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Prominent Pokemon figure and YouTuber Wolfe "WolfeyVGC" Glick has announced that he is stepping away from Pokemon tournaments due to fans' inappropriate behavior. On October 23, 2025, the content creator posted a YouTube video titled "Moving Forward," in which he discussed fans' behavior at IRL tournaments, claiming that he had been touched inappropriately in a sexual and non-consensual manner.
WolfeyVGC elaborated:
"The example that I think makes the clearest, the fastest, is that I competed at seven official tournaments in the 2025 season. So, from September 2024 until August 2025, I attended seven in-person tournaments. At five of those tournaments, I was groped. Fans, when taking pictures with me, put their hands on me sexually and non-consentually during the act of taking photos. I don't like that this is happening. And I also think that it's pretty clear to most people, most reasonable people, that this is not normal behavior. Like most people do not grope other people."
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Timestamp - 03:24
WolfeyVGC says his decision to step away from Pokemon tournaments also stems from fans' "parasocial behavior"
At the 17-minute mark of the aforementioned YouTube video, WolfeyVGC stated that his decision to step away from Pokemon tournaments was also influenced by fans' "parasocial behavior."
While claiming to have observed "parasocial behavior" from both his followers and those who "actively dislike" him, the 29-year-old stated:
"These in-person issues that I've been facing, I would say, are a part of a broader trend that I'm going to describe as parasocial behavior. I don't know if that's actually the right way to use the term. But I'm going to describe it as parasocial behavior. And the thing about this parasocial behavior is that, while it's been noticeable in person, it has also been extremely noticeable online. In fact, it's possible that some of you have seen a lot of this parasocial behavior online. And I mean parasocial both, in people who are fans of mine and people who are not fans of mine. People who actively dislike me."
Timestamp - 16:53
WolfeyVGC then discussed the "negative aspects" of fans' "parasocial behavior" by saying:
"The vitriol present in some of the messages, especially messages around me losing, I found it to be very jarring this year at Worlds. I have never... I guess what I should say is that I've always tried to make it extremely clear that the spirit of this channel is not victory, but competition. For me, winning is exciting because of the defeats. They're all related. And part of the reason why I made a Worlds video every year, despite the fact that for two of those Worlds, I'm not especially happy with my performance, is because it's not all about winning. It's about trying. It's about giving it your all and trying to..." (Timestamp - 18:15)
Elaborating on the type of messages he received following his elimination from the 2025 Pokemon World Championships, WolfeyVGC stated:
"I was especially surprised this year, after being eliminated from Worlds, at just the level of hate and vitriol that I was seeing online. I got offline pretty quickly in part because of this. But, yeah, I just think that the level and the rate of messages that I can't even repeat here because of the things people were saying has increased to a level that I'm not super comfortable with." (Timestamp - 19:10)
The YouTuber also claimed that his fans were messaging and tagging him in inappropriate posts:
"However, this is also true on the opposite side of the coin, people who presumably are fans of mine. The rate at which people are messaging me or tagging me in posts describing sexual acts that they want to perform to me or on me, whatever about me, I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable." (Timestamp - 19:30)
At the end of the video, WolfeyVGC stated that "even if this was the end of him competing" in Pokemon tournaments, he "would love to still continue competing and be able to do the thing that he loves."
