On March 14, Ludwig Ahgren started a stream without a fixed end dateLast night, a whole month later, it was finally over.
For most of 31 days, Ahgren played games, trained, watched movies, and even slept on stream. At night, its moderators took over, podcasting and collaborating with viewers to share videos and other media. All this time a timer was running. But as long as viewers kept bringing in subscriptions, it wouldn’t hit zero (although it got extremely close a few times). It was generally a fairly relaxed approach to history writing; Ahgren now holds the record for the most subscribers in Twitch historyEven the stream finale was relatively low-key. Instead of fireworks, Ahgren and his friends smashed the racecar bed that had become a centerpiece of his power over the past month. Then they relaxed, made dinner, and talked about it somehow existing militantly pro-labor Disney movie News Releases
That’s not to say the subathon was a walk in the park. Indeed, Ahgren did not go for a walk in the park – or done a lot of everything—Without tens of thousands of viewers that last a whole month. During the last minutes of the flow, he sat in his bedroom, speaking candidly about the experience, which he chose to end yesterday instead of letting it go on for days, weeks, or months.
“I know once, I’ll hit the ‘stop streaming’ button for the last time ever,” said Ahgren. And it’s not that far away, even when we think about our entire lives. So even though it was a stressful month – weird, at times grueling – it was nice not having to press the ‘stop streaming’ button for a short period of my life. I could wake up like a sleepover and hang out right away. ”
This, he emphasized, is probably a one-time thing.
“It will never happen again,” said Ahgren. ‘And that’s a good thing. You were here for the last subathon I’ll ever do. I will still be live. I’ll still do things … But this will fade, that’s why it was special. And also why I could do it in the first place – because I knew it was contained. ”
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Ahgren started the subathon expecting it to last 24 or 48 hours, largely hoping to make a splash after taking a short break from streaming because “all of our lives as streamers, whether we like it or not, are dictated by numbers on the screen. ”And while the flow of a month, as he noted, was grueling, he was able to maintain healthy habits.
“I slept eight hours every night,” said Ahgren. “I ate three square meals every day. I’ve never been more consistent with training than the subathon. “
Granted, he was able to do those things on stream because he started the subathon with an already starved built-in audience. Smaller streamers couldn’t stand the kind of audience hits that Ahgren sometimes made while living the more mundane aspects of his day-to-day existence. So on the one hand, he successfully demonstrated a new, healthier way forward for marathon running, but on the other, he may be one of the few handfuls with the resources to make it happen.
With this in mind, Ahgren tried to turn the subathon into something that would benefit others. He said he is going to donate “about $ 350,000” his subathon earnings to charity.
“That’s crazy,” he said of the amount. “I tried as much as possible to make it a selfless endeavor, feeling the overwhelming guilt of all the money and the people who came in.”
Over the course of the subathon, Ahgren gained a million new Twitch followers and hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers, not to mention mainstream press fame and countless trending moments on social media. But Ahgren was not always a great success story.
“I moved to LA because I only got one job interview after I got two degrees from college, graduated with honors, and got fired from the job I got,” he explained as his flow waned. “Worked at Best Buy, got fired from Best Buy. Switched to Snapchat, got fired from my marketing job. And the only job I could never get fired for was streaming. And it’s probably the only job I’ve ever really loved. “
“While the clock is winding, I have two minutes to go, I have nothing to say but thank you,” he added.
Then he paused and quietly watched the chat scroll past at a million miles per hour. Then he broke the silence.
“Don’t let it get screwed up!” he said. “I’m not your friend. No parasocial relationships. I can’t know any of you. 200,000 people in my stream right now. But somehow, guys, as a collective …”
He fell silent again, visibly holding back tears.
“… made me very happy.”
Then he thanked everyone and saluted. Then the flow faded to black.