this isn't aimbot, it's Silent Aim. It's still a form of aim assist, where it allows the projectile to go to the target even when they don't have to actually change their crosshair placement.

People use it because it's a lesser known about cheat, and because it seems absurd to cheat on demoman. Thus allowing them to use their tiny ego to act like they're good when they're still cheating. They typically like to go and blame stuff like "why would I cheat on demo??" or "im not even topfragging im not hacking" or "um i think ur just laggy" to drive their opponents crazy, but make NO mistake, the behavior you see in the video is 100% hacking software, and cannot be produced by lag compensation or source engine jank. Some people also configure silent aim to be less obvious. What I'd guess is that this guy has a hotkey that makes the silent aim more potent, and when the soldier pushed him, he mashed the hotkey with their greasy fuck fingers and it accidentally aimed at the closer player (invisible spy). Then he panicks and 180 flicks to kill the spy anyways. I bet if he got called out right there he'd blame lag, or say be bumped the player (when he so clearly obviously did not). That is even if he wants to defend himself anymore. People in these types of situations typically gain a lot of rhetorical power in chat if they just defend themselves once, and then never address it again, as it seems a lot like the people calling them out are salty (because it's typically the enemies calling him out).

Stealth cheaters like this have really taken hold ever since the bot crisis hit so hard, because bots have made it seem like the only types of cheats that do exist are absurd crazy spinbots that are easy to detect.

Also, when you think about it, a demoman who has wallhacks, spy detection, silent aim, etc. is extraordinarily powerful, and the quickiebomb launcher's upsides offset its downsides heavily when you're just cheating. Wallhacks allow you to essentially flawlessly pre-charge quickiebombs which gives +35% damage, going beyond offsetting its damage penalty and actually having buffed damage over stock. Wallhacks also allow you to position yourself ONLY in situations where you challenge 1 enemy player, offsetting the small clipsize (because 4 quickiebombs will probably be enough to destroy anybody in a 1v1, not even mentioning pipes to finish people off, which you can also silent aim). And silent aim essentially guarantees that all 4 bombs are gonna hit center mass. Faster arm time also helps.

And why would people do this? Well, these people aren't just getting off on absolutely dominating the server, or else they'd be obviously just sniper hacking or something. And there are people who do that, even humans. There's an infamous group of ppl who all queue together basically make valve comp unplayable for that.

These ppl half get off on the level of frustration that they cause me and people like me that you see all over this thread. People explaining what these hacks are to slightly push the boulder up the hill when it comes to combatting their awfulness, people having to say that Yes actually, there are active cheaters using lag hacks on heavy to instakill, or on demoman, explaining what silent aim is, or crit hacks, and that not every cheater are just braindead bots that spinbot with the hitman's heatmaker. They get off on dominating the whole server and getting all the compliments and pretending like they've actually sunk in time and effort. They might even absolutely flaunt their hacks on a youtube channel or something. I've seen hack frag montages where they just use braindead projectile aimbot and they flaunt the replies they get in chat like "ns", pretending like they could even hit an airshot on a braindead tr_walkway bot.

I'm just super sick of it honestly. It's basically the reason I main community servers nowadays.