Streamer who broke back has surgery, Twitch silent

An onling streamer has had two surgeries to correct her injuries after a foam pit incident wasn’t properly built for safety.

Adriana Chechik, who broke her back earlier this month at TwitchCon after jumping into a foam pit that wasn’t checked for safety issues, has detailed her recovery process. She has had multiple surgeries.

Chechik attended TwitchCon, a convention for streamers on the Twitch platform. At TwitchCon, there was an event where streamers would stand on a platform and try to knock each other off with foam bats, where they would fall into a pit of foam squares. However, the pit was not deep, and at the bottom was solid concrete. Chechik, after being told that the pit was safe to jump in, broke her back after connecting with the solid ground.

Posting via Twitter, Chechik detailed her recovery: “So surgery went well, 5 hrs 30 minutes! More fusions than expected, bones completely crushed & nerve damage to my bladder, hopefully I’ll be able to pee again in the near future...had some bleeding around the bone but overall doing good!” Chechik posted on October 12.

For the ppl asking why did u jump. Don’t try and turn me into the bad guy. I am among all those who assumed it was met with proper safety precautions. It’s like getting into a car assuming the air bag will work and it doesn’t. I’m not at fault. None of the victims injured are.

— adriana chechik (@adrianachechik) October 14, 2022

A few days later, on October 14, she described passing out after brushing her teeth, and the following day, she had to go back in for a second surgery. She has since been released from the hospital.

The parties who managed the foam pit where multiple injuries occurred are Twitch, who organised the event, Lenovo, a sponsor of the foam pit, and Kairos Media, the agency that ran the booth. A week after the incident, Twitch has remained quiet, both publicly and privately, likely for legal reasons.

In addition to the disaster that was TwitchCon, Twitch has been experiencing a flurry of negative news. A shocking report outlined how child predators targeted nearly 280,000 children on the platform, while streamers are deciding if they want to continue working with Twitch after it announced it was cutting revenue.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.