This “emergent behavior,” as Johnson calls it, comes when users of digital tech—which tends to physically isolate—suddenly erupt from the online into the real world. In Cenat’s case, that would be fans transforming from the mediated abstraction of “6.5 million followers”—just a few million smaller than the population of New York—to a crowd of kids demanding PS5s.

Johnson thinks it's naive for anyone to be shocked that a streamer on Twitch—relatively unknown despite ranking among the 50 most popular websites—could summon a crush like the one Cenat did, comparing the reaction to the media geeking out over flash mobs. “The wider cultural understanding of what Twitch is, who streamers are, how people engage with them, why they engage with them—this is much lower than with other huge web platforms,” he says. “And so this kind of bemusement seems to be really dominant in the discourse around the incident, because a lot of people just don’t have this level of experience with it.”

There’s an uglier aspect to the response that needs highlighting, he adds—one adjacent to the rise of Kick, Twitch’s new “free speech” rival, and a fractious US political climate. “A lot of the responses seem very right-wing and very racist and very hostile. And that’s something that really stood out,” he says. “What I’ve noticed is how rapidly a lot of the online crowd has essentially sought to politicize this, to move it from the realm of ‘large of masses of people sometimes don’t behave all that well,’ which is what this is, to ‘this is a much more social, political, and racial thing.’”

It seems unlikely that the disturbance will diminish Cenat’s popularity: Streamers tend to implode only when they are perceived as inauthentic. Here, wild examples include a supposedly wheelchair-bound man standing up in front of followers who believed he had a permanent physical disability or, more recently, a daredevil lying that his plane was about to crash so he could stage an emergency evacuation.

Cenat's situation is different. Following the incident, his YouTube channel posted a video titled “Kai Cenat Shuts Down New York City.” It's since been viewed more than 2 million times, a confirmation of the economic incentives the internet offers for making a scene. So far, Cenat is still on Twitch. Johnson believes whether or not he is banned will be driven by public perception and the outcome of the charges. (He's scheduled to appear in court on August 18.) Regardless, the case will provide more content.