Back in October, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez played the viral murder mystery game Among Us for the first time, with the help of left-wing vlogger Hasan Piker and several other Twitch and gaming personalities. Drawing in over 400,000 concurrent viewers, the stream was hailed as a revolutionary way to engage with voters ahead of the 2020 election.
Now, AOC’s livestreaming has also proven to be a very effective fundraising tool. Yesterday (November 28), she took to Twitch for her second Among Us stream, once again joined by Piker, alongside YouTuber (and former Dazed 100er) ContraPoints, and Canadian MP Jagmeet Singh.
This time though, AOC wasn’t drumming up voter support. Instead, she aimed to raise funds to support people affected by the coronavirus pandemic. “Today I’m using the stream to fundraise for local food pantries, eviction defense legal aid, and community support organizations,” she wrote in a tweet shortly after announcing the stream.
In the end, it’s safe to say that the fundraising effort was a success. Over the course of the six-hour stream – which was started “on a whim” – AOC reports that viewers collectively raised $200,000.
In case you’ve missed out on the Among Us hype, the game itself involves running around a spaceship and performing tasks with up to ten players. Two of these players are impostors, and have to kill the rest before they’re found out and voted off the ship.
AOC’s full November 28 stream is available in full here, or watch the highlights from her debut stream, which also included Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her daughter, the climate activist Isra Hirsi.
Days after the original stream, Among Us was the subject of a massive hack that spammed pro-Trump messages via the in-game chat. The developers, InnerSloth, subsequently rolled out “emergency maintenance” and have since introduced updates to address the issue.