PogChamp is an emote on the streaming platform Twitch used to express excitement, intrigue, joy or shock, and “Pog” and “Poggers” are the words that grew out of it. The original emote showed streamer Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez with his mouth and eyes wide open; Twitch removed that face in January 2021 and, after a community vote, replaced it with a komodo dragon.
Origin
- November 26, 2010: the face first appears in a Cross Counter TV outtake uploaded to YouTube. Gutierrez, a professional Street Fighter player, makes an exaggerated surprised face after the cameraman bumps his tripod, alongside fellow streamer Mike Ross.
- 2011: the name refers to a promotional video called “Pogs Championship,” in which Gutierrez wins a game of Pogs. Know Your Meme reports that 4chan users began posting stills of his shocked face shortly after that video.
- 2012: Twitch added the face to its pool of global emotes under the name “PogChamp.”
Sources split the origin in two, and both parts hold: Wikipedia dates the source video to November 26, 2010, while its etymology section ties the name to the 2011 “Pogs Championship” video. The 2010 outtake supplied the face; the 2011 video supplied the name. Reading “Pog” as “play of (the) game” is, per Wikipedia, a backronym.
How It’s Used
Viewers spam PogChamp in chat when something exciting happens, such as a clutch kill or play. Know Your Meme notes it is also used sarcastically, when there is no hype at all, such as a streamer failing a challenge or dying in a mundane setting. Wikipedia records PogChamp as the third-most-used emote on Twitch, used 813,916,297 times from January 9, 2016, until its removal on January 6, 2021. CNN, as cited by Wikipedia, describes “Pog” and “Poggers” as words for “particularly awesome” moments, which is how the term moved off the platform. See also #TwitchEmoteCulture.
The Pog Family: A Glossary
| Term | What it is | First documented |
|---|---|---|
| PogChamp | Twitch global emote; originally Gutierrez’s surprised face | Added to Twitch in 2012 |
| Pog / Poggers (word) | Short forms of PogChamp used as words for a great moment | Not precisely dated |
| POGGERS (emote) | Better Twitch TV emote of Pepe the Frog with a surprised, excited face, often used in place of PogChamp | Submitted February 23, 2017 |
| PogU | FrankerFaceZ emote using a different still of Gutierrez from the original 2010 video | Submitted June 3, 2018 |
| WeirdChamp | FrankerFaceZ emote of Gutierrez making a disbelieving face; expresses disappointment | Submitted July 3, 2018 |
| KomodoHype | Twitch emote of a komodo dragon with its mouth wide open | Added in 2015; became the permanent PogChamp in 2021 |
Dates for POGGERS, PogU and KomodoHype are from Know Your Meme’s PogChamp entry; WeirdChamp is from its WeirdChamp entry.
The 2021 Removal
- January 6, 2021: Twitch announced it would remove the original PogChamp emote. Wikipedia reports this followed comments from Gutierrez on Twitter “supporting further civil unrest” after a participant died in the US Capitol attack that day; Know Your Meme reports that Twitch’s announcement described the comments as “encouraging further violence.”
- January 8, 2021: Twitch began showing a different streamer’s face as PogChamp every 24 hours, saying this would prevent exclusive association with one person. The first two faces were UnRooolie and UmiNoKaiju; the last was SteveInSpawn.
- February 11–12, 2021: Twitch announced a live vote, “The PogChampening,” between UmiNoKaiju’s face and the existing KomodoHype emote. ComicBook reported on February 12 that “a lizard is now the new official face of PogChamp on Twitch.” Per Wikipedia, KomodoHype won with 81% of the votes, and the original KomodoHype emote was kept, leaving two emote names with the same image.
Browser extensions split on the change: FrankerFaceZ banned uploads depicting Gutierrez, while Better Twitch TV kept PogChamp-related emotes and left the choice to broadcasters.