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Hans Eli Sebastian Fors (born 16 December 1990), known by the pseudonym Forsen, is a Swedish Twitch streamer who initially gained popularity for having competed in StarCraft II, but is best known for competing in Hearthstone and for streaming a variety of popular games. He is also known for his rowdy fanbase, who call themselves "Forsen Boys" or "Forsen Bajs" and have had a hand in popularizing a number of Internet memes. Since December 2018, Forsen has had over one million followers on Twitch, and as of June 2024, has more than 1.7 million followers.

Esports career

StarCraft II

In 2011, Forsen won first place in the E-Sport SM May Qualifier and was the runner-up in the E-Sport SM October Qualifier, earning a total of 3,500 Swedish krona ($382.50) and qualifying for the Swedish National Championships in StarCraft II. In 2012, Forsen garnered attention by advancing to the final group stage of the 2012 DreamHack Stockholm StarCraft II tournament.

Hearthstone

In Hearthstone, Forsen won his first tournament in the May 2015 HTC Invitational, and won a Play it Cool streaming marathon in October 2015, achieving the highest rank among the competitors after 24 hours of play. In 2015, Forsen was one of the top four Hearthstone streamers, streaming to up to 45,000 viewers on his live stream on Twitch. He was once known as one of the game's most skilled experts at the Miracle Rogue deck, having piloted it to achieve the highest rank in the game's ladder system on both the North American and European servers in June 2014. In 2017, after spending much of his Hearthstone career as a free agent, Forsen signed with American esports organization Cloud9 as a streamer.

Streaming career

As of January 2023, Forsen had been a livestreamer on Twitch for over a decade. His stream has been lauded as "genuinely... fun and entertaining" for its tightly knit community and inside jokes, as well as for Forsen's tendency to stream "Lidl" games, a term coined by Forsen to describe games of low production value.

In February 2018, Forsen captained his four-player team to first place in a $100,000 Twitch Rivals PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) Invitational tournament, winning $13,600. The following month, he also participated in the Darwin Project Invitational tournament, taking first place and winning US$20,000. In December 2018, he achieved a personal all-time high viewer count of 80,860.

In late 2020, Forsen began a friendly rivalry with fellow streamer xQc, the pair competing to achieve the fastest time in a speedrun of Minecraft. As of October 2023, Forsen has a personal best of 15:28, 70 seconds faster than xQc's best time.

On 26 November 2020, Forsen received an indefinite suspension from Twitch after he accidentally showed a GIF sent to him by a viewer displaying a sexually explicit interaction between a woman and a horse on stream. He was unbanned after a month.

On 20 April 2023, Forsen was banned again from Twitch. No immediate reason was apparent, nor was the duration known, however, on 24 April he revealed that it was due to watching a "dubious ASMR youtube video" on stream, and that the ban would last for one week.

Community

Forsen's stream community, known as the "Forsen Boys" or "Forsen Bajs", has gained notoriety of its own through its practice of stream sniping, especially in games like PUBG. Stream snipers in Forsen's community are noted for locating Forsen in-game and playing loud music and audio through voice chat, and represent a point of appeal for Forsen's audience. In 2018, the Darwin Project Invitational tournament was disrupted by the infiltration of a match lobby by Samme1g, a stream sniper in Forsen's community.

The community is also known for its practice of spamming, and its resulting popularization of internet memes and Twitch emotes. The spread of notable emotes such as "monkaS" and "PepeHands" (images of Pepe the Frog) have been attributed to Forsen's community on Reddit. Their references to Ugandan action-comedy film Who Killed Captain Alex? have also helped popularise the Ugandan Knuckles meme. In January 2018, a warped image of Fors' face ("forsenE") became the most-used emote on Twitch worldwide.

Forsen's moderation of the community has been described as "permissive" and "laissez-faire", and in 2015, he distanced himself from their actions and the "Forsen Boys" label. That year, streamer Katy Coe became the target of sexual harassment from members of Forsen's community, culminating in Forsen banning links to her channel after Coe posted to Reddit denouncing the behavior. In 2017, Forsen received a 24-hour ban from Twitch after members of his community spammed the n-word in the 2017 Awesome Games Done Quick chat room.

Awards and nominations

References

1. ^ "Sebastian Fors". Hitta.se (in Swedish). Retrieved 18 March 2022.
2. Anglerfjord, Sofie (9 October 2020). "Guide: Så blir du en streamer på Twitch – allt du behöver veta". M3.se (in Swedish). Retrieved 9 April 2021.
3. ^ Alexander, Julia (29 January 2018). "How Twitch's most popular emote, forsenE, took over". Polygon. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
4. ^ Grayson, Nathan (9 February 2018). "Twitch's New Policies Are Worrying Some Provocative Streamers". Kotaku. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
5. "forsen - Streamer Overview & Stats". TwitchTracker. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
6. "Forsen Starcraft 2 Profile". GosuGamers. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
7. "Hearthstone News: Forsen grabs first tournament win in HTC Invitational". GosuGamers. 18 May 2015. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
8. Leslie, Callum (19 October 2015). "Forsen wins in yet another controversial Play it Cool marathon finish". Dot Esports. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
9. ^ Leslie, Callum (11 February 2015). "Meet the Forsen Army, the vanguard of Twitch's dark side". Dot Esports. Retrieved 22 January 2022.
10. Clark, Tim (9 October 2015). "Forsen: "I haven't been happy playing Hearthstone in a long time"". PC Gamer. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
11. PCGamer (3 July 2014). "Hearthstone Help: Six of the best streamers to learn from". PC Gamer. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
12. ^ Sapho (31 March 2017). "Legendary Hearthstone Player Joins Cloud9". DBLTAP. Archived from the original on 24 January 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
13. Fisher, Carver (January 15, 2023). "AI Twitch stream perfectly emulates Forsen's speech and likeness while answering chat". Dexerto. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
14. de Wit, Jan; van der Kraan, Alicia; Theeuwes, Joep (2020). "Live Streams on Twitch Help Viewers Cope With Difficult Periods in Life". Frontiers in Psychology. 11: 586975. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.586975. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 7714943. PMID 33329243.
15. Grayson, Nathan (1 March 2018). "Star-Studded Tournament Can't Transcend PUBG's Esports Problem". Kotaku. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
16. "Forsen triumphs at Twitch Rivals". PUBG.ac. 2 March 2018. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
17. "Darwin Project в Twitter: "After taking first place in the last ..." Twitter (in Bulgarian). Retrieved 4 November 2021.
18. "forsen - Twitch statistics, analysis and predictions - SullyGnome". Twinge. Twinge.tv.
19. Galloway, Ryan (23 February 2021). "XQc and Forsen's Minecraft rivalry continues as xQc breaks record". Dot Esports. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
20. Mukherjee, Shreyan (21 October 2023). ""You have to be willing to kill your stream" - Forsen explains why xQc can't beat his new Minecraft speedrun record". Sportskeeda. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
21. Samples, Rachel (26 December 2020). "Forsen's Twitch channel reinstated after month-long ban". Dot Esports. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
22. "Twitch Has Banned Forsen". Game Rant. 20 April 2023. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
23. Horetski, Dylan (24 April 2023). "Forsen reveals Twitch ban was for watching "dubious" AI VTuber content". Dexerto. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
24. Grayson, Nathan (7 September 2017). "Battlegrounds Streamer's Audience Loves His Loud, Obnoxious Stream Snipers". Kotaku. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
25. Grayson, Nathan (14 March 2018). "Forsen Can't Get Away From Stream Snipers, Even In Private Tournaments". Kotaku. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
26. Alexander, Julia (14 May 2018). "A guide to understanding Twitch emotes". Polygon. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
27. Grayson, Nathan; Myers, Maddy (24 January 2018). "Racist Jokes Keep Showing Up In Overwatch League Broadcasts". Kotaku. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
28. Miceli, Max (22 February 2022). "All nominees for QTCinderella's Streamer Awards". Dot Esports. Gamurs.

External links

• Forsen on Twitch
• Forsen on Twitter

• Living people
• Hearthstone players
• Swedish esports players
• StarCraft players
• 1990 births
• Swedish Twitch (service) streamers
• Swedish expatriates in Spain
• People from Umeå