Ever read about Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection? Just wondering.
You may have seen the clip off of popular Call of Duty Twitch Streamer Carl Riemer’s stream floating around in the last week or so. An intoxicated Riemer found it appropriate to play with a loaded pistol that he was “positive” wasn’t loaded, swearing that he had emptied the mag. As you can probably guess, the gun was still quite loaded and ended in Riemer pseudo-accidentally firing the weapon live on stream.
We say pseudo-accidentally because there’s only so much “accident” that can go into pulling the trigger on a firearm live on stream. Anyone who has ever handled any sort of gun knows that the first rule of gun safety is that a gun should always be handled as if loaded, no matter how sure you are that it isn’t.
Thankfully, the only casualties of Riemer’s firearm was a jug of what seemed to be a workout mix and his $1,000 monitor. Riemer took to YouTube to apologize deeply and seemingly very sincerely for his actions. In the video, he admitted to being intoxicated as well as acknowledging that that was absolutely no excuse, emphasizing that guns aren’t toys to be played with and holding up a metal cup that had been shot clean through.
Unfortunately, the video comes after Twitch and SoaR Gaming, his streaming organization, had already dished out their judgements and punishments. Twitch has immediately suspended him, which Riemer bemoans in his apology video, stating that he doesn’t know how long he’ll be banned or if he’ll even be allowed to collect his earnings from the previous month. SoaR also immediately hit him with the ol’ banhammer, instantly removing him from the roster in a tweet that we’ve included above.
“[SoaR] did what they needed to do, because i’m an idiot,” Riemer bluntly admits. “I could have hurt somebody, I could have hurt myself, I could have hurt one of my animals – and that’s unforgivable.”
Riemer also mourns the possible end of his streaming career. He discusses how he’s poured the last several years of his life into his career as a streamer and now could likely see it all come to an end over a single intoxicated mistake that he made.
All in all, the situation turned out as well as it possibly could have in a lot of ways. Riemer was incredibly close to shooting himself on a live stream to his entire audience, or taking out one of his pets instead. He openly admits that his actions were extremely foolish and that he deserves the punishment coming his way, but at the end of the day, he’s also extremely lucky to still be alive.
What do you think? Does Riemer deserve all of the flack that he’s getting for this, or are SoaR and Twitch overreacting?
