Wolfe “WolfeyVGC” Glick is without doubt one of the most prolific aggressive Pokémon gamers within the house. He’s gained the official World Championship event, competed in a number of occasions all over the world, and has amassed tens of millions of followers on his YouTube channel the place he talks about aggressive Pokémon and the occasions he attends. Nevertheless, Glick says in a lengthy new video that he’ll probably step away from in-person occasions due to harassment from followers.
The professional participant says he’s needed to cope with followers groping him throughout photos and pushing boundaries like touching him with out consent. He says this meant leaving this 12 months’s Worlds event early as a result of he wasn’t in a position to watch the occasion in peace after he’d been eradicated and that the stress he feels from these occasions has now began to outweigh his enjoyment of competing within the tournaments themselves.
Glick additionally says he needs to be there primarily to compete, however the fan interactions have begun overtaking his personal time on the reveals and even, in some instances, prevented him from attending to the matches on time.
Past that, Glick says that he doesn’t wish to make a video for this 12 months’s Worlds event as a result of it will make him “relive” the occasion and all of the unhealthy reminiscences he has related to it. For now, he’ll be taking day without work from in-person occasions, which may have an effect on whether or not or not he qualifies for 2026’s World Championship.
“Even if I do qualify for the World Championships this year, it is very likely that I will not attend,” Glick says within the video. “It’s gonna depend on how the rest of the season and how the rest of these events go. But what I will say is that I do not want to have another Worlds like the one I just had. I would rather not attend than take the risk because I think that if I don’t attend Worlds there’s a chance I could come back in the future. I think if I have one more Worlds like this one, I don’t think I’m coming back.”
Glick says that these “parasocial” interactions have been each an issue in-person and on-line. The professional claims that whereas he isn’t above criticism, the “vitriol” from some has grow to be so prevalent that he’s not comfy interacting with followers or critics on-line, and that the undesirable consideration has included sexual harassment in on-line messages too.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I feel like I’ve become more of a symbol and less of a person,” he continues. “There is a lot of responsibility and I’m very privileged to be in that position, but at the same time, I would like to be a person. Sometimes I would like to be Wolfe and not WolfeyVGC.”
For now, Glick will likely be taking social media breaks, doing fewer movies, and even taking part in Pokémon Legends: Z-A in solitude fairly than on stream. He indicators off the video saying that he nonetheless needs to create content material about aggressive Pokémon, however that he’ll should take time to reevaluate his method after these “dehumanizing” experiences. However he isn’t totally strolling away and says he nonetheless needs to make modifications to enhance his relationship with the aggressive Pokémon house.
“I always figured that if I stopped competing it would be because competition stopped being fun for me; like I lost the love of the game or maybe I wasn’t able to keep up with a new guard and it was really hard for me to never win. […] The thing I’ll say about this that is positive is that I’m still having fun. I still love competing and I’m still having a blast. If I could just do the competition part of tournaments and not everything else, that would be great for me. […] Because it’s still fun for me, I have motivation to try and fix things.”
He says he’s nonetheless trying into arranging meet-and-greets the place followers can chat with him in-person, however isn’t but positive what kind these will take shifting ahead.
“I wish that I could do more,” Glick says. “I wish there was more of me to give. I really have tried for so hard for so many years to be the person people see me as, as this symbol, as this kind of unshakable bastion in the scene, but I am only human, and I think pretending that I’m not is not doing me or you any favors.”
