Millions of streamers try their luck on Twitch every month. You have to come up with something special to stand out from the crowd. For example, being taped to a colleague’s house, like streamer Emily “ExtraEmily” Zhang was doing now.
What kind of streamer is this? ExtraEmily has been on Twitch since 2020. In the summer of 2022, she made her breakthrough. Since then, her channel has seen rapid growth.
In February of this year, it still reached an average of 1,280 viewers. Then she joined One True King (OTK), the organization of MMORPG streamer Asmongold – now, in April, she has already reached an average of 11,300 viewers (via sullygnome).
How did she do it? Among other things, with their rather unusual variant of a so-called subathon: a marathon stream in which viewers can extend the duration of the stream by taking out paid subscriptions (“subs”).
However, the 28-year-old did not stop at her PC for hours on end while being on the air. For her “wall-a-thon,” she instead had herself taped to her OTK colleague Esfand’s house. After just 13 hours it was already over (via JeuxVideo).
Other content creators earn their viewers through kindness:
Twitch streamer with only 1 viewer becomes famous through a kind gesture – This is her story
More videos
Streamer has eggs thrown at her for $20
What stream was that? On April 9th, ExtraEmily launched her Wall-A-Thon. The plan was that she would be taped to a wall for 24 hours. However, the 28-year-old explained that she had originally planned to only do 6 hours, which then became a full day “due to peer pressure” from her streaming troupe.
Instead of simply extending the stream with subs, viewers could make the streamer suffer for extra money.
For 10 US dollars or 1.00 bits, Twitch’s virtual currency, ExtraEmily had a water balloon thrown at her. Particularly generous viewers could also have an egg thrown at the streamer for $20, 2,000 bits or 10 gift subs.
You can see what it looked like in this clip:
Streamer hangs out for 13 hours, earns $2,640
This is how the stream went: Apparently, getting taped to a wall for 24 hours is easier said than done. After initially trying to attach the tape herself, ExtraEmily got help. That also led to great Google searches like, “What’s the best way to glue someone to a wall on Reddit?”
However, after only 2 hours there were doubts about the structural integrity of the tape structure. So the streamer was removed from the wall and quickly glued to a pillar. There she lasted another 8.5 hours before she threw in the towel.
After a total of 11 hours and 45 minutes on the stream, ExtraEmily announced she was giving up and just enduring the remaining time. Subs should then no longer be able to increase the timer. Nasty viewers quickly managed to increase the remaining time from 45 minutes to over 2 hours before this change was implemented.
After a total of 13 hours on the wall, it was over and ExtraEmily was cut out of her tape cocoon.
Does it pay off? According to analytics site TwitchStats, the streamer’s wall-a-thon netted 1,057 new subs, which should net the 28-year-old just over $2,640. Additionally, she added 5,400 new followers, which means she now has over 200,000 followers on Twitch (via sullygnome).
Whether it was worth having an egg in your hair for hours can only be answered by the streamer herself.
Subathons like ExtraEmily’s are popular on Twitch. The record for the most successful subathon is currently held by Kai Cenat, whose marathon stream during Black History Month in February 2023 earned him more than 300,000 paid subscriptions. With this he even drew the attention of the musician Drake.
21-year-old breaks 2 records on Twitch – Drake demands: “Give him $50 million”