What is this strange phenomenon?

• Rainer “Drachenlord” Winkler spoke about many different topics at the beginning of his career. He did that with a strong accent, often hurtfully and carelessly. A group of people started to openly make fun of him on the net and get outraged.
• Over the years, a battle developed between Dragonlord and his “haters.” People went to his home and harassed him on the spot. Conflicts, charges, and court rulings ensued. The haters see Dragonlord as a bad person. Some wish him prison, others even death. They themselves are criticized for having long since lost all sense of proportion.
• The “Dragonlord” case has long since ceased to be a minor YouTube phenomenon. Experts see it as a phenomenon of our Internet age. Sascha Lobo addressed the “Dragonlord” case as a cultural phenomenon in a Spiegel column in 2021. He sees the case as proof that the German legal system is too outdated to understand conflicts on the Internet.

YouTube deletes Dragonlord’s accounts apparently because of “ban evasion”

Why are his enemies cheering now? YouTube has deleted the Dragon Lord’s channels. The reason is apparently a violation of the platform’s guidelines. Exact details are not officially known.

One suspects it could be a penalty for “circumventing a content block”, a so-called “ban evasion”:

• Winkler had received a warning for a copyright violation, which usually results in a mandatory ban.
• The Dragonlord was then active on another YouTube channel after all. That’s against the rules.
• It’s quite possible that YouTube considered the context of the violation and decided to get rid of the permanent source of conflict Dragonlord.

In any case, the haters on the net are rejoicing and declaring the Dragonlord “defeated.”

Without the YouTube channel, they say, he has lost his main source of income and thus no more resources. Some also seem to want to pin the ban on themselves as a personal achievement: There are grumblings that they “reported” the channel into the ban.

This alludes to the idea that platforms like YouTube and Twitch will automatically ban any channel if only enough people file a report. However, platforms deny that the reporting algorithm can be abused in this way.

“I’m far from defeated because of it!”

How does Winkler see it himself? He reacts surprisingly relaxed. In two videos on TikTok, Drachenlord explains in front of a green screen that he is not “defeated” at all – Winkler considers the ban on YouTube to be a minor problem that can soon be resolved. So far, he has always been able to get his channel back. It’s been that way for years.

First of all, yes, my YouTube account has been deleted. No, I’m not worried because it’s still like that it’s edited […] I’m waiting for YouTube to reply, it may take a while. I get billions of messages on Whatsapp: Höhöhö defeated! – Do I look like I’m worried?

Even if the YouTube account is gone, I’m still not defeated. First of all, I still have more than 200,000 followers here on TikTok, and even if I don’t, I’ll have to rework my OnlyFans a bit.

He made a “small mistake” that is now being checked and then he will continue on YouTube.

People on the Internet want to abuse next reporting system – See Dragonlord like an NPC

How does this continue? Apparently, unfortunately, the same as all the time. Calls are immediately circulating on Twitter to abuse TikTok’s reporting system so that the Dragonlord loses his channel there as well.

That’s what’s behind it: What is striking is that Winkler is now playing exactly the role that the “haters” want him to play. You can see this in the way the vocabulary is converging. Where haters cheer that he is “defeated”, like an NPC in a video game, he declares himself “far from defeated”.

The use of “defeated” around the Dragon Lord even originated with a cry out Winkler himself. In the early days of the entire case, he yelled in one of his live streams, “You will never defeat me!” Along with a shirt that read “Undefeated Forever,” this gave rise to the Haters’ desire to actually defeat the Dragon Lord.

It was already noticeable in previous incidents that Haters see in the Dragon Lord a kind of fictionalized character, as in a television show:

• Thus, some spoke of the last court hearing as a “- Season finale.”
• Now you read that people were looking forward to “The TikTok – Season .”

In fact, there is not even a popular case known from the USA where a content creator is harassed and demonized for such a long time as Winkler is in Germany.