Twitch will change PogChamp’s face every 24 hours

Twitch deleted its popular PogChamp emote a few days ago after the person it was based on – Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez – posted tweets encouraging more crowd violence following the riot on Capitol Hill. The spirit of PogChamp, however, will live on: today, Twitch announced that it will be reviewing different versions of the emote every 24 hours, starting today.

The reason PogChamp was popular was because it was the site’s global hype emote: when something cool was happening on Twitch, you could be sure to see people poking themselves into the chat. As writer (and, full disclosure, my friend) Ryan Broderick said in his excellent Garbage Day newsletter, Twitch removing the PogChamp emote was probably in the service of making the site truly mainstream.

“The other big aspect of this is that Twitch’s long-term goal as a business seems to completely dissociate itself from ESPN’s reputation for gamers,” Broderick writes. “So the PogChamp debacle is basically perfect for Twitch – a small change that indicates that they are no longer aligned with Gutierrez and anything that falls under the specific toxic strain of the pro-gaming community he represents.”

Twitch’s push towards truly mainstream relevance didn’t start in 2020, and a year spent mostly indoors has helped move the site there. Perhaps the biggest win – and the strongest signal – that Twitch was starting to hit those goals was Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) ‘s flow with some of Twitch’s biggest stars, who was the one of the biggest individual feeds the site has ever seen. seen. The idea that there was a difference between Twitch influence and mainstream influence evaporated just as the AOC flow died down. (Since then, Internet-savvy Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has also broadcast Among us with a cast of all-star broadcasters.)

I reached out to Twitch for feedback and will update this story when I have a response.

PogChamp is dead. Long live PogChamp.