In case you haven’t heard of it, Twitch Plays Pokemon (TPP) is the newest social experiment that’s exploding in popularity all over the internet. TPP is a live stream of the game Pokémon Red Version that is played by the viewers of the stream. It parses commands from the chat box and inputs them into the game. TPP has been likened to the Émile Borel quote that “with an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters, one will type Shakespeare’s plays.” The key differences being that instead of an infinite number of monkeys we have about sixty-thousand viewers, and instead of an infinite number of typewriters we have one emulator. TPP started off as a social experiment but has evolved into an integral part of the internet subculture. It’s no longer about seeing if the game can be completed with an anonymous viewer base; it’s now about the story the viewers have created to fit with their own actions.

The creators originally intended for it to have a small viewer base, and to have those viewers work together to complete the game. An average of sixty-thousand viewers is anything but small; most teamwork and coordination is impossible at this volume of inputs. The lack of teamwork is evident when you see how many actions that have been made that are detrimental to completing the game, like many of the higher leveled Pokémon being released.

Admittedly, the griefers (players who intentionally impede progress) could support the argument that TPP is just a social experiment. With any group of people, individuals who impede progress have to be expected, and seeing if those obstacles could be overcome with teamwork is a valid social experiment. However, the fanbase has even made the griefers’ actions viral– there’s a remembrance day for all of the Pokémon that were released: Bloody Sunday. There’s even a few admittedly silly religious belief systems that were spawned by TPP, complete with Facebook and Wikipedia pages, such as the Helix Fossil.

TPP is so viral that no event has gone unnoticed by the fanbase. Google Image searching “Twitch Plays Pokemon” will yield an absurd number of results with hardly any of them being actual gameplay. All of this fanart shows that TPP is no longer about seeing if a large, anonymous viewer base can complete the game, but about the story these anonymous people can create out of the actions of the viewers.