Despite Anger From People Who Don’t Seem To Know What A Vtuber Is, Vtuber Ironmouse Claims Record For Most Twitch Subscriptions Ever

Every couple of years, somebody breaks Twitch’s all-time paid subscriber record. Ludwig Ahgren, now mostly on YouTube, showed the world how it's done in 2021, running a subathon – short for subscription marathon – in which additional subscriptions added time to a clock. He remained live for 31 days and racked up over 280,000 subscriptions. Kai Cenat, Twitch’s biggest mainstream success story of the past few years, employed a similar formula last year and moved the needle just a hair past 306,000. Today they both got beat by a pink-haired anime girl.

After 30 days of continuous streaming, one of the most popular vtubers in the world, Ironmouse, just broke Cenat’s record, with her sub count sitting at 313,000 as of this publishing. After a certain point, these numbers become immaterial – Twitch’s subscription system is extremely game-able and does not paint a complete picture of popularity, money-making potential, or anything, really –  but the circumstances surrounding this one are what make it interesting. 

First, there’s Ironmouse herself. She’s a superstar these days, but her rise to prominence was far from a foregone conclusion. The person behind the bubbly-looking anime avatar suffers from a chronic illness called common variable immune deficiency, or CVID, which leaves her highly susceptible to infection, as well as a lung condition. She can barely go outside and, to this day, only “attends” IRL events by way of a remote-controlled robot with a screen and a camera attached. Her first subathon, which took place in 2022, helped put her on the map in part because there was no guarantee that she could last a full month, or even more than a handful of days. Against all odds, she pulled it off. It’s not an understatement to say that becoming a vtuber changed Ironmouse’s life; once isolated and bedridden, she now has community and the necessary funds to seek sufficient care for her own health. 

If the story ended there, it would be yet another example of Western media trying to make a heartwarming story out of tragic systemic failure, but Ironmouse is at least attempting to do something with her star power: half the money raised during the current subathon will be donated to the IDF – no, no, not the bad one! In this case, that regrettable acronym stands for Immune Deficiency Foundation, an organization for which Ironmouse and other streamers who support her have raised a staggering amount of money over the years.

So it’s for a good cause, but why here and now? This is where the game-ability of Twitch’s subscription system enters the equation. Every September, Twitch hosts an event called Subtember, in which it discounts the price of subscriptions to all streamers. This year, that actually meant basically bringing subscription prices back down to what used to be standard price after a platform-wide increase earlier this year, but a deal’s a deal. Even the human mind’s sturdiest defenses wither in the face of “25 percent off.” 

This year, however, there’s a twist: For the final five days of Subtember, Twitch is also offering bonus gift subscriptions, meaning that if a viewer uses Twitch’s gift subscription functionality to purchase five subscriptions for other viewers in chat, Twitch will sweeten the pot with a bonus subscription. But the reality of the situation contradicts Twitch’s own FAQ on the matter. What seems to actually happen is that Twitch throws in at least one additional subscription per five – sometimes many more.

Viewers have likened it to a gacha game; you put in a few subs, and you – or rather, everyone else in chat – might hit the jackpot. At this point, Twitch has contributed thousands to Ironmouse’s total number. In line with other elements of the current Twitch regime, it’s at least savvy marketing. A company otherwise so strapped for cash that it’s been forced to lay off nearly 1,000 employees is nonetheless helping a beloved streamer donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to a good cause.

While, again, the number means less than what Ironmouse is planning to do with it, that hasn’t stopped some around the Twitch community from taking issue with how she came by it. Fans of Cenat, the previous record holder, have voiced bewilderment at the idea that so many people are “subbing to a fictional character on a screen,” neglecting to understand that there is a real person behind the fictional character and, indeed, that real person’s story is an enormous part of her appeal. As a result, recent discourse around Ironmouse’s record has focused on a perceived battle between fan factions – between weebs and normies, two groups not nearly so well represented on Twitch until the titans that are Ironmouse and Cenat came along. 

Based on an admittedly cursory survey of the damage, it seems like perhaps there’s been more conversation about people objecting to Ironmouse’s big moment than actual people objecting, but these sorts of divisions are not unprecedented. During Ironmouse’s first subathon in 2022, a landmark moment for vtubers, some of the more toxic elements of Twitch’s community suggested that vtubers were playing on easy mode, that not using their real appearances somehow gave them an unfair advantage over regular streamers. However, as Ironmouse and a growing army of vtubers large and small have shown us, vtubing is extremely fertile soil for high-effort innovation. Unshackled from the bonds of physical reality, they can create games within games and blur the lines between the real and digital worlds. 

Other big-name streamers, including Ahgren, have thrown their support behind Ironmouse. 

“She's a great streamer, has one of the best stories on Twitch, and is also donating half the money raised to charity,” he wrote on Twitter. “GO IRONMOUSE!!!!”

Cenat, ever the showman, has taken to playing up more of a rivalry angle, acknowledging that the record was broken but suggesting that he’s gonna break it again.

In reality, both Ironmouse and Cenat are intensely creative; it would be hard to argue that either deserves to hold the record more than the other. Cenat does Big And Loud better than anybody, turning marathon runs through popular games into bonafide events. Even the trailer for his Elden Ring playthrough oozed ambition. Bringing in a “therapist” to counsel him through the expansion was meta icing atop an already solid sundae. Ironmouse, meanwhile, has a backstory and lore, as well as serious singing chops. She’s also much wackier than you might initially assume. Thanks to her digital avatar, she can be whatever she wants on stream, including a worm. Now, to honor a promise she made to her community in exchange for breaking Twitch’s subscriber record, she’ll be attending the Streamer Awards later this year as a worm.

Specifically, this worm:

If you’re angry at that worm, I don’t know what to tell you. At least find a less likable worm to be angry at.

Ironmouse is, of course, over the moon, which she and her community intend to fuck.

"Words cannot express how I am feeling nor can they express my gratitude," she wrote on Twitter. "Thank you all so much for the incredible support and thank you for changing my life. Thank you for being the best community in the universe. WE DREAMED BIG AND WE DID IT BROS! I LOVE YOU ALL!"