How much money did the Donkey Kong 64 charity stream raise?

It pulled in more than $340,000 for Mermaids, with donations still coming in for days after the broadcast ended on January 21st, 2019.

Hbomberguy is Harry Brewis, a British YouTuber known for long-form video essays, who had over 300,000 subscribers at the time of the 2019 marathon.

Why was Graham Linehan involved?

Linehan, co-writer of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, had posted on Mumsnet in December 2018 urging users to email the Big Lottery Fund CEO to block a £500,000 grant to Mermaids, which is exactly why Brewis chose Mermaids as the beneficiary.

Did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really appear on the stream?

Yes. AOC joined by voice, voiced support for trans rights, discussed her 70% top marginal tax rate proposal, and helped Brewis play Donkey Kong 64, drawing coverage from Polygon, Splinter and The Hill.

What is Mermaids and why did it need funding?

Mermaids is a UK charity that supports transgender children, teenagers and their families, and its planned £500,000 Big Lottery Fund grant was put under review in December 2018 after an organised email campaign against it.

Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream

Q: What is Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream?

It was a 57-hour Twitch livestream in January 2019 where British YouTuber Harry Brewis (Hbomberguy) played Donkey Kong 64 to 101% completion and raised over $340,000 for UK trans youth charity Mermaids.

Q: Where did Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream come from?

Brewis first promised a Donkey Kong 64 101% stream in an August 2018 YouTube video about speedrunning, then scheduled it in January 2019 after Graham Linehan's Mumsnet campaign got Mermaids' £500,000 lottery grant put under review.

Q: What does Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream mean?

Online it's shorthand for weaponising a culture-war attack into a charity windfall, sometimes tagged #ThanksGraham, referring to anti-trans comedy writer Graham Linehan whose Mumsnet post inspired the fundraiser's charity pick.

Q: How do you use Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream as a reference?

People cite it as the template for political Twitch charity marathons: pick a punishing gaming goal, aim the money at a cause your critics are attacking, and let guest cameos and outrage snowball the donations.

Q: Is Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream still popular?

The stream itself was a one-off 2019 event, but it is still routinely referenced as a landmark moment for Twitch charity streaming and Hbomberguy's channel.

Q: What other famous guests joined the Donkey Kong 64 stream?

Guests included Doom co-creator John Romero, Donkey Kong 64 composer Grant Kirkhope, whistleblower Chelsea Manning, video essayists Jim Sterling and Lindsay Ellis, and musician Patricia Taxxon.

2019eventclassic

Published August 27, 2026

In January 2019, British YouTuber Harry Brewis (Hbomberguy) played Donkey Kong 64 on Twitch for 57 straight hours to fundraise for UK trans youth charity Mermaids, raising over $340,000 out of spite for anti-trans comedy writer Graham Linehan. The stream pulled in surprise guests including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chelsea Manning and John Romero, and became a landmark moment for political charity streaming on Twitch.

charity memes twitch streamer memes lgbtq memes british memes livestream memes

Overview

Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 Trans Charity Marathon Stream, also tagged online as the #ThanksGraham Charity Stream, was a 57-hour Twitch broadcast in which British video essayist Harry Brewis attempted a 101% completion run of the 1999 Nintendo 64 title Donkey Kong 64 to fundraise for Mermaids, a UK charity supporting transgender children and their families1. The stream pulled in more than $340,000 and stayed open for donations for days after Brewis finally finished the game3.

What made the marathon spread beyond gaming Twitch was the guest list that dropped in over the weekend. Doom co-creator John Romero, Donkey Kong 64 composer Grant Kirkhope, whistleblower Chelsea Manning, video essayists Lindsay Ellis and Jim Sterling, musician Patricia Taxxon, and then-newly-elected US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all called or dropped by to chat while Brewis kept collecting golden bananas3. The AOC appearance in particular was covered as national political news, not just a gaming footnote6.

The stream is still cited as a template for how a small creator can turn a bad-faith culture-war argument into a fundraising surge, and it kicked off a wave of similar directly-political Twitch marathons among left-leaning YouTubers3 5.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitch (livestream) / YouTube (announcement)

Creator

Harry Brewis

Date

2019

The idea started as an offhand promise. On August 31st, 2018, Brewis, who runs the Hbomberguy YouTube channel, posted a video about speedrunning culture in which he pledged that he would one day stream himself beating Donkey Kong 64 to 101% completion, no matter how long it took, without setting a date1.

The date got picked in mid-December 2018, when the UK's Big Lottery Fund announced it was reviewing a planned £500,000 grant to Mermaids after a Mumsnet thread titled 'Mumsnetters assemble!' by Father Ted co-writer Graham Linehan urged parents to email the fund's CEO in protest2. On January 14th, 2019, Brewis uploaded a YouTube announcement naming the date of the marathon and citing Linehan's Mumsnet campaign as the reason he was pointing the money at Mermaids specifically, telling viewers he wanted to 'do his bit' against what he called woefully misinformed British tabloid coverage of trans issues5.

How It Spread

The Twitch broadcast went live on January 18th, 2019 and ran across roughly 57 hours of on-and-off play3. Brewis's old childhood save file reportedly showed 59 hours of playtime at just 69% completion, so the 101% run doubled as a personal grudge match against a game he never actually finished as a kid3. By around the 40-hour mark, UK outlet Metro reported the total had already blown past $200,000 (£155,000), driven partly by viewers explicitly donating 'to spite' Linehan5.

Guest cameos snowballed the audience. Grant Kirkhope, who wrote the actual Donkey Kong 64 soundtrack, called in, as did John Romero, Jim Sterling, and Chelsea Manning3. The stand-out moment came when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined the call to declare support for trans rights, explain her proposal for a 70% marginal tax rate on top earners, and help Brewis with a section of DK64 gameplay, a clip that ricocheted through Polygon, Splinter and The Hill within hours6. Coverage also hit Newsweek and Kotaku Australia, moving the story out of the LGBTQ+ blogging beat and into mainstream news1.

The aftershocks kept going for days. Linehan spent January 20th tweeting attacks on Mermaids, including a widely ratio'd joke about 'transabled' people, which mostly funnelled more donations toward the stream1. On January 21st, the Scottish Parliament passed a motion congratulating Brewis on the amount raised for Mermaids and later mailed him a framed copy of it1.

How to Use This Meme

The stream is referenced online less as a template you copy directly and more as shorthand for a specific tactic: pointing charity money at whatever cause a bad-faith online figure is currently attacking, and doing it publicly enough that critics end up boosting the fundraiser. The hashtag #ThanksGraham became the standard way to tag donations back at Linehan during and after the broadcast1. Later left-leaning Twitch fundraisers, including subsequent Hbomberguy streams, still use the same basic shape: pick a long, absurd gaming goal, book political and creative guests to phone in, and let outrage do the audience-building for you3.