YouTuber unifies viewers through trans charity

Harry Brewis, better known to the online world as H.Bomberguy, made history last month by streaming “Donkey Kong 64” for over 57 hours to raise money for a charity dedicated to helping transgender children in the U.K. 

Over the course of the weekend of Friday, Jan. 18, to Sunday, Jan. 20, Brewis, a well-known YouTuber in the online left-wing community, got guests from activist Chelsea Manning to Adam Conover of “Adam Ruins Everything” to “Doom” co-creator John Romero to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to come on the stream and voice their support for the rights of transgender individuals around the world. 

Brewis raised money for Mermaids, a charity that works to help transgender children and their families get the support and resources that they need, by streaming the slowest speedrun a video game has ever seen on Twitch. 

In a video announcing his stream, Brewis said he would finally beat “Donkey Kong 64,” a video game that he never finished as a kid, but the time finally came when Irish comedian Graham Lineham promoted an email campaign to try and defund Mermaids. Brewis decided to raise the money for Mermaids on his stream because he’d “like to do [his] bit to support the people who do the hard work of contributing to people’s thinking on an important issue.” Graham Lineham used his audience (over 659 thousand Twitter followers at the time of Brewis’ stream announcement video) to, as Brewis said, “make sure some children won’t have access to helpful resources.”

In the first day, Brewis passed his first two goals ($500 and $4,000) in the first hour and a half of the stream. By the time he took his first break to get some sleep at 18-and-a-half hours, he had already passed $42,000. 

As the stream went into its second day (or when Brewis woke up from his roughly five-hour-long sleeping break), Brewis woke up to a donation count at $50,000. The stream began catching fire on social media, and guests like Chelsea Manning began to join. The donations continued to rise and in one day went from $50,000 to close to $175,000. 

In the third day, not only did Brewis get his biggest guests like Ocasio-Cortez and Conover, but his donation count reached well over $300,000 when he finally defeated King K Rool, the game’s boss. “You did this,” a sleep-deprived Brewis said to the stream’s viewers as the credits for “Donkey Kong” rolled, “And when I collapse ... You will still be here ... We can build a better world. It’s not impossible. And any doubts I ever had about that have definitely been flushed very far down the toilet.” The final donation count was over $340,000.

Through the culminated efforts of countless contributors who kept the stream’s chat active while Brewis took two short breaks to sleep, eat and shower to prevent it from being shut down from inactivity; all the guests who helped it go viral; all the viewers and donors who raised the money; and all the behind-the-scenes contributors keeping the whole process going, Brewis and his team accomplished a massive victory and a historic show of unity for Mermaids and trans people around the world.

Brewis ended the stream almost two hours after completing the game with a long list of contributors and people working behind the scenes saying their congratulations and goodbyes. Brewis himself shut down the livestream after all the goodbyes by sitting back with tears in his eyes as “Revolution Lover” by Left at London, a transgender musician who came on the stream, played for everyone. After it ended, Brewis gave a final goodbye with a tearful, “We’re out.”