Twitch can often be a cesspit of awfulness. If it’s not one streamer getting swatted or another streamer getting accused of misogyny, then it’s potential litigation between big-name broadcasters (that ultimately fizzled into nothing). But there is some good on the platform, too. One such example is WowGrandma78, a grandma and Twitch streamer who celebrated her 80th birthday this month with a subathon. As of now, she’s been livestreaming for 12 days. And until the clock runs out–which gets extended by three minutes every time someone subscribes–she has no intention of stopping.
WowGrandma78—guess she needs to change her whole branding now—turned 80 on March 17, according to her Twitter. To celebrate, she went live on Twitch to host a subathon, a subscriber marathon where a streamer’s broadcast is extended by a certain amount of time for each subscriber they accrue. This is what WowGrandma78 has been doing since March 17, which means that she’s now been livestreaming on Twitch for approximately 288 hours. (Naturally, she’s taking breaks to sleep and do other things from time to time!)
While 288 hours and counting may be a long time to sit in front of a camera, WowGrandma78 isn’t new to this. A literal grandma with six children, nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren, she started her Twitch channel in January 2020 with “the intentions of having a friendly and safe place,” according to her channel’s About Me. She streams every day, mostly at night, playing World of Warcraft as a restoration druid. Other games occasionally pop up, like the browser-based, Wordle-like word-guessing game Words on Stream. But as noted in her bio, WoW has been her game of choice for nearly 20 years.
If you stop by her livestream, expect chill broadcasts with lots of WoW and friendly conversation. She spends a lotta time telling stories about her life, like how this one time she called the fire department on her youngest son because he was infatuated with fire and burned a neighbor’s doll. As she’s doing this, she’s also fielding questions about raising children, saying hi to folks in the chat, and kicking ass with her druid. It’s really sweet. I witnessed a heartwarming exchange between WowGrandma78 and a chatter named Kapers_, in which the chatter said their expected child’s name will be Sloane. WowGrandma78 said it was a beautiful name and shared some brief parenting advice.
Another highlight of WowGrandma78's subathon is the slideshow that plays when she takes a break. It’s a long carousel of images and text chronicling her life, following WowGrandma78 through birth and adolescence to her first children and into retirement. It’s a cool way to get to know someone. And an even more awesome way to celebrate a birthday: playing games and giving people a glimpse at how your life has unfolded.
WowGrandma78 hasn’t responded to a request for comment in time for publication, probably because she’s busy playing World of Warcraft, which I understand. It’s her birthday, and those raids need to get done.