A Florida man has been arrested after he threatened to “kill 20 people” in a Twitch chat. It’s no secret that any online community can become toxic, with people saying unkind or unsavory things to each other. As an example, streamer xQc recently revealed that a Twitch viewer spent $850 in donations to send him hateful messages, in $5 increments.
Last year, the situation became even more extreme when people began carrying out hate raids against Twitch streamers they didn’t like, usually targeting minorities or members of the LGBTQ community. Those participating in the raid would spam the Twitch streamer’s chat with offensive messages, and while many content creators were indifferent or angered after being on the receiving end of hate raids, others admitted to feeling hurt by the messages and even stopped streaming for a while.
One Twitch viewer took toxicity in chat to a whole new level, however, on December 9. Lowell Thomas Schoonmaker, a 33-year-old Florida man, began to post threatening messages in a Twitch chat. After making vague statements like “mass murder coming soon,” the Boca Raton resident said, “Today I’m going to kill 20 people. Have a nice day.” Another Twitch user then tipped off the FBI about the threats.
Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies were able to track Schoonmaker down by tracing his IP address, and he was arrested on December 14. The probable cause affidavit mentions that the Twitch user also made comments about wanting to “destroy the world” and it being “time for me to ruin my world.” As of December 17, Schoonmaker was still detained in Palm Beach County Jail, and he may be charged with making a written threat to commit a mass shooting or act of terrorism. To explain his actions, Schoonmaker said that he dealt with depression and was also drunk when he made the threats. He stated that he didn’t mean what he said and didn’t even own firearms.
Obviously, it’s never a good idea to make threatening statements like Schoonmaker did, whether joking or not, particularly given the current climate in the US. Behaving in such a manner on a platform largely associated with gaming will also just add to the ongoing perception that violent video games are to blame for mass shootings.
It’s unclear at this point whether Schoonmaker has also been banned from Twitch for his threatening comments, but hopefully the platform is actively seeking ways to immediately halt any similar actions by viewers. Recently, Twitch began testing an elevated chat feature, which lets users pay to highlight their message for 30 seconds to 2.5 minutes. Though the longer durations cost up to $100, that likely won’t deter somebody who is intent on sharing their thoughts, be they positive or negative.
Source: WPTV