FARGONATION; TWITCH COMMUNITY BUILDER
What's up, fam, happy second month of 2021! We're stoked to bring you our first guest blog of 2021 from our pal Kyle Fargo. Continue to scroll as Kyle shares his story on how he built an amazing community, and brought communities together on an online platform called “Twitch”!
Let's dive into it!
2020 was an extremely hard year for everyone; the constant fear of a pandemic we knew nothing about, people losing jobs, financial stress, mental health, substance abuse, and world events. Most people say “Wow I am glad 2020 is over!”, but for me, I am thankful 2020 happened.
My name is Kyle Fargo and I’m a born and raised 34 year old Calgarian; this is my story on how I turned a bad year into lifelong friendships, built an amazing community, and brought communities together on an online platform called “Twitch”.
On April 1st 2020, I lost my job due to the pandemic. The thoughts that ran through my head were “How am I going to get through this with a wife and 2 kids that need my support? I can’t see my friends. Everything is shut down. I am feeling extremely helpless!”.
I am an avid video gamer and have been since I owned my very first Nintendo Entertainment System. I’ve always wanted to be a Twitch streamer; I love entertaining and just being myself so why not give it a try? How can I build a community and turn people’s bad days into good ones, mine included!?
I really had no direction with what I wanted to do as a streamer but I had an idea; “Let’s do interactive party games that anyone can play! JACKBOX GAMES!” Jackbox Games is the party game-making studio best known for hit games like YOU DON’T KNOW JACK, Quiplash, Fibbage, Drawful, Trivia Murder Party, and more! Think of them as the child of classic social games like ‘charades’… the child who dropped out of college, then earned the family’s respect by founding a jam company.
The start of building the community was a struggle where I was only getting 4 or 5 viewers per stream, but by putting my head down and getting to work that’s where I started to shine. I got excited every time there was a new follower, accommodating everyone by letting them know this was "their" safe space. "Come hang out, play some games and get your mind off real life stresses", I would often say.
Months went by and I started to get a following. I had returning community members to participate in games, active monthly supporters, and really started to build relationships with my community. They called my Twitch space their home and relied on me to help them through the tough times in their life.
I have accomplished so much with this community I created, from being accepted as a “Jackbox Stream Team” member, to doing my very first 12 hour stream called a sub-a-thon. A sub-a-thon is where you complete challenges when people subscribe to your channel. Challenges included singing (I am a terrible singer), dancing, eating the world's hottest sucker called “Satan’s Toe”, playing Mario Kart with “drunk goggles” and other fun activities! I ended up with over 100 new subscriptions and over $500 in donations which I donated 10% of the revenue to a local charity. I’ve hit over 1000 followers, hosted a community mental health night, participated in a celebrity Jeopardy event that raised over $3300 USD across 9 different charities, and so much more, but really all that being said, it’s all the friends I and my community are making along the way.
I realized how important communities are and how they can help in so many ways, that’s when I reached out to Local Laundry. They have been so accommodating with everything and although they don’t have a reach with online gaming platforms like Twitch, I am eager to help Local Laundry get this new type of exposure. I plan on doing more charity work in the future and assisting with charities that Local Laundry supports, helping with volunteer work and representing a brand that does so much for communities.
Thank you so much LL for letting me be a part of this experience. Thank you to everyone that took the time to read my very first blog, let me share my progress on how I build a community and how much it means to me. Many more stories to come!
https://www.twitch.tv/fargonation
https://www.instagram.com/twitch.fargonation/
