NYPD officers detain online influencer after giveaway devolves into chaos.
NYPD officers detain online influencer after giveaway devolves into chaos.
Kai Cenat, 21, a streamer, had announced the event to his several million followers and crowds surged beyond control
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Police in New York City detained an internet personality after his supposed video game console giveaway drew a crowd to Manhattan’s Union Square which devolved into chaos Friday.
Police were mulling possible criminal charges such as inciting a riot, Jeffrey Maddrey, the NYPD chief of department, said in the evening.
Aerial TV news footage Friday showed a surging, tightly packed crowd climbing on vehicles, hurling chairs, throwing punches and scaling structures in the park.
Shouting teenagers swung objects at car windows, threw paint cans and set off fire extinguishers.
Livestreaming on Twitch from a vehicle as the event gathered steam, Cenat displayed gift cards he planned to give away.
Videos posted on social media and taken from news helicopters showed the streamer being lifted over a fence and out of the crowd and then placed in a police vehicle.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This streamer is dumb or just wanted to get known, probably both. How can he think he can improvise a giveaway like this with no security? There are numerous example of this kind of things ending up in injuries and deaths. Crowds are powerful and dangerous when not managed.
He’s currently the top streamer on Twitch by subscriber count, and regularly draws high tens of thousands of concurrent live viewers. He’s “known”.
From what I know about him, I’m pretty sure he just didn’t imagine that THIS MANY people would show up. No fucking way he did this for “clout” or to “flex his power and cause a riot” (like Fox News actually suggested). I wonder why they’d say that 🤦🏿♂️
A video game giveaway is likely to draw the wrong crowds, especially in NYC. Not really surprised this devolved into mayhem.
Why wrong crowds and why especially in NYC?
"Wrong" because their skin was too dark for the NYPD, so they harassed the crowd, causing chaos.
Do you think the "free gaming console" crowd is going to be a bunch of mature adults behaving rationally? Clearly, we see that this is NOT the case. ?????