money Adriana Chechik Calls Out Tech Company Lenovo After Back-Breaking TwitchCon Injury
TwitchCon, the annual convention celebrating the creators and gamers who use the streaming platform Twitch, took place at the San Diego Convention Center this weekend. The event featured live games, fan meetups, and performances, including a Megan Thee Stallion concert featuring Halo’s Master Chief. But it was a foam pit that stole the show after adult entertainment actress and Twitch streamer Adriana Chechik said she broke her back in two places after jumping into the pit — and she isn’t the only one reporting an injury. At least one other person tweeted that they dislocated their knee in the foam pit, and several Con attendees say there’s evidence the pit wasn’t safe. What’s going on?
According to a Washington Post reporter, the foam pit was a collab between tech companies Intel and Lenovo and allowed attendees to battle with foam swords on a raised platform, eventually sending one of them down into the pit of foam blocks. During Chechik’s turn with streamer EdyBot, video of the incident shows Chechik defeating EdyBot, before jumping off of her platform and into the foam pit, bottom-first. Underneath the voices of moderators, Chechik can be heard saying, “I can’t get up.” The streamer said on Sunday that she broke her back in two places and was undergoing surgery to put a rod in her back. “Send your support,” she tweeted. “When it rains it pours and I am definitely feeling the rain right now.”
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Now, Chechik is asking Lenovo why they didn’t make the event safer.
“Why did @LenovoLegion say here, you can dive in?” Chechik tweeted, “They open the pit up a second day after the 1st person injured their foot and ankle bad enough to leave #twitchcon in a brace.”
When asked for comment on Sunday, a spokesperson for Lenovo told Rolling Stone that they closed the pit following Chechik’s injuries and are looking into the incident.
“We are aware of the incidents of TwitchCon visitors who sustained injuries in the gladiator game soft foam pit at the Lenovo booth,” the spokesperson said. “The area has since been closed for any further use while we work with event organizers to look into the incidents.” Lenovo, Intel, and Twitch did not respond to additional requests for comment.
Specs for the foam pit were not readily available, but video footage from the pit shows it was around two feet deep. Buzzfeed reported that average foam pits, most prevalent in gymnastics studios or amusement parks, can range from four to six feet in depth but are usually built on top of a trampoline surface to prevent injury. According to Chechik, the surface underneath the TwitchCon pit was firm. The streamer added that announcers for the installation could be heard telling people to jump into the pit and responded rudely after she was injured.
“Why did #legion tell ppl they could dive into the pit knowing they had the rhinestone pad at the bottom?” Chechik asked in another tweet. “I [have] heard of multiple ppl who have bad injuries. Also the announcers during my fall were kinda rude saying walk it off….”
Another streamer, LochVaness, tweeted that she dislocated her knee falling into the foam pit on Saturday.
“Once I had jumped off and my foot hit the bottom and my ankle rolled and then my kneecap was on the side,” she told NBC News. “I couldn’t move … I had almost passed out if it wasn’t for one of the staff guys calming me down.”
EdyBot, for her part, tells Rolling Stone that she was not told that someone else had been injured in the pit. ”They’re telling everyone to jump in all day,” she said in a statement. “Someone could have easily done an awkward fall and landed right on their neck. Adriana missed the entire event she was excited for and is now in a lot pain, looking at a very long recovery. If I had known someone dislocated their knee in the same pit, I would have skipped it entirely.”
On Twitter, Chechik thanked the first responders and EMTs who helped her to the hospital but expressed frustration at her path to recovery.
“Last night was horrible, the pain I had I felt like I’d rather die,” she tweeted Monday morning. “This is gonna suck.”
This story has been updated to include a statement from EdyBot.
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