It started with PUBG, but he’s all the way down the rabbit hole now. Fans of Tanmay Bhat already know how much he loves the hell out of his midnight gaming sessions, and chatting with fans and other players while he’s at it. Now he’s taking things one step further.

This Republic Day, Tanmay Bhat is leveraging his seven million-strong social media following for a good cause. “I believe [live] streaming is the future, and I plan to do one massive stream for charity every year,” Bhat told Dead Ant.

He kickstarts 2020 by partnering with Mumbai YouTuber Saiman (Says), who announced an initiative to plant trees in December 2019.

“I was inspired by Mr. Beast, who’s doing a worldwide campaign to plant 20 million trees [to fight climate change],” Saiman Says. “So I thought, let’s do something on a smaller scale in India and set an example for other influencers as well. I believe everyone who has a following should use it to help/give back to society in some way.”

TreeSena is a collaboration with Mission Green Mumbai. The aim is to plant over 4,000 trees in and around Aarey Colony in Mumbai, replacing the 2000+ trees that Aarey Forest recently lost in the area to a controversial metro construction last October. The idea is to give back twice as much to the area, in the spaces where they have permission.

The initiative has raised about Rs. 6 lakh already through Saiman’s own videos on his channel, Saiman Says. He hopes to get closer to, if not reach his goal of Rs. 16 lakh with tomorrow’s Treemathon. Through the eight-hour-long session, fellow YouTubers and comedians will join Bhat and Saiman for a 30-minute shot each at beating Getting Over It, which Bhat describes as a “rage-inducing single-player game that’s damn difficult to play”.

Which is exactly why Bhat wanted to watch comedians take a crack at it. “It makes for great content, and I thought comedians playing this game would be very fun to watch,” Bhat says. “It’s a fun little experiment I’m trying this year. It was put together in a very short period of time, so there are no sponsors or anything; it’s on a really small scale. I guess we’ll learn from this one and see how to do it thereafter.”

Who’s Coming? What time?

Tomorrow’s lineup features our other favourite gaming heroes, Jose Covaco and Carryminati, as well as Sorabh Pant, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Kaneez Surka, Kumar Varun, Sahil Shah, Urooj Ashfaq, Be You Nick and Kenny Sebastian, with some last-minute surprises.

Viewers can tune in between 2-8 pm tomorrow on Bhat’s YouTube channel to watch this shit go down. And those who want to donate to the cause can do so through Bhat’s Super Chat, as well as PayTM, Google Pay and other options that will be shared during the streamathon tomorrow. And then of course there’s always treesena.org, where the campaign is on till February.

Winner Winner, What’s For Dinner?

The top five donors tomorrow will have trees named after them, score a meet and greet with Bhat, as well as a free pass to his next live show.

FYI: The cost of each sapling is Rs. 380. These saplings will be over 4 feet tall, and will be maintained for a year after they are planted. A minimum donation of Rs. 50 (or more) from you will help them achieve this goal!

Wait, Watch?

Of course you can always just watch it here: