Morgan continued: "To be clear, on the specific allegation - have you ever used anal beads while playing chess?"
The 20-year-old replied: "Well, your curiosity is a bit concerning, you know - maybe you're personally interested, but I can tell you, no.
I don't know about you but when I appear in a very serious interview and talk about the multimillion dollar damage an unfounded allegations has done to my career, I really want to make sure that I include some weird kink shaming right there in my defense. That will surely make me seem like a serious person that sponsors can trust.
I think it was rather commenting on the interviewer's inappropriate intrusiveness into an intimate topic rather than kinkshaming. Understandable that Niemann got defensive there, IMO.
He would respond professionally and be honest about how serious those rumors are. He sued several big organizations over that claim and should take it seriously rather than going "lol, why are you so interested in vibrators, do you like that sort of thing" to the interviewer when everyone in the room knows why the question is being asked.
No they aren't. The cheating rumor started with a cryptic tweet of the World Champion at the moment, Magnus Carlsen, just right after losing against Niemann and withdrawing from the tournament. The tweet didn't say or insinuate anything about anal devices. The rumors increased when they played together a few days later and Carlsen resigned in move one, again without mentioning or insinuating anything about anal devices. And finally a couple of weeks later Carlsen explained why he thinks Niemann is cheating. You can count how many times he mentions buttplugs, anal beads or whatever. Yes, zero times.
These are the serious rumors. Serious as in if it were proven true, his career would end forever. Serious as, a large part of the chess community believe that they are true or at least contain some truth in them. Serious as in tournament organizers don't send him invitations and affect his chess career in a negative way. Serious as in that still today, some players (for example Vladimir Kramnik) refuse to play against him.
The buttplug rumor started in a twitch chat as a joke, and was popularized in the satirical subreddit Anarchy Chess as a joke (believe me, I was part of the subreddit and created a couple of memes myself). It was just making an absurd situation even more absurd, nobody actually believed that he cheated via anal stimulation.
People making memes on the internet isn't a serious rumor. Real life consequences is.
I don’t think there is a single person that has heard he cheated but doesn’t know about the butt plugg.
That doesn't mean that the buttplug thing was a serious rumor.
Those aren't serious at all though. You're outraged by the way a random dude responds to a question about a vibrating buttplug. You are in need of touching some grass for a very extensive amount of time my friend.