Sadly, beloved The Joy of Painting host Bob Ross did not live to see the outcome of the internet revolution, but that has not stopped him from having one of the most popular channels on the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch.

Last week, Twitch announced that it would be playing a nonstop Bob Ross marathon in honor of both Ross’ recent birthday and Twitch’s new Creative channel category, which is intended for content like painting, sculpting, digital art and so on. Before the marathon even began, the twitch.tv/bobross channel was already drawing in thousands of viewers and followers, and after the stream went live, tens of thousands of people tuned in to watch.

At this moment, the Bob Ross channel has the most live viewers of any channel on Twitch, with over 37,000 people watching at once. In the last week alone, the channel has received a total over 3.2 million views, and over 400,000 registered users are following the page.

Ross’ instant popularity on Twitch helped propel the new Creative category to the thirteenth most watched “game” for the month of October, putting it ahead of both StarCraft II and the Star Wars Battlefront beta.

While a number of The Joy of Painting episodes are available on YouTube, what really sets the Twitch stream apart is the live chat, which allows viewers to talk about the episode currently playing. Once the marathon went live, Twitch chat saw the birth of multiple Bob Ross memes, such as when users spam “RIP devil” when Ross cleans his brush by “beating the devil out of it.”

Twitch owner Amazon is likely monitoring the happy little accident that is the Bob Ross channel’s success, as it seems to have effortlessly captured the”second screen experience,” which is highly sought after by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Not only that, but Twitch even has people tuning in to a show in real time, something television networks have struggled with since the advent of DVR.

As the Bob Ross marathon nears its end, numerous Twitch users have begged the site to keep the stream going indefinitely, but so far Twitch has remained silent on whether it plans to continue airing the show. It seems unlikely that Twitch would continue playing the show nonstop forever, especially since it is unclear what kind of usage rights the site has for The Joy of Painting, but some users have suggested that the marathon could become an annual event.

Screenshot via Twitch | Bob Ross