Earlier this week, Twitch removed its extremely popular Pogchamp emote, which is used to express excitement in chat, after the face of the emote, Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, encouraged further “civil unrest” after the insurrection at the Capitol Building. Now, just two days later, it’s replaced Gutierrez’s likeness with an elaborate plan that is, honestly, pretty poggers.
Today on Twitter, Twitch announced how it’s going to handle the Pogchamp emote from now on.
“You know what? In the spirit of figuring out 2021 together, let’s just roll with it for now!” the company wrote. “Get ready for a new Pogchamp every 24 hours, starting today.”
Today’s Pogchamp is fighting game expert Kenny “UnRoolie” McWild, who previously threw his hat in the ring to be the defacto Pogchamp replacement. Tomorrow’s could be anybody, but I’m guessing it will probably be somebody else who’s already volunteered on Twitter.
The rotating Pogchamp idea was originally suggested by longtime gaming personality Sean “Day9″ Plott not long after Twitch removed the original Pogchamp emote.
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It’s not hard to see why Twitch liked the idea: If it selected a single individual to be the new face of Pogchamp, that streamer almost certainly would have faced harassment and other forms of unwanted attention. This way, the Eye Of Sauron Of Harassing Dickheads at least has to glance around a lot instead of focusing its fury in one place. Still, that will not necessarily prevent people from going after the streamer of the day, and it opens up new possibilities, like Twitch giving the spotlight over to a streamer who turns out to have a problematic history. This is new territory, though, so there’s no telling how it will actually turn out. Perhaps that’s the most pog part of all.