By: Benjamin He
So giveaways are kind of a big deal. They’re often done by online personalities and entertainers or entertainment groups, often giving out huge prizes, that goes anywhere from gift cards to game consoles to a facetime with the entertainer themselves.
However, when too many fans get way too overzealous for these giveaways…well then that becomes a problem. That is exactly what happened to streamer Kai Cenat, who had a giveaway turn into a riot.
Hordes of fans overran Union Square Park on Friday at 4pm. Cenat was giving away some Playstation 5 consoles. By 1:30, about 300 people were there in the park. Jeffrey Maddrey, the New York Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, said on Friday — “something we would expect for a social media event like this.” So it was going decently well so far. Unfortunately for everyone involved, however, by 3:00, the news of the giveaway had spread far and wide on the internet, and thousands of people began coming into Union Square.
Soon enough, people started gut-checking and jostling others like it was Henry the Hippo’s funeral, jumping on top of cars like Spider-Man, and blocking traffic like Just Stop Oil protestors.
Police eventually removed Cenat from the park, Maddrey said, “for safety reasons.”
Police arrested 65 people, 30 of which were adolescents, says Maddrey. Two police officers and four civilians were taken to the hospital in ambulances, while another officer suffered a broken hand. But Maddrey warned that the number of people injured would rise.
“We went from 300 kids to a couple of thousand kids in minutes. We have to be responsible when we use this tool.” says Maddrey.
Currently, Cenat has 6.5 million followers on Twitch and also holds the record for the most monthly subscribers on the entire platform. In February, he had 300,000 paying viewers. That’s more than most U.S. newspapers.
The giveaway was in collaboration with Bronx Youtube star Fanum, who discovered and elevated Cenat’s career in content creation. His fame grew as he streamed with popular rappers 21 Savage and Bobby Shmurda. Cenat has earned tens of thousands of dollars a month just for streams of himself sleeping.
Despite his immense popularity, however, he has been banned multiple times in 2021 by Twitch for displaying explicit imagery, threatening other users and streaming while under the influence.
During a short stream inside a vehicle near Union Square on Friday, Cenat flashed a fistful of what he said were $100 gift cards held in a brown CVS paper bag to give away.
“They’re throwing tear gas out there,” Cenat said in a Twitch stream while the chaos was unfolding. “We’re not going to do nothing until it’s safe. … Everybody for themselves, because it’s a war out there, man.”
The stream cut off abruptly after Cenat got out of the vehicle seconds later, then got mobbed by an ocean of fans. The stream stopped after his bodyguards started pushing people away from him.
People in the crowd were spotted throwing paint cans, bottles and rocks, while others walked around with shovels, axes and other tools from nearby construction sites. Some in the crowd, the police chief added, lit fireworks during the chaos, and he said one or two police officers had to be removed from the crowd because of injuries.