Twitch will change the face of PogChamp every 24 hours

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

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

“The other big part of that is that Twitch’s long-term goal as a company seems to be totally divorcing ESPN’s reputation for gamers,” writes Broderick. “Therefore, the PogChamp disaster is basically perfect for Twitch – a small change that signals that they are no longer aligned with Gutierrez and all within the specific toxic lineage of the professional gaming community he represents.

Twitch’s momentum towards truly mainstream relevance didn’t start in 2020, and a year spent mostly inland has helped move the site there. Perhaps the biggest win – and the strongest sign – that Twitch was starting to achieve these goals was the Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stream with some of Twitch’s biggest stars, which was one of the biggest streams that the site has seen. The idea that there was a difference between the Twitch influence and the mainstream influence evaporated the moment the AOC flow darkened. (Since then, internet congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has also broadcast Among us with a cast of major broadcasters.)

I contacted Twitch to comment and will update this story when I have an answer.

PogChamp is dead. Long live PogChamp.