Originally published at: Influencer Kai Cenat to be charged with inciting riot after Playstation giveaway causes chaos in Union Square | Boing Boing
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I think he’s a Jedi
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My first question is: did the kids start the riot or did the police? Press coverage of this is swathed in ‘exonerative voice’. 
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It’s unclear that he actually brought PS5s, PCs, Mic’s, Monitors, Xboxes, and such to give away. It is sounding like this far he just wanted to create a scene and a crowd for his insta.
I imagine we’ll learn more as time goes on, though.
Edit to add:
There’s definitely video of people screaming things like “Where’s my Playstation!” and breaking things with shovels apparently grabbed from a construction site.
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Giving away playstations: inciting a riot
Telling your fans to assault the US Capitol: not inciting a riot
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Anybody actually get a Playstation?
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Skin color? /S
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If he had them, I don’t think he had a chance to safely give them out. There’s video of the car he’s in having people all over it, banging on the doors, windows, everything. There’s no spot for him to get out or anything, and they speed off with five - six people hanging on, who all fall off with various injuries.
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Well, in this case, orange is definitely not the new black. 
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“We’re not trying to give the streamer too much attention for creating this chaos there in New York City […]”
Says the newscaster who is part of a huge news corporation that is streaming the event live and mentioning the streamer by name.
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Construction sites are stocked with bottles, fireworks, rocks, and paint cans? Oh, right, this is NYC we’re talking about.
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Reminds of the height of the punk panic era…
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“What happened to the Playstations guys?”
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I wonder what it is about Trump that’s different from popular Black man Kai Cenat.
While people consider that puzzler, I’ll note what they do have in common: both are attention-seeking arseholes.
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Leaving aside the questions about other riot-fomenting entities (Trump, the cops), I’m not sure that there is a way to safely give out Playstations in Union Square.
A Playstation is an expensive, popular object, and New York is a large, populous city. Unless you have extraordinarily deep pockets and an eighteen-wheeler, you are probably not going to be able to bring enough Playstations to make everyone happy. And as aspiring Playstation owners are probably mostly at an age that is not famous for its impulse control and good decision-making, it’s not difficult to predict that some kind of mayhem is likely to result when the supply runs short (or even before).
If Cenat didn’t anticipate that, he’s even dumber than the average 21-year old. And if he did anticipate it but did it anyway to stoke his own notoriety, then I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him. And if he anticipated the chaos but didn’t also guess that the Man would throw the book at him when everything went sideways, then he’s too dumb to be allowed out, and should be put under house arrest for his own protection.
I don’t know if he thought up this wacky stunt on his own, but if it turns out that he has backers or promoters who encouraged it or signed off on it, then they need to face all the same charges as Cenat.
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The BBC article says that there was no permit for the event.
That’s definitely distinct from a riot incitement charge; but “tell my several million followers that I’ll be giving out 300 playstations in Union Square Park without bothering with the paperwork that even smallish events require” is…not a good start…for any attempt to claim that you were being remotely responsible about it.
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Not for nothing, but he said 300 playstations, a number of PCs, monitors, mics, recording cameras, and other electronics like tablets, iphones, etc.
Nevermind that 300 PS5s new in boxes wouldn’t fit into the vehicle they were in, much less all those computers and tablets and microphones and web cams and iphones.
I don’t know what the deal was , maybe he was giving out vouchers, but he didn’t have it with him.
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