Twitch streamer Matthew ‘Mizkif’ Rinaudo was left stunned after a heartwarming conversation with a fan of deaf FaZe Clan star Soleil ‘EwOk’ Wheeler.
Like many popular broadcasters on Amazon’s video platform, Mizkif attended TwitchCon 2019 in San Diego, where he met up with plenty of friends, streaming colleagues, and EwOk herself.
There was one interaction at the event that surprised him, however, and left him in tears, after he was personally thanked by one of the FaZe star’s superfans – who was also deaf like Wheeler – for everything he had done to promote the deaf community online.
“This guy came up to me for EwOk, and he gave me his phone,” Rinaudo explained on his September 30 stream from the San Diego zoo. The Twitch star revealed he thought he was asking for a photo to be taken, before he saw the text on the phone.
“It had text on it, and it said ‘Thank you for all that you do for Ewok’. He was deaf, so I messaged him back and said that it was my pleasure. He was like, ‘You helped our community so much’, and I was like ‘damn’.”
Mizkif’s girlfriend Maya Higa, who boasts her own following for her Just Chatting streams, interjected into the story that Rinaudo started crying when he read the messaged.
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He didn’t deny it either, and said he was blown away by what Ewok’s fan had written to him: “It was crazy, I started crying yeah. It’s nuts to see these people, and their change so much.”
It wasn’t the first time Mizkif had cried during the TwitchCon weekend either. He also revealed earlier in the stream that when he met EwOk herself at the San Diego event he started crying then too, because he was so happy.
“You were crying?” he replied to his chat as they spammed ‘FeelsStrongMan’. “So was I, dude. When I met EwOk, I was supposed to be going on another stream, and then I met EwOk and started crying, so I dipped and went to Subway instead.”
EwOk and Mizkif have shared a fun relationship across Twitch since TimTheTatman first fired the deaf streamer into the spotlight. Most recently, Rinaudo wished Wheeler a happy 14th birthday in sign language, alongside a message saying he was “proud” of her.