The face formerly known as poggers —
Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez's image comes down following Capitol invasion tweets.
Kyle Orland -
Further Reading
“Simp,” “incel” part of newly banned insults on Twitch
One of the oldest and most popular global emotes on Twitch has been removed from the service after Twitch said "the face of the emote encourag[ed] further violence after what took place in the Capitol [Wednesday]."
That face belongs to Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez, a longtime Street Fighter pro and commentator. Since 2012 and until yesterday, Gutierrez had been immortalized on Twitch in the form of the "PogChamp" chat emote, which portrayed an exaggerated excited face he first made in a 2010 video (the name comes from another meme-worthy video featuring Gutierrez playing with pogs).
Twitch's decision to remove the emote (one of its custom chatroom emojis) seems focused on a series of tweets Gutierrez made Wednesday afternoon, expressing sympathy for the "#MAGAMartyr" shot during the violent Pro-Trump mob invasion of the US Capitol Wednesday. Gutierrez went on to ask if her death would lead to "civil unrest" or if she would "die in vain." In the hours before Twitch's decision, a number of people in and around the Twitch community had begun to call attention to Gutierrez's tweets and/or suggest the emote be removed or replaced.
Further Reading
Comments on Twitter could now lead to punishment on Twitch
In 2018, Twitch rolled out a new harassment policythat began considering "verifiable hateful or harassing conduct that takes place off-Twitch" in its moderation decisions.
"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," Twitch said as part of its tweeted statement. "However, we can't in good conscience continue to enable use of the image. We will work with the community to design a new emote for the most hype moments on Twitch."
Twitch viewers used the PogChamp emote roughly 2 million times a day, according to stats from TwitchEmote.com, and it was the fifth most popular on the entire site, according to StreamElements. The meme behind the emotes has evolved to the point where just saying "poggers" or "pog" on a stream or chat can express the same enthusiasm or surprise, to the point that even Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has attempted to use it.
As recently as 2018, Twitch partnered with Gutierrez to promote a paid, custom animated "cheermote" of the PogChamp image. That promotion included a video where Gutierrez joked about a "strong legal team" creating the cheermote as an alternative to "suing each and every one of you for copyright infringement."
In 2016, Gutierrez told a Reddit AMA that being the face of the emote "doesn't feel like anything because it's not something that I engineered, did on purpose, or even said 'okay' to."
Until Twitch decides on a new PogChamp emote, there are plenty of people on social media making highly entertaining suggestions for the best available astounded facial expression.
[Update:Information about the origins of the name "PogChamp" has been corrected and updated.]
Promoted Comments
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Billbobjr123 Seniorius Lurkius
It's good that Twitch didn't tie Gootecks's name to PogChamp like they did with DansGame (the streamer DansGaming) or Jebaited (Alex Jebailey). They have virtually free reign to reassign the emote image to anyone else's face.
The coolest idea I've seen (but may be difficult to implement) is to have PogChamp tied to a database of faces submitted by the community, and each use of PogChamp pulls a random face from this database. This way when an entire crowd in chat is spamming PogChamp in response to something awesome, you get a really cool visual representation of all individuals cheering on the streamer.
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Aurich Lawson Creative Director
DonsAcsher wrote:
A streamer who I watch regularly said he met the guy and he said he hated having his face used as an emote so I don't think it would have been all that bad to keep using his face just to piss him off.
That's just silly. Yes, he didn't like being pogchamp. But keeping his face just to annoy him would be childish. This was the right move by Twitch.
Ryan was/is a leading member of the fighting game community, of which I'm a part, I'm very familiar with him. I say was/is because his relevance has faded quite a bit since he became a loon, but not enough. Too many people were willing to look the other way while he turned into a covid denier nutcase.
I saw that shift yesterday. A friend of mine who has known him for probably at least 20 years told me it was the last straw, he's given up any hope he'll learn or get better. People started speaking up before Twitch made the move. Frankly they probably made the move because they saw the voices.
We know how to deal with these right wing nuts. It's not to embarrass them, or even engage them, it's to deplatform. Take away the attention they crave, positive or otherwise.
dme123 wrote:
Yesterday I turned 40 and today I see a headline that could not have made less sense to me if it had been written entirely in hieroglyphics; are the two related??
I'm older than you, and it not only made perfect sense, I'm intimately familiar with all the details. You're not old, you're just out of touch with an internet community. That's fine and normal.
You only get 'old' when you start getting mad that there are things you don't understand. Staying young in spirit just means always being open to learning something new.
Promoted Comments
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Billbobjr123 Seniorius Lurkius
It's good that Twitch didn't tie Gootecks's name to PogChamp like they did with DansGame (the streamer DansGaming) or Jebaited (Alex Jebailey). They have virtually free reign to reassign the emote image to anyone else's face.
The coolest idea I've seen (but may be difficult to implement) is to have PogChamp tied to a database of faces submitted by the community, and each use of PogChamp pulls a random face from this database. This way when an entire crowd in chat is spamming PogChamp in response to something awesome, you get a really cool visual representation of all individuals cheering on the streamer.
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Aurich Lawson Creative Director
DonsAcsher wrote:
A streamer who I watch regularly said he met the guy and he said he hated having his face used as an emote so I don't think it would have been all that bad to keep using his face just to piss him off.
That's just silly. Yes, he didn't like being pogchamp. But keeping his face just to annoy him would be childish. This was the right move by Twitch.
Ryan was/is a leading member of the fighting game community, of which I'm a part, I'm very familiar with him. I say was/is because his relevance has faded quite a bit since he became a loon, but not enough. Too many people were willing to look the other way while he turned into a covid denier nutcase.
I saw that shift yesterday. A friend of mine who has known him for probably at least 20 years told me it was the last straw, he's given up any hope he'll learn or get better. People started speaking up before Twitch made the move. Frankly they probably made the move because they saw the voices.
We know how to deal with these right wing nuts. It's not to embarrass them, or even engage them, it's to deplatform. Take away the attention they crave, positive or otherwise.
dme123 wrote:
Yesterday I turned 40 and today I see a headline that could not have made less sense to me if it had been written entirely in hieroglyphics; are the two related??
I'm older than you, and it not only made perfect sense, I'm intimately familiar with all the details. You're not old, you're just out of touch with an internet community. That's fine and normal.
You only get 'old' when you start getting mad that there are things you don't understand. Staying young in spirit just means always being open to learning something new.
