Every now and then, the Internet makes you smile

[El Jefe]

The story is a bit dated, but I just learned about it. And the weekend was tough for some in related communities, and particularly rough for my own mental health. So I wanted to share something to give a smile. And it may even be of interest to some of the folks here. Link to coverage is immediately below, but I'm doing a longer-form breakdown of events (because it's fucking awesome).



1. Late last year, the UK National Lottery had selected the trans-activist charity Mermaid as one of its potential grant recipients. Graham Lineham, writer for a few popular British comedy shows (including Father Ted) decided this was unacceptable. He started going on rants about it, which of course stirred up the TERF crowd that's WAY too common in the UK.

2. On January 18th of this year, Youtuber / Twitch streamer Hbomberguy started a 101% completion (yes, this is a thing that can be done) run of Donkey Kong 64. Proceeds were to go to Mermaid, with a goal of $500. The stream would be active off and on over the next three days.

3. Somewhere about two dozen hours into this stream, it just started picking up steam and recognition in the larger world of social media. By hour 50, it had exploded into incredibly rare territory.

4. Celebrity names suddenly started popping up, and wanting to get involved. John Romero (Doom creator) stopped in for a chat about supporting the cause. Mara Wilson did the same. Chelsea Manning came in to speak about some of her own experiences working with Mermaid. Matt Mercer of Critical Role, Neil Gaiman, Adam Savage, FUCKING CHER, and a host of others start retweeting and directing folks towards the stream. Around this point, the stream has cleared the $50 K mark.

5. Graham gets more frothy-mouthed and starts going after HB on Twitter. This leads to some of the support mentioned above, and people just start coming out of the damn woodwork. Over the course of the next day, NGO experts dealing with trans right as well as the intersectionality of autism and trans communities come on to talk about issues. They cover everything from finding regional support organizations to the problems with Autism Speaks. Trans members of the community come and start talking about their own stories, or just to offer up support. There are hours of supportive discussion, covering history and current issues. Medical professionals, counselors, and social workers make appearances (largely organized through the support of some other streamers to let HB focus on just playing) to join in the discussion.

6. More start coming in: Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything, Josh Sawyer (a big part of Fallout New Vegas, Icewind Dale, and other games), the Chapo Trap House crew, and so on. Grant Kirkhope, the composer of the music for DK64 and the voice of Donkey Kong for the game, comes on and speaks out in support of trans rights in DK's voice. DONKEY KONG SPEAKS ABOUT TRANS RIGHTS. Rebecca Heineman (long, long time part of the videogame industry, involved with Interplay for quite a while, and involved with everything from the original Bard's Tale to Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. Chuck Tingle gets involved (and eventually spins this off into one of his completely ridiculous stories again, as it is his first real exposure to Twitch). Chris Kluwe (Vikings punter and occasional writer dealing with the larger gaming world) puts in an appearance. This leads to probably the most surreal moment of the stream.

7. So just wrap your brain around all of that for a moment. At about hour 50 or so, the fund has raised almost $220 K from a starting point of $500. Then the look on HB's face is priceless. Somebody points out to him, a streamer who is 50 hours of playing in with few breaks at this point: "AOC just joined your Discord server." Yeah, a standing member of Congress just joined random UK streamer's feed. She speaks for a while.

8. Other funny bits. Graham gets a spot on Wikipedia's page for "Owned." For a short while, Graham's own website redirected to the Twitch stream, due to some quick domain name renewal work on the part of folks.

9. Nearly 58 hours later (terrible for a speedrun, but it was literally HB's first time trying to tackle a 101% run on this game), he finishes. The end results clocks in at over $360 K for funds raised. And to top all of it, Mermaid STILL got the $500 K National Lottery grant, even after Graham tried to organize a campaign to keep that from happening. HB himself eventually got a framed copy of a motion that the Scottish Parliament created to recognize him (thanks to Ellen Murray, a bit of a recognized activist for trans rights in the UK, particularly in Ireland). Said announcement of the motion was of course tagged with ThanksHarris and ThanksGraham.

10. This all started with some streamer setting a relatively small goal, and attempting to raise some awareness. It ended with a standing member of Congress on said Twitch stream and a damn congratulatory motion being passed through the Scottish Parliament. It ended with dozens of trans members of the community getting to share their stories, of additional resources and data being shared by experts, and with an unbelievable amount of money being raised for the target organization.

Final note: A full list of folks who got involved isn't easily available without going through the whole stream and finding out yourself. About a week or so after the stream, when such a list was still available, a doxxing campaign was organized to specifically target folks (celebrity or otherwise) that appeared as guests or in support. I culled the best details I could from several different articles, and only listed people who chose to remain public even after the doxxing campaign.

[Kyle]

Wow. That's pretty cool. Who would have ever guessed a Donkey Kong 64 speed run would go bananas like that?

[El Jefe]

I hate you so much, JONES.