Twitch Announces KomodoHype as the New Pogchamp

It took a politically charged comment, an attempt at promoting diversity, and plenty of harassment, but Twitch has decided on a new replacement to the Pogchamp emote. Introducing (but not really) KomodoHype as the new Pogchamp.

For those out of the loop: At the beginning of the year, Twitch announced that they would be removing the Pogchamp emote after the face of the image (Ryan Gutierrez, aka Gootecks) encouraged civil unrest during the riot on the US Capitol building.

As a test of sorts, Twitch then tried a rotating selection of replacements. Every day, a new emote from a Twitch Streamer was selected to replace Pogchamp. The intention was to celebrate the diversity among streamers on the platform. Unfortunately, many of the selected streamers became the target of harassment, which was often racially charged.

Over the weekend, they held a public vote to decide on a new permanent replacement. And here we are. KomodoHype is now the new Pogchamp.

Its a clever move, in our opinion. Having a specific real life person as the face only caused them to be harassed by Twitchs user base (which is a whole issue itself, but one article at a time.) By having it be a random animal meme, theres no one to bully.

This isnt even the first time KomodoHype has changed names. Originally, the emote was part of a collection that Twitch added when doing a promotion event with Old Spice. Originally, the emote was called OSkomodo. When the promo ended, the emotes were kept and new designations were given. The komodo itself is even based on a popular image macro meme.

I, personally, am happy with this outcome. I used KomodoHype as an alternative for Pogchamp since it was added. I like reptiles, whatever. Seeing it become more mainstream is cool by me.

Now if we could only deal with that whole harassment issue.