Just to recap, Twitch removed the PogChamp emote on Wednesday after its creator, Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez, said some pretty awful stuff on Twitter that basically incited the Capitol Building insurrectionists to commit more acts of violence. He was resoundingly admonished by pretty much everyone, including Twitch, and anything with his likeness got booted off the platform.
At the time, Twitch acknowledged that getting rid of the PogChamp emote would be a blow to its entire subculture and promised that they’d come up with a new emote as soon as possible. "We want the sentiment and use of Pog to live on – its meaning is much bigger than the person depicted or image itself – and it has a big place in Twitch culture," the streaming platform wrote. "We will work with the community to design a new emote for the most hype moments on Twitch."
It didn’t take too long for them to come up with a solution. Twitch will now have a brand new PogChamp emote each day in perpetuity, so if you invoke the PogChamp emote in a Twitch chat you’ll get a brand new astonished face every single day.
The idea came from prolific Magic/Hearthstone streamer Sean “Day9” Plott, who suggested that Twitch "create a database of streamer and/or general faces." Each of those faces would have the same astounded expression as Gootecks did so as to maintain the original meaning of the PogChamp emote.
Today’s PogChamp is Kenny “UnRoolie” McWild, a fighting game enthusiast who suggested himself as the replacement PogChamp shortly after Twitch removed the original on Wednesday. He even provided a photo of himself looking completely shocked and amazed (but in a good way) at something off-screen.
So today is UnRoolie, tomorrow might be any of the numerous people responding to Twitch’s announcement with pictures of astounded expressions. It doesn’t look like it’ll be too hard for Twitch to come up with 357 more PogChamp emotes to fill out the rest of the year.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Twitch account is still banned. And frankly, good riddance.
Source: Twitch