It was only a matter of time until politicians started to get on the Twitch wagon; we just didn’t think it would be so soon.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shook the streaming world by promoting a charity stream on Twitter being hosted by hbomberguy (real name Harry Brewis,) a British YouTuber and Twitch streamer. Brewis was playing through Donkey Kong 64 and raising money for Mermaids, a charity that focuses on transgender youth.
Brewis decided to stream as a response to hostile comments and actions by Graham Linehan, a successful comedian who created the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd. On top of several anti-trans remarks dating back to August 2018, Linehan had lobbied for a $500,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund to Mermaids to be revoked. The grant is now under revision, which caused Brewis to fire up the stream and campaign for independent donations.
Brewis ended up streaming for over 65 hours, and raised north of $300,000. Several guests called into the stream during this time, such as activist Chelsea Manning, YouTuber Contrapoints, and Donkey Kong 64 composer Grant Kirkhope. In fact, not long after Ocasio-Cortez plugged the stream in a tweet, she ended up calling into the stream to discuss the issues…and video games (including the bold but defendable statement that the N64 was the best console.)
This isn’t the first appearance of politicians into the Twitch sphere; just earlier this month, a Senate candidate for California, Ted Dzubia, appeared on the /STARTUPS podcast with Twitch streamer Steven “Destiny” Bonnell and Dan Saltman.
We’ll see what happens as a result of this landmark appearance by AOC, but we can be certain that a lot more high profile names will be making appearances on the platform.
