Influencer Abby Rao says Twitch caused 'a rift' in her relationship her ex and YouTube star RiceGum
- Abby Rao is a content creator and co-founder of the Clubhouse, a new TikTok collab house in Beverly Hills.
- RiceGum, whose given name is Bryan Le, is a YouTube and Twitch personality who originally made his name online through diss tracks, roasts, feuds, and "edgy" humor.
- Le and Rao's yearlong relationship was featured heavily on the RiceGum and FamilyGum YouTube channels, until Le's behavior on Twitch drove a wedge between the two.
- Since their breakup in mid-November, Rao says she has been living with daily online harassment by users who appear to be RiceGum fans.
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Abby Rao — the popular Instagram model and TikToker — is ready to put her painful public breakup behind her. But that's easier said than done, when your ex is Bryan Le: the embattled YouTube and Twitch personality known online as RiceGum. Six months after their split, Rao says she's still getting spammed with comments and messages from Le's hardcore fans on a daily basis. Their burn of choice? "Rice made you." They've even got a hashtag going (#RiceMadeAbby) to underscore the point.
"Imagine talking shit to the guy that made u famous," one commenter wrote under one of Rao's recent bikini pics.
"Stop biting the hand that fed you," another chimed in.
The kind of online hate Rao is receiving will sound familiar to those who recall the blood-letting YouTuber Alissa Violet endured following her messy breakups with Jake Paul and FaZe Banks, or the relentless accusations of clout-chasing and gold-digging Corinna Kopf dealt with during and after her romance with fellow gamer Turner "Tfue" Tenney.
Until now, Rao has remained relatively silent on this harassment, and how it's impacted her life and career. With more than a million followers on TikTok and almost two million on Instagram, it's worth noting that Rao is now an influential creator in her own right. Recently, she co-founded the Clubhouse Beverly Hills, a new TikTok collab house, with the help of Hype House veteran Daisy Keech and social media stuntwoman Kinsey Wolanski. And lately, she's been spending more and more time in the studio, working on a foray into music.
But this week, Rao hit a breaking point. And in a confessional uploaded to YouTube on Monday, she finally addressed the hate head-on.
"So I want to start off by saying that I don't even wanna be filming this video really," Rao opened the clip. "I am sad that this is the way that I am starting my channel...It's kind of just like, an obligation to myself to respond to, kind of, just all of the hate that I'm getting right now, mainly from my ex's fans."
RiceGum debuted the pair's relationship in a YouTube video on January 11. According to Rao, she and Le dated for "over a year," and "almost immediately" started living together in the Clout House. Le is now living in an apartment, having moved out of the $12 million Hollywood Hills home when FaZe Banks (and the rest of FaZe Clan) relocated.
"It's kind of a downgrade, but look, this is what I'm working with," Le said in a tour of his new digs.
Over the course of their relationship, Rao appeared in a number of Le's vlogs and live streams — an offer he extended and she accepted in an effort to be supportive. Soon, pranking and challenging Rao became a mainstay source of comedy on Le's YouTube channel, as well as the "FamilyGum" channel he created to capitalize on the internet's love of creator couples. Memorably, Rao allowed Le to vlog her breast augmentation last year. And once, she even agreed to get an impromptu tattoo in Le's honor for a video.
Rao told Insider that she was never compensated for any of those appearances, and never asked to be.
Contrary to rumors circulating amongst RiceGum fans, Le did not, as a enraged commenter recently put it on Instagram, "pay for [Rao's] boob job" or "pave the way" for her career, according to Rao. Rao has repeatedly acknowledged that she "learned so much" from watching Le work. But, in many ways, Rao's career was sidelined during her relationship with Le.
"I think I just loved him so much that I ended up putting myself second," Rao reflected. "I ignored myself for a really long time. And now, that's over. And I'm going to just focus on myself and do what I know that I'm meant to do in life.
"I'm glad it happened," she continued. "Everything happens for a reason. But I think that it was definitely — I definitely lost myself focusing on another person."
According to Rao, the real sticking point in the relationship wasn't money, clout, or competing ambitions. It was Twitch. And, more specifically, built-up "resentment" between Rao and Le over his behavior on the platform, where he regularly plays Fortnite. Earlier this month, Le was banned from Twitch following incidents that, by his own admission, violated community guidelines.
"A few months into our relationship, he started doing these live streams with girls and just the conversations, and the narrative of the content was just not something I was comfortable with," Rao said. "And so it caused a rift in our relationship. And he took that as me not supporting him...I just feel like what he really wanted to do was not something that I aligned with, like, morally."
On Youtube, examples of Le's "edgy" live streams with women are still floating around. In one, Le asks two women to kiss and twerk on camera for his viewers.
"Like, he has so much talent," Rao said of Le. "To be live and to entertain that many people and keep a show going alive is something that's really hard to do. And I just felt like his talent could have been put to so much better use and I just felt like, why did his content have to be disrespectful towards me to be comedy?"
Eventually, Rao stopped pushing the issue, deciding instead to take a step back from the relationship and let Le "do his thing."
"But I do wish him the best, and I wish that he would see the good he could do," she added. "And I think he still has time to turn that around. Like, I hope he does. I really hope he does. I really do want what's best for him."
Le did not immediately respond for comment.
- Read more:
- A power struggle and trademark dispute are rocking TikTok's Hype House as the influencer collective finds fame and fortune
- 'The truth about the Hype House': A former member of the blockbuster TikTok crew is speaking out about problems she saw while living there