A popular Fortnite pro Twitch streamer just paid off his mom's student loans. Gamers - especially streamers - often get a bad rap, with the negative deeds of some amplified above all the rest. The good that some do often gets lost in the shuffle, and while many who make a lot of money often ignore where they came from, some precious few ensure those who helped them get where they have gotten are taken care of. Aydan Conrad is one of those people.
Student loan debt in the United States is a major issue. The average owed by 2016 college graduates is more than $37,000 - an amount that, if paid back over the course of 10 years, represents a financial handicap of over $380 per month. That's a lot of money for Americans, over 60 percent of whom are unable to handle a $500 emergency without going into debt. While some U.S. presidential candidates have proposed solutions to this issue, the country lags behind much of the rest of the world in addressing this crisis. While Aydan or any single person can't solve the problem of student debt on his own, he was glad to solve his mother's personal student debt crisis.
Polygon reports Aydan elected to free his mother of her student loan debt. The exact dollar amount of her loans is unclear, but the Fortnite streamer paid them off in full. Aydan has the means to do this: not only does he have 1.4 million followers on Twitch, which surely represents a steady income, but he is also a member of Ghost Gaming, with more than $127,000 in competitive winnings to date. Nevertheless, this is a huge contribution for anyone to make toward eliminating another's financial woes. He even called his mom to tell her the good news during a Twitch stream, which resulted in perhaps one of the most objectively feel-good moments in Twitch history. It has since been uploaded many times to YouTube, with one of the videos embedded below:
At first, Aydan's mom was incredulous. “You can’t," she says in the video. "It’s not a federal loan. I don’t think you can touch that.” Her disbelief transforms into shock when he names a person through whom he apparently could have made the payment. After his mother finally accepts that he's not messing with her, she breaks down into tears as Aydan barely holds back his own. After everyone regained their composure, Aydan tells his mom that his fans made this possible for her.
This truly is a beautiful moment - and one that is far too rare in today's gaming landscape. When one thinks of events involving streamers, incidents like an Australian Fortnite streamer who assaulted his pregnant wife on camera, one who strangled a cat live on her Twitch stream, or another who accidentally worked her adult content-related cam job on her Twitch channel come to mind. The number of truly wholesome Twitch streaming stories is depressingly low. What Aydan did was impressive by any metric. His mother - and the gaming community in general - should be proud that he was willing to make that kind of sacrifice, and other Fortnite players should take note and try to do the same.