Two YouTubers called for a meeting of their fans on social channels in Berlin. This escalated into a mass brawl. The police are now criticizing the two influencers and urging them to be responsible with their influence. It cannot be that they incite events to generate more clicks and subscribers.
How did the mass brawl come about? The two YouTubers Bahar al amood (14,000 subscribers on YouTube) and ThatsBekir (260,000 subscribers) have apparently been in a dispute or “beef” for some time. Both regularly provide their community with videos.
In one of their latest videos on YouTube and social channels like Instagram, they called for a fan meeting in Berlin at Alexanderplatz:
- The meeting was supposed to take place on March 21 at 5 PM
- A total of more than 400 fans showed up for the meeting
- However, initial discussions between the two parties quickly turned into a scuffle
- Over 50 people participated in the mass brawl
The fans reportedly had pepper spray with them, which they even used against arriving police officers, according to Berliner Morgenpost.
The fight from Alexanderplatz later shifted to the subway station. About 20 people reportedly continued to brawl on the tracks and threw stones.
How did the fight end? The police published an assessment of the brawl:
- 9 people were temporarily arrested and there were 13 criminal investigations
- 100 police officers were deployed
- three ambulances and one emergency doctor were on duty
It wasn’t until 9:30 PM that the police could end the operation. An alleged manager of ThatsBekir wrote shortly after the brawl that the YouTubers should not be held responsible. (via Morgenpost)
This was the reason for the meeting: Both YouTubers, who probably also belong to the rapper scene, gathered their fans for a fan or subscriber meeting in Berlin. The police chief Norbert Cioma, however, sees a different reason.
According to Cioma, the meeting and the escalation were deliberately provoked in order to generate clicks, subscribers, and followers for both parties:
We see in the rapper scene and increasingly also among other influencers that they sometimes handle their influence very irresponsibly and it seems to become trendy to deliberately create explosive situations to generate more followers, subscribers, and clicks.
Cioma cautioned that the influence of people should not be used for such purposes. There are “more meaningful things than using one’s notoriety to provide a suitable platform for violent youth in public.”
