Jerma985: Comedian, Philanthropist, and Friend
Jeremy Harrington, more commonly known as Jerma945 is a 36 year old youtube and twitch streamer well known for his interactions with chat, his naturally comedic banter, and his high production interactive streams. While his presence on social media continues to grow and draw in crowds of new and old fans Jerma has never changed how he wants to be perceived online or let the popularity dictate his streams.
To understand Jerma it is important to look back at his start. Jeremy was born in Boston, Massachusetts and originally started voice acting on Newgrounds in 2005. While he only did a few roles and has since stopped professionally voice acting he has continued to use different voices to create personas that he uses in skits and random quips mid-stream. In 2011 Jerma decided to start a youtube channel where he mostly played Team Fortress 2(TF2). In 2014 we got the first glimpse of the chaos known as Jerma985’s channel with the start of the Jerma Rumble; which is an annual video of all Jermas persona’s wrestling tournament style against each other until there is a final winner in the game series WWE2K. In 2016, he even did a live action version of the Jerma Rumble, which garnered a lot of attention due to the quality of his skits. By 2016, Jerma moved to Twitch as a full time streamer where he gained more popularity for his constant interactions with chat while streaming games and “just chatting”. On twitch Jerma mostly posted sims playthroughs which in future years became the premise for his most popular stream to date and unconventional streams like his green screen streams which allow for a multitude of fan interaction both on stream and on platforms like twitter and reddit. While Jerma may seem like a normal streamer he definitely interacts with his fans more often than other influencers and talks to them on a friend-like level. The casualty and comfortable atmosphere his streams create allow for more friendly fan-to-fan interactions and fans-to-influencer interactions.
Jerma has never been about the money and started streaming for the fun of it but by using the platform Twitch he is able to earn money through subscribers and donations from chat. He also chooses to not run ad breaks mid stream which would allow more revenue for him from Twitch. As he started to become more popular and gained a larger following he began doing donation streams. From 2014–2016 Jerma participated in a charity stream effect called Tip of the hats, a Team Fortress 2 based charity event to raise money for camp one step; which is a camp for children with cancer that comes at no cost to the families due to the donations received during charity live streams and other donations. In 2014, Jerma and his fan base raised $100,000 for camp one step. In January 2022, the Nevada Science Center who previously worked with Jerma for his Archeology stream posted on twitter that Jerma and his fan base donated $10,000 to the science center.
Jerma’s main priority seems to always be fan interaction and is always trying to find ways to make the stream fun and exciting for fans by creating things like scenarios or skit streams that have fan based interaction through Twitch’s polls and other twitch resources similar to twitch’s democracy mode. In 2021, for his archeology stream Jerma worked with the Nevada Science Center’s archaeologist named Josh to break some rocks he found, find a treasure chest, rare pokemon cards, and find a special rock with minecraft diamonds in it. While this stream was not interactive it was a skit based stream where he was dressed as an archaeologist and many fans fell in love with the skit and the fake pokemon cards he created with independent artists for the stream. If you’re interested the whole stream can be found on Jerma’s second youtube channel called 2nd Jerma.
In 2019, Jerma hosted his first fully intractable stream on Twitch which was a carnival stream where he had the audience control a ball launcher with WASD and voting in chat to shoot frog on lily pads, he boxed a robot controlled by the viewers, dunk him in a dunk tank, claw game, made cotton candy, and had clowns to make caricatures. This stream was very popular and fans really liked how they could interact with every aspect of the stream while Jerma got to read chat and see how the robot was commanded. The stream was even mentioned in an article by The Gamer which praised him for having the stream run smoothly with 15k+ subscribers voting, and called him “one of the brilliant entertainers on Twitch and it’s great to see so many people tune in to see his carnival finally come to life”. Full Stream. Because the carnival stream went so well and had such a unique engagement method it seems that Jerma wanted to try and to do that style of stream again and in 2021 with the help of other twitch streamers and sponsored by coinbase, Jerma was able to make a sims based stream called Jerma’s Playhouse where fans got to vote on sim-like commands for Jerma to do like eat, sleep, exercise, shower, go to the bathroom, hire services, flirt, buy items, and go to work. This stream was a great success and had such a high production value that it brought a lot of attention to his channel and garnished more subscribers. Full Stream. Since the production of Jerma’s playhouse many web new sources have written about the uniqueness and success of the stream. Game Rant said that they found the level of freedom given with the streams plugins was very impressive. They also said that “The stream has notably high production value and it is obvious a lot of effort was put in”.
As Jerma’s channel continues to grow in popularity from the success of the Dollhouse stream other streamers noticed his success and he was even nominated for the 2022 Streamer Awards hosted by QTCinderella and Maya Higa for Best Streamed Event with the Jerma’s Dollhouse stream, and League of their Own. Jerma ended up winning both categories and received praise and applause from his fellow streamers at the event. The official streamer awards twitter posted about Jerma winning the League of their Own award “There’s no real way to describe a Jerma stream, in the sense that you never know what’s in store when he goes live. From games, science experiments, dollhouse simulations and even finding his replacement, @jerma985 rightfully deserves #TheStreamerAwards League of their Own Award”.
Jerma is a unique man with out of this world ideas that always seem to make both him and his fans happy. It is nice to be a part of his audience because you truly feel a connection with him through his interactions and he can always put a smile on your face or make you laugh when you are having a bad day.
Citation:
Center, Nevada Science. “Thank You @Jerma985 and His Community for a $10K Donation!” Twitter, 21 Jan. 2022, https://twitter.com/ScienceNevada/status/1484629516446093313.
Jczazz. “Jerma985 — Jerma Opens a Treasure Chest and Reads a Letter.” Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/jerma985/clip/ElegantDeafHummingbirdNomNom-auElX8Iqva2M_cLe?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time.
Jerma. “Huge Shoutout to All Who Donated, or Came to Watch Day 1 of Tip of the Hats. Over $50,000 Raised so Far. Can’t Wait to See the Final Number!” Twitter, 30 Mar. 2014, https://twitter.com/jerma985/status/450101154564022272?lang=en.
Sato, Kazuo Alerik, and Kazuo Alerik Sato (168 Articles Published) . “Twitch Streamer Jerma985 Is Playing a Weird Version of IRL Sims.” Game Rant, 21 Aug. 2021, https://gamerant.com/jerma985-twitch-irl-sims-stream/.
“The Streamer Awards.” The Streamer Awards, https://thestreamerawards.com/.
Switzer, Eric. “Twitch Streamer Creates Backyard Carnival Using Twitch-Controlled Robots.” TheGamer, 23 Sept. 2019, https://www.thegamer.com/jerma985-carnival-twitch-stream/.
TheRealTiiks. “R/jerma985 — Jerma Broke His Award!” Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/jerma985/comments/tczkwg/jerma_broke_his_award/.
The Streamer Awards. “There’s No Real Way to Describe a Jerma Stream,https://twitter.com/StreamerAwards/status/1502879661139062786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1502879661139062786%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.invenglobal.com%2Farticles%2F16733%2Fall-the-award-winners-at-the-streamer-awards-2022.
Tipofthehats. “Tipofthehats.” Tip of the Hats, 18 Sept. 2016, https://tipofthehats.tumblr.com/post/150585171809/jerma-showed-up-to-toth-in-person-and-he-brought.
Unimportantone. “Jerma985 — ASUJST7256.” Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/jerma985/clip/CrepuscularEndearingFrogPeanutButterJellyTime-cm48zi9uKE9F4eru?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time.
Wargur. “Jerma985 — ;p;” Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/jerma985/clip/BreakableUgliestAlmondGivePLZ?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time.
