Twitch Removes “PogChamp” Amid Capitol Violence

Warning: This article contains mentions of white supremacy, racism, transphobia, and shooting deaths.

Amidst the violent storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6th, 2021, Twitch staff made a swift, immediately effective, decision to remove all traces of the “PogChamp” emote from their platform. The emote, modeled upon fighting game personality Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, has been stricken from the platform in the wake of inflammatory remarks posted to Gutierrez’s Twitter account. The remarks advocate for “civil unrest” in response to the death of a female Trump supporter shot by law enforcement during the riots.

Maintaining that these remarks were deliberately “encouraging further violence,” Twitch staff explained that they “can’t in good conscience continue to enable the use of the image.” Indeed, describing Ashli Babbit as the “#MAGAMartyr” and her death as an “execution,” Gutierrez’s tweets are emblematic of a familiar approach with long roots in white supremacist patriarchy.

Specifically, this is a strategy that converts an individual, often a white woman perceived as an innocent regardless of any of her own bigotry, into an object to be owned by white men who will then wield her body, image, and death as a tool to incite further violence.

Gutierrez then continued to encourage his followers to watch footage of her death, even as he described the video as “gruesome” and heavily implying Twitter was preventing him from posting it to readily accessible platforms. This essentially served to further dramatize the rallying cry with one hand and risked exposing vulnerable users to violently triggering content with the other.

Twitch then went on to clarify on its Twitter account that they wanted the “sentiment and use of Pog to live on,” given its significance to gaming communities and its previous use to celebrate achievements or impressive gameplay. Thus, while striking all original iterations of the emote from the platform, staff are seeking to work with the community “to design a new emote for the most hype moments on Twitch.”

The context of this emote’s removal is a difficult one, despite Twitch’s clear attempts to maintain a sense of responsible optimism. Eliminating “PogChamp” from the platform has been requested before by Twitch users and streamers.

These requests particularly arose after Gutierrez gave airtime on his platform to COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation that would have swayed susceptible individuals away from getting a vaccine that would protect themselves and others. At that time, Twitch took no action, neither against him nor against the emote that bears his likeness.

It is striking then, that in this more recent decision, action was taken swiftly and communicated unambiguously. Historically, they have notoriously applied rules inconsistently, incompletely, or ignored applying rules at all. This has even occurred despite months (if not years) of user and streamer requests. Several Twitch viewers and streamers I was speaking with at the time were surprised, not just by the swiftness of the move, but by the fact that Twitch took action at all.

The readiness with which Twitch moved to strike the emote from its roster further exposes some wider and still more persistent gaps. This isn’t to say removing the emote is the wrong choice, I wholeheartedly agree. Nonetheless, It stands out that Twitch was able to move quickly, without loopholes in regard to this matter.

Standing in stark relief to this decision are multiple policy changes they’ve made recently. One example includes making “simp,” “incel,” and “virgin” bannable words while staff refuses to universally ban the n-word or other slurs such as transphobic and homophobic language. This forces marginalized streamers to manually ban every possible variation on these slurs, at the expense of their own health and safety.

So too does the hand-wringing refusal to implement a trans or Black category tag, even after years of requests to do so from members of these communities, allegedly to protect vulnerable community members from further targeted harassment. These choices expose glaring blindspots. These users already frequently face targeted harassment and social media statements discussing them “accidentally opting in” to violent speech, threats, and stalking, which handily absolves Twitch of responsibility for addressing the harassment problem that is truly of concern.

Also, they painfully overlook not just the reality that trans and Black tags are necessary and valuable for finding communities with shared experiences, but strike a deeply false note when it comes to accountability to safety and inclusion for trans and Black streamers and viewers alike.

Twitch having an LGBTQIA+ tag hardly guarantees safety or inclusion for these users of the platform either. The LGBTQIA+ tag is overwhelmingly populated by white cis gay men, who are far from incapable of trans-exclusionary and racially insensitive language and behavior.

Removing “PogChamp” is a step forward and an important one, but in the same breath, it continues to shine a bright spotlight on ways Twitch has strikingly let down its userbase. The platform and the individuals that run it have proven themselves able and willing to act quickly, decisively, and without ambiguity but have also shown their willingness to selectively pick and choose what and who is worth acting swiftly for.