Jarett Kobek - Only Americans Burn in Hell

HRH navigated to the Twitch channel of a pretty young woman who lived in Tokyo.

The woman was not playing a video game. She was interacting with the livechat. She was receiving donations whenever she impersonated a character from Final Fantasy XV .

HRH navigated to the Twitch channel of a young woman who was dressed as Diana from Wonder Woman . The woman was drinking AriZona Iced Tea and playing South Park: The Fractured but Whole .

HRH navigated to the Twitch channel of a man in his twenties, who was cursing wildly as he attempted to play a game called Cuphead .

“ Cuphead is a crowd-funded odyssey into an ersatz replica of animation from the Great Depression,” said HRH. “I have never indulged, but I am informed that it is a work of manifold difficulty.”

HRH navigated to the Twitch channel of a young woman who lived in Sidcup.

The Sidcup woman was playing The Sims 4 , a piece of software that simulated the appearance of a Twentieth-Century AD suburban life that been murdered by the international capitalist class.

The sex worker watched the Sidcup woman demonstrate the décor of a simulated house in The Sims 4 .

The house in The Sims 4 was very moderne Danske.

It stood in contrast to the visible décor of the woman’s Sidcup home.

“This is live?” asked the sex worker.

“Twitch is where the Western world’s underclasses go to demonstrate their lack of utility in the face of increasing mechanization and globalized manufacturing,” said HRH. “Education has failed them. These children produce nothing but hours of live video. Each day hosts an onslaught of countless banal gigabytes. Millions of other children hang upon these performers, watching their every gesture and nuance.”

“It’s people playing video games?” asked the sex worker.

“What you are witnessing is the death of traditional media. Do you think these children have the capacity to thrill to the slight characterization that you discovered in Lovecraft? Do you believe that after hours of this plotless false intimacy they will return to television? Here we encounter the terminal point for millennia of narrative. Goodbye the Ferrari, Tony Kushner.”

“I feel fucking old,” said the sex worker. “And I’m only twenty-seven.”

“Worry not. All of the Shropshire lads who salivate over MILF pornography will seek to unlock your wisdom of the ages. Forget you not, madame, that blood is a rover.”

“Is this what we’re doing tonight?” asked the sex worker. “Are we going to fuck or what?”

“Such crassness!” cried HRH. “Delightful! Delightful! Did I not inform you that I would demonstrate the greatest perversity? Do not think that Twitch itself constitutes the horror. There remains another dimension.”

HRH scrolled down on the webpage hosting the Sidcup woman’s Twitch channel.

HRH clicked the donate button.

The donate button opened another browser tab in Google Chrome.

HRH switched to this tab.

HRH filled out the form on the donate page.

HRH clicked donate.

A notification appeared on the Sidcup woman’s stream.

It informed the woman and her viewers that HRH had donated £2,000.

The woman pulled off her headphones and began to cry.

“One cannot donate to any Twitch channel which experiences true popularity,” said HRH. “Fellows with an audience in the hundreds of thousands will not evidence the appropriate response when presented with a mere £2,000.”

The Sidcup woman screamed into her computer: “No. Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. What? No. No. No. Oh my God. No. Oh my God. No. No. No. Fuck. Fucking Hell. Oh my God, no. No. No. Fuck. No. What? What? WHAT?”

“How much money do you have?” asked the sex worker.

“The zeroes pile up like the bloated corpses of dissident intellectuals at Dachau,” said HRH. “Imagine the earnings from a weapons-for-hostages scheme with the Islamic Republic of Iran and multiply that figure by a billion.”

HRH leaned back in his DXRacer chair.

HRH vaped indica.

“It strikes my mind that perhaps there is a way to raise the pleasure,” said HRH. “Would you care to indulge?”

HRH taught the sex worker to navigate channels on Twitch.

The sex worker navigated channels on Twitch.

The sex worker found channels belonging to sadder members of the Twitch community. People with four viewers, people who were streaming games that no one liked, people who were talking to an audience of no one.

The sex worker donated $1,000 to a bald man with a goatee who was playing the VGA remake of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire .

The sex worker donated $3,000 to a man who was playing World of Warcraft .

The sex worker donated $5,000 to a woman in Seoul. The woman was not playing a video game. She was watering her plants and singing along to “Lip & Hip” by 현아.

All three streamers pulled off their headphones. One started crying. All started cursing. One talked about dreams coming true.

“You see?” asked HRH. “One can change a life with nothing more than a donation of $3,000. Streaming video is the intellectual sweatshop of the future.”

HRH told the sex worker to take it up a notch.

She donated $20,000 to a young woman dressed in Sailor Moon cosplay.

Her shriek was so piercing that both HRH and the sex worker had to cover their ears.

“Shall we go for the big score?” asked HRH. “Do you wish to inhale the sweet smell of success?”

“What?” asked the sex worker.

“$100,000,” said HRH.

“You actually have this much?”

“The bodies of Dachau. Arms sales to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” said HRH. “For one night only, my cherub, with the contours of your Cthulhoid membrane illuminated by a liquid crystal display, money is of no concern.”

“Let’s do it,” said the sex worker.

“My one request is that I pick your victim,” said HRH.

HRH navigated to the Twitch channel of a young woman who was dressed like a sexy unicorn.

The sexy unicorn wasn’t playing a game. She was speaking to the people in her channel’s livechat.

“Okay, SweetA, thanks for the sub,” said the sexy unicorn.

“No, DuskDot, I don’t own a gun,” said the sexy unicorn.

“Here she is,” said HRH. “I have watched this one for a great long while. Her popularity is minimal. Her desperation is great. With one click, you will change her life forever. Imagine the surprise!”

The sex worker clicked on the donate button.

The sex worker filled out the form.

The sex worker donated the money.

A notification rose up on the sexy unicorn’s Twitch stream.

The sexy unicorn sat in stunned silence.

The sexy unicorn could not believe what she was seeing.

The sexy unicorn checked to see if the donation was real.

The sexy unicorn threw off her headphones.

The sexy unicorn screamed.

The sexy unicorn started dancing in her lower-middle-class bedroom.

HRH leaned back in his DXRacer chair.

HRH vaped indica.

HRH smiled.

HRH experienced the shudder of a tantric orgasm.

“Do you realize that we’ve just changed that girl’s life?” asked the sex worker. “We totally fucking changed everything.”

“I am aware,” said HRH.

“I can’t believe it,” said the sex worker.

The sexy unicorn was still dancing.

The sexy unicorn started jumping on her bed.

“She’s probably never seen that kind of money in her life,” said the sex worker.

“I guarantee that it is a new experience,” said HRH. “Here, madame, is the true perversity. This is from where the greatest pleasure derives. You sit there and you believe yourself enmeshed in generosity, in the glow of altruism, in the spirit of human giving, but tonight you have done nothing but practice a refined form of cruelty.”