Streamer CriticalBard talks about being the temporary face of PogChamp

Last week, Twitch removed the face of its hugely popular PogChamp emote, Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, after calling for more violence on the Capitol right after a mob ransacked the building. In the process, Twitch responded to a community suggestion for the emote – why not have a different face to represent the hype on Twitch every day?

So that’s what the company did. Three days after the start of the experiment, Omega “CriticalBard” Jones, a partner black streamer who writes music for critical role, took its turn as the face of the global emote. The racist harassment came almost immediately.

“At first it was good. I was nervous. I will say in advance that I have my mods ready on Twitch, ”Jones says. “And they were like, ‘Well, the person who’s a PogChamp today looks like he’s doing fine. So I think everything will be fine. I said ‘Ha but I’m black.’ Jones started getting comments on Twitter from people saying he didn’t look like PogChamp, that Twitch should bring back the old emote instead, and then “a ton of people, you know, saying racist things. After it uploaded to Twitch, however, the problems really started.

Jones was playing Overwatch with friends – “I don’t play well, that’s why I don’t compete,” he says – when Twitch users stormed his cat saying he didn’t deserve to be PogChamp. “But it happened about unimportant black lives and stuff,” Jones says. “And then someone mentioned White Lives Matter, whatever. And I said, “No, white lives don’t matter because white life isn’t a thing.” Someone cut it off.

The clip went viral in places like the Twitch drama subreddit / r / LivestreamFail and on the internet live. It has, however, been taken out of context. “I said you can be proud to be Italian, that you can be proud to be Scottish – because these are nationalities,” Jones says, echoing what he said in the full version of the clip. “It’s your heritage.” He continued:

You cannot be proud of being white. Because whiteness is a concept that was only created because blackness became a thing. And the only reason darkness is a thing is because we black people were taken from Africa without our consent, enslaved and left to dust. Our literal heritage and our identity have been taken from us. All we have to hold on to in America – most, most blacks – is our darkness. So there is a black culture, there is no white culture. There has never been a white culture.

It’s an elegant way to present a rather complicated concept, a concept that Internet users seem to want to misunderstand. To discuss race in America is to discuss power dynamics and history, which is difficult to understand if it is up to you not to understand it. Jones says he was trying to explain this to people. “But you know, racists have to be racists,” he says.

Jones says he wanted to be the face of PogChamp because it would mean a lot to other people who want to see marginalized people on Twitch. “I can face a little bull if that means someone else can see something that’s, you know, them. Their color. Or someone they can relate to, ”he says. He was also into the idea of ​​a community-based spinning emote. “The funny thing is, people don’t even care about PogChamp as a person. They just care about keeping what they consider a tradition, ”Jones says. “But if PogChamp is talking about that excitement, it doesn’t matter who the face is.”

Jones’ harassment points to a larger problem on Twitch: The site doesn’t seem to know how to protect its creators from marginalized backgrounds from the toxic elements of its community. Jones told me that the Twitch rep who originally contacted him to tell him he was the face of PogChamp said the company plans to give PogChamp additional moderation support in its channels in the future. But Jones says it’s not enough. “What bothers me about that is instead of doing what you can do, which is ban these people from your platform – if we’re going to get in there you have to start banning IP addresses, ”Jones says.

Plus, Jones says, it’s not as if the Black Twitch community hasn’t spoken to the company about the issue in the past. “Like, it wasn’t just yesterday that someone said, ‘Twitch you need to fix this problem.’ Racism has been rampant on Twitch for a long time. And they haven’t done anything about it yet, ”Jones says. “So that makes us say, ‘Okay, so what’s the point?'”

Twitch obliquely referred to the harassment of Jones in a Twitter thread yesterday, where the company wrote that it believes in celebrating diversity. A Twitch spokesperson sent me the following statement when I asked for more details:

Highlighting a new PogChamp every day was an idea that came straight from our community and was created with the spirit of celebrating the diversity of creators on Twitch. While we have seen an overwhelmingly positive response from the community and those highlighted, we are also in close contact with the new faces of PogChamp to offer support as needed. We do not tolerate harassment on Twitch and will take action if behavior by our service violates our policies.

But in Jones’ view, this is not enough. “They didn’t even say ‘we were sorry’. They said we’re working to make this place more diverse and all that, ”he said. “They didn’t condemn anything. They have to start condemning this stuff, ”Jones continues. “They have to start saying, ‘This is not what we want as a platform. This is not what we promote as a platform. And people will start to see the repercussions of their actions. Start to see the consequences of what they are doing. ”

Jones also made it clear that it wasn’t just random Twitch users who came to his stream to harass him. He says it was made by some Twitch Affiliates and Partners. “If Twitch is a company that says, ‘We don’t agree with this,’ you have to show that you don’t agree with this. AKA, terminate their accounts, get rid of their partner badges. Get rid of that affiliate status. Because I’m pretty sure in the partner and affiliate rules and everything, you can’t really, you know, do hate speech and stuff. But I guess when Twitch is making money, it’s okay?

The harassment did not deter Jones, however. Some in the community rallied to his defense, such as Hasan “hasanabi” Piker, a prominent political streamer, who defended Jones on his own path. “I loved watching Hasan’s music video,” Jones says. “One of the best things that can just give you all the light, the nutrients your life needs, is watching these people admire someone and expect them to like being on their side,” and they are not.

He also told me that he had seen a great influx of new subscribers – “But I’m not going to be like, ‘Thanks for being a racist,’ Jones jokes – and that he’s still here.“ Blacks have it. had to walk through this world on high alert, ever since we were practically born, “he said.” So there is absolutely nothing they can do. I got doxxed. I got death threats. You can say anything. that behind your keyboard that you can barely afford, with your two spectators.You can say it all, but understand that you are only feeding me.

February is Black History Month and Jones tells me that Twitch has already started reaching out to prominent black creators about activations. It’s an open question whether Twitch’s revised hateful conduct policy – which was announced in December and will go into effect at the end of this month – will have an impact on the crowds of people swarming marginalized creators. when Twitch puts them in the spotlight. As with everything else, the devil is in the app. Will Twitch protect its marginalized creators?