or that we quickly move on to something else. In other words, Raphaël Graven alias Jean Pormanove is undoubtedly dead for nothing. His persecutors probably do not understand what is happening to them, convinced to make people laugh, to bring a community to life, without imagining being executioners.
We are in August 2025 and the humanity which unites us crumbles a little more.
