This guy turned a joke on Twitter into a fundraiser and a published book. What have you done today?
If you're something of a Twitter fiend you may remember Nate Crowley (aka @FrogCroakley ) from the legendary Daniel Barker's Birthday Saga.
What you may not know is that in December last year Crowley ended up raising tonnes of money for endangered frogs by inventing fake video games. You may also be unaware that Crowley has turned this strange happenstance into a published book.
Let's start at the beginning.
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Crowley says this was supposed to be, "a nice, cathartic way of blowing a couple of hours having silly ideas," but that around tweet 200 he realised things may have escalated.
The tweets themselves are masterful, covering the comedy spectrum from punny...
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...to deeply disturbing.
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Some even looked like legitimately awesome ideas for games.
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By the end he clocked in at exactly 1,000 tweets, but tweet 316 in particular was a game changer. Out of a love for frogs Crowley set up a JustGiving page for the Zoological Society of London and changed the rules: he would invent a game for every £5 donated. He even offered illustrations for £20 donations. It ended up raising £1,986.04, pretty good for runaway Twitter tomfoolery.
Why frogs you ask? Well we asked that too, and Crowley told us:
"They are fascinating, beautiful lads and they tend to get forgotten about because people concentrate so hard on bigger, more charismatic mammals. But frogs are having a garbage time of it — amphibian biodiversity is taking a huge kicking right now, and it’s something that flies under a lot of people’s radar.
"Also, I really don’t like how frogs have somehow become a hate symbol due to the whole Pepe thing — I really feel for the guy who first drew that cartoon — so I figure they need some good PR."
Now he's taken it one step further with his new book, 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed).
Like the fundraiser, the book was born of idle joking around.
"I had been joking with my agent about trying to sell a book of the tweets instead of my next novel, to save us both some time. But then people started honestly asking for me to turn the thread into a book, and we had a bit of a moment of realisation."
The publisher sent a few pages and they look incredible — insofar as they range from brilliantly banal to emotionally scarring.
You can also check out the genius launch trailer below, in which Crowley interviews some of the heroes from his imaginary games. My personal favourite: Seapuncher.
I heartily salute Nate Crowley and his twisted imagination. Let the story of a joke born of distraction culminating in fundraising and real-life publication be a lesson to us all. Silly Twitter jokes can be a force for good in this world!
