UPDATE 1/8: Following a suggestion made by Sean “Day[9]”Plott, Twitch will replace the PogChamp emoticon with another one every day.
Original story:
On Wednesday, January 6, Twitch updated its site, removing the popular PogChamp emoticon, following a series of messages from the emoticon’s face, Ryan “gootecks” Gutierrez. Gootecks originally appeared in 2010 on a YouTube series featuring personality from the fighting gaming community, Mike Ross, Counter Cross TV, and the name comes from a later video with the same two hosts.
Despite its popularity on the site, Twitch posted the following statement along with its removal of the emot.
In its statement, Twitch refers to a series of tweets made by gootecks around the events that took place in the U.S. Capitol building on January 6th. Congress was scheduled to confirm the Electoral College’s votes for President Biden today. A woman was shot in the neck and died, making public reference to the worms.
Gootecks first posted that he would later share a graphic video of his death, simultaneously inciting violence in return and pointing to Twitter’s alleged censorship. He then tweeted a recording of the woman shot, again pointing to censorship. He claimed that the riot police “gave him life for our country” and, in both tweets, used the hashtag #MAGAMartyr.
Along with the invasion of the Capitol building, several explosives were also found on campus.
Popular political streamer HasanAbi was streaming all day covering the events as they went live. He was also live after the expulsion of PogChamp, showing frustration as the emoticon had “transcended the person himself”, but acknowledged that he had been “alt-right”.
Twitch has acknowledged the importance of emotive advertising and has said it will work with the community to make it a substitute.
gootecks has not publicly responded to the removal of emot by Twitch.
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