Like culture has a hero.
It goes by the name of Kai Cenat, 21-year-old African-American, YouTuber by profession and successful career with millions of followers.
On Saturday, in a place as central to Manhattan as Union Square, his call to action caused such a riot that the police had to work hard to contain the eruption that caused fear and surprise to residents and tourists .
Destruction, assaults, injuries, 65 arrested (more than half, teenagers), looting of establishments.
“Kai Cenat is tearing down New York”, said the protagonist in a video that he uploaded that night, without it being clear when he recorded it, if before or after he was released for the accusation of causing riots and for meeting il· legal He was seen driving around in a car. He seemed to be delighted with himself, isolated from the commotion, but aware of the consequences. “Many of you are out there right now, make sure you are out of danger”, he is heard in those images.
In case anyone had any doubts, that evening the generational change was evident. Without entering into considerations, neither better nor worse, different.
A few years ago, not many years ago, the riots took place due to the calls of social and political leaders to demonstrate for free love, against the war in Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq, for peace and love, or racial inequality. There was an unfathomable and utopian factor, an idealistic burden, the pursuit of dreams.
Cenat has four million subscribers on YouTube and more than 6.4 million users on the Twitch streaming platform, one of the most successful. In a demonstration of the new times, from those means he did not appeal to the intangible in his call, but to the purest materialism. He caused chaos with the slogan of giving away PlayStation 5 consoles, devices with the ability to distance you from reality and put you even further inside the bubble.
“This can end quickly, it depends on how noisy you are,” he pointed out when he made the call. “It’s a public place and anything can happen,” he warned. I sensed what would happen.
The situation of out-of-control and violence that generated his invitation has also done collateral damage. “This is not a police issue, this is a problem for parents and the education of their children,” declared the mayor of New York, Eric Adams. “Our children cannot be raised by social networks, they are being kidnapped by influencers”, he warned.
Fathers and mothers of detainees have told them not to blame them, to blame society and its police officers who “use their weapons to harm instead of protect”, they replied, referring to the police brutality that many of those who attended the call suffer because of the color of their skin.
In this case, the power of convening should not be underestimated. Anyone older than Gen Z can be mistaken for Cenat’s celebrity, who has gained a massive audience with his games, jokes and energetic personality that comes across in his videos. He is one of the most watched streamers by a very young crowd. His recordings include reactions to songs and films, parodies or challenges that spread across the internet. The popularity of this New Yorker made Rolling Stone magazine include him in the list of the 20 most influential creators of 2023.
He started contributing to Youtube in 2018 with pranks and competitions. His big break to fame came when he started broadcasting on Twitch in 2021. He soon transformed into a phenomenon by broadcasting games and reactions to viral pop culture phenomena.
He made humorous versions of all kinds of real life, such as buying his mother a house or interrupting university classes by cooking eggs in reading rooms.
In those creations he enjoys being a threat, and his followers give full support to his lunatic antics.
Of course, this type of performance has caused Twitch to impose temporary bans on him. The first was for sharing explicitly graphic photos of his followers, and in 2022 he was banned for a month because he was deemed to have posted content that could be seen as threatening.
And, in spite of everything, its success does not stop growing. No one doubts that he will try to profit from the chaos of Union Square. His vanity received a bath of multitudes.
