Twitch will change the face of PogChamp every 24 hours

Twitch removed its popular PogChamp message a few days ago after the person on which it was based, Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, posted a few tweets encouraging more violence over the crowd after the riot at the Capitol. However, the spirit of PogChamp will live on: today, Twitch announced that it would be cycling through different versions of the emote every 24 hours.

The reason PogChamp was popular was because it was the world’s hype emote: when something cool happened on Twitch, you would be sure to see people wandering around in the chat. While author (and, in full disclosure, my friend) Ryan Broderick put it in his excellent newsletter Garbage Day, Twitch’s removal of the PogChamp emote was probably employed to take the site as mainstream.

“The other big part of this is that Twitch’s long-term goal as a business seems to be completely separate from its reputation as an ESPN for gamers,” Broderick writes. “The PogChamp debacle is therefore perfect for Twitch – a small change that indicates they are no longer in line with Gutierrez and everything within the specific toxic tensions of the pro-gaming community he represents.”

Twitch’s pursuit of the main relevance of the mainstream did not begin in 2020, and a year that was mostly within helped move the site there. Perhaps the biggest win – and the strongest sign – was that Twitch started achieving the goals, representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)’s stream with some of Twitch’s biggest stars, which was one of the biggest individual streams the site has. never had. saw. The idea that there was a difference between the influence of Twitch and the influence of the mainstream evaporated the moment AOC’s stream went dark. (Since then, internet-friendly Congressman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has also streamed Between us with a cast of all-star broadcasters.)

I contacted Twitch for comment and will update this story when I hear back.

PogChamp is dead. Long live PogChamp.