Twitch streamers Kai Cenat and Fanum invited fans to Union Square on Friday for a real-life stream and giveaway. They promised to hand out gift cards, gaming PC equipment and PlayStation 5s.
But the IRL stream descended into chaos as frenzied fans crowded over the giveaway, shutting down lower Manhattan in the aftermath.
Cenat, who has 6.5 million Twitch followers and 4 million YouTube subscribers, advertised the New York City giveaway in now-deleted tweets. He collaborated with Fanum, who has 1.3 million followers on Twitch and 1.2 million on YouTube. The stream was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. on Friday.
But by 1:10 pm, police responded to a “large gathering” in the park, a New York Police Department spokesperson told TechCrunch. The spokesperson said that “a couple thousand individuals” crowded into the location. By 3:30, videos of the riot began flooding social media. Fights broke out as people in the crowd climbed vehicles and
