David Hunt, known online as GrandPooBear,[8] grew up in Michigan and attended the University of Colorado Boulder.[9] An avid snowboarder, he was in an accident in April 2013 which left him severely injured.[10][11] While spending months in recovery, he turned to video games as a new passion to focus on, saying: "I was bored on the couch, and I decided I wanted to become really good at one video game, Super Mario Bros. 3."[2]
Hunt lives with his wife, Gina Hunt, who helps operate their streaming business.[9][12] They had their first child in January 2019.[5]
Career
Hunt started his streaming career playing DayZ, and soon moved on to Super Mario Bros. 3 speedrunning.[11] After the 2015 release of Super Mario Maker, Hunt began learning Kaizo techniques from playing over 5,000 hours of the game, including levels created by PangaeaPanga, and created a series of video tutorials on Kaizo game mechanics with walkthroughs of his own levels.[13] He became a prominent video game streamer of Super Mario Maker 2,[14] and helped found the company Warp World, which focuses on creating software applications that help streamers.[5] He is well known for completing unique or difficult challenges, such as spending over a year clearing 1,000 expert levels in a row in Super Mario Maker 2,[15] or becoming the first person to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 with the Nintendo Power Glove.[16] As of 2020, he is a full-time game streamer.[17]
Prominent Kaizo creator BarbarousKing named his Grand Poo World series after GrandPooBear.[18] Hunt has said, "the first [Grand Poo World] changed how people make ROM hacks." Hunt was invited to become an official Red BullEsports Athlete on December 14, 2018.[19][2]
Speedrunning events
Hunt has also appeared at and hosted a number of speedrunning events and other video game tournaments, both in-person and virtual. He has performed speedruns of both Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Maker at various Games Done Quick events,[3][4] participated in Fall Guys tournaments at Twitch Rivals events,[20] and performed with other streamers in a recreation of the TV show Survivor in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.[21]
At Summer Games Done Quick 2018—in a speedrun race of Super Mario Bros. 3 against another streamer, Mitchflowerpower—Hunt attracted attention for accidentally causing his opponent's game to crash, forcing him to restart the game.[22] Hunt waited for his opponent to catch up as a show of sportsmanship, but the game crashed again later in the event. No prize money was at stake, but Hunt said: "I caused it. I take responsibility. I'm gonna take 5 to feel bad and be back out. Mitch deserved a better ending."
In addition to appearing at events, Hunt has also hosted his own series of in-person speedrunning events called GrandPOOBear's Speedrun Sessions.[6] These events were co-operated by Hunt's sponsor Red Bull, and in some cases were run as a component of Red Bull's own AdrenaLAN event.[23] The events focused on Super Mario-related games, and have featured other streamers and speedrunners from the community.
During his career, Hunt has played Super Mario Maker, a game that allows players to design and publish their own video game levels. In January 2016, one of Hunt's levels named "Pile of Poo-POOgatory" was deleted from Nintendo's platform.[26] A representative from Nintendo said the level was deleted because of the word "poo" in the level title (despite the fact that the Super NES title EarthBound had a character named "Poo" in it). After appealing, the same representative called Hunt during a stream and claimed the level would be restored. A few days later, Nintendo recanted the decision, and the level remained deleted. One month later, Hunt found that Nintendo had deleted all of his levels without notice. In this case, Nintendo confirmed that Hunt's content had not been flagged for inappropriate activity such as cheating, but did not say why the content was deleted.
A similar incident occurred in 2019 with Hunt's content on Super Mario Maker 2, this time with Nintendo threatening to ban Hunt from the platform.[27][28] Hunt was not the only individual to have levels deleted in this manner, for which Nintendo has received criticism from news outlets such as Kotaku and Polygon.[29][30] Other creators such as PattyTTV spoke out in support of Hunt, but Nintendo has yet to comment on why Hunt's content was removed.[31]
Glitchcon "stream-sniping" incident
In late 2020, Hunt participated in GlitchCon, a part of the Twitch Rivals program. While playing in a Fall Guys tournament, Twitch found that xQc, one of Hunt's teammates, engaged in "stream sniping" during the tournament, a tactic where a player watches an opposing team's stream to gain a competitive advantage using their opponent's point of view.[32] All members of xQc's team, including Hunt by association, had to return all prize money they had received, and they received both a 6-month ban from participation in Twitch Rivals and a 7-day suspension from streaming on Twitch.[33] Hunt's 7-day suspension, along with one other team member, was later reduced to only three days. Hunt publicly apologized for the incident and said: "I should have said something, instead I got swept up in playing with a group I don't normally do."[34]
TheDragonFeeney allegations
On February 16, 2021, streamer TheDragonFeeney released a statement on Twitter accusing Hunt of emotionally manipulating, publicly belittling and sexualizing her.[35] She claimed that he had been gaslighting and guilt-tripping her and others for years but that she had finally had enough. She identified the instigating moment as a comment Hunt made on stream: "I am angry at Feen that she planned a game without me, because I invite her to everything that I do. I'm mad at her now." She also claims, after telling him that she felt that his actions in a game of Among Us were unfair, meta and full of "backroom deals", that "David had not actually taken responsibility for his actions, and instead turned the blame on me in a way that made me feel I was the one in the wrong, and that I was the one being a downer." She also claimed that, in 2017, Hunt made lewd comments about her in front of her and her husband, and, in 2018, he grabbed her breast at a speedrunning event.
In Hunt's response,[36] he denied grabbing her breast, and claimed that the lewd comments she mentioned were taken out of context, "purposely manipulating to make me look like some sort of creep." In regards to her gaslighting allegations, he said: "I clearly was failing at getting my point across in any meaningful way." He says the on-stream comment was just a sarcastic joke: "I am one of those people who deal with hurt in jokes. I am someone that likes to be invited when my friends do things, and it hurts when they don't." He also emphasized to his fanbase that he doesn't want this to turn into a "choose sides" war and "make sure that my community - and I understand it is large - does not attack anyone".[citation needed]
