SamEzTwitch, a French Twitch streamer, was rudely awakened by a rainstorm when he was having a casual stream. It probably won’t be the last time an outside incident has an impact on a stream.

With only 22.1K followers as of this writing, SamEzTwitch is a casual user of the Twitch network. He is well known for his multiple-weekly informal streams in his native French that fall under the Twitch category “Just Chatting.” His home was battered by a violent rainstorm on July 11 during one of his most recent streams, which had a catastrophic and humorous yet unknown set of effects. SamEzTwitch is seen sitting in his room and remaining silent for a brief length of time in the 27-second snippet labeled “la dinguerie” and snipped by ViiK_Live. A loud and blinding flash of lightning is visible through the neighboring window around halfway through the film, but just as Sam starts to back away, the video brightens, freezes, and cuts away with a distorted image.

Because of this, unlike some other instances of Twitch streams being interrupted, it is unclear exactly what happened other from the fact that his devices were certainly damaged.

When user n0yst later posted the video on Reddit, it unleashed a torrent of rumors about the precise extent of the lightning strike’s devastation. The rapture, aliens, or simply having his house too close to a tree or a Transformer were common explanations given. Some found this to be even more amusing, speculating that SamEzTwitch may have been struck by an orbital cannon or endowed with superhuman abilities as a result of the lightning strike.

The streamer eventually confirmed that the entire thing was a hoax, thanks to visual effects and microphone noises, in recent remarks on Twitter, which were eventually brought up by a number of other people. Thankfully, unlike with other content creators, this prank did not have more severe repercussions.

Regardless of what actually occurred, the video illustrates the risks of using a lot of technology when it’s bad outsideā€”a lesson that tragically many others have had to learn the hard way. SamEzTwitch even acknowledged that rain and hail fell in his area afterwards; he jokingly referred to this as karma for his hoax. According to his Twitch schedule, he intends to keep streaming at least once per week for the foreseeable future, so it looks he has no plans to stop.