Hey Chuggaaconroy!

It’s me. I’m just a single person among your one million subscribers, watching your Let’s Plays of Nintendo games, some of which I’ve played, most of which I have not. Although I’ve watched your videos daily for years now and binge-watched several of your past Let’s Plays, I’ve never commented on a video or replied to one of your tweets. You don’t know me, but I wanted to thank you for helping me through the hardest months of my life.

Last September, I moved from Kansas to Georgia, largely against my will. I loved my hometown. My friends and I had the same sense of humor, my school challenged me academically and supported me socially and The Donut Whole had the best donuts. Being ripped from my childhood home and having to start over two years from graduating high school terrified me. Soon after I moved, I realized that my parents weren’t too sympathetic and that I just couldn’t call my old friends every day. My parents told me that I shouldn’t be upset because everyone moves, and my friends were carrying on with their own lives. I had never felt more alone, and I wanted to run away, eat myself into a coma or throw myself under a bus.

You started your play-through of Pikmin 3 a week after I left home. After another day of school where the students ignored me and the curriculum seemed like it was designed to trip me up, I had something to look forward to. For 20 minutes or half an hour a day, I didn’t have to apologize for being homesick or blatantly lie about how grateful I was to be going to such a good (meaning pretentious) school. Even when there wasn’t a daily update, I could always check Twitter and know why. I could depend on you for either a video or an explanation, even when I couldn’t depend on my friends to pick up my calls or my parents to listen. You never disappeared. I never had to wait for hours, wondering whether you would update or not that day. You were always so reliable, and that’s what I never knew I appreciated.

You were a constant. I didn’t have to be sorry for watching your videos. All of my other hobbies and interests were so closely tied with Kansas that they were mutated to the point of being unrecognizable in the Deep South. Sometimes, they simply vanished. The competitive speech team at my old school had 30 people; at my new school, it had two on a good day. I had to take a year off from orchestra. But you were always there, producing videos and making puns wherever in the world I was. I could talk about The Runaway Guys to my fledgling friends without uttering the phrase that everyone grew to hate: “Well, in Kansas…”

Even when I started to actually like it here, I kept watching your videos, just like always. Your optimism, humor and bad puns made me smile even on the hardest days. And the sheer amount of work you put into your videos made it clear that you cared about your viewers. It’s nice to know that someone thinks you’re worthy of hundreds, if not thousands, of Pokémon bios. It’s even nicer to be reassured that you matter, to literally be told that you make a difference. Somehow, you told me that right when I needed to hear it, even eight months after I moved.

And I know I’m not alone. You’ve helped millions of people relive their childhoods, made depression less terrible or just added a little more optimism to a world that, at times, can be cruel and unfair and terrible.

So on behalf of a lot of unspoken voices, thank you. Thank you so, so much.