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 threw traffic cones.
Cenat’s stream was cut short. A clip on his Twitch channel shows the crowd shoving into each other.
Manhattan *Riot* 13th Pct. Union Square Park. NYPD calling a level 3 mobilization for a riot. Aviation reporting the crowd is throwing plywood & construction debris at eachother
— NYCFireWire (@NYCFireWire) August 4, 2023
Kai Cenat got nyc looking like france
