40,000 people are playing Pokemon Red AT THE SAME TIME

I'm completely baffled at how this thing skyrocketed. If you haven't seen it yet, a guy set up an emulator for Red that allows you to enter a button input into the chat and Red will react. It's been going on for almost 4 day, and it's up to 40,000 people right now

http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon