pogchamp

PogChamp is a widely used Twitch chat emote that expresses surprise, excitement, or hype during livestreams. The image depicts the face of the streamer Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez and became one of the most recognizable emotes on the platform, crossing into broader internet meme culture.

Originating in the Twitch community in the early 2010s, PogChamp emerged from a reaction image of Gootecks that fans adopted to signal astonishment at moments in games and broadcasts. It quickly became a staple of live-streaming culture, frequently used in competitive play and big moments to convey an emotional spike.

Culturally, PogChamp helped shape how viewers react in real time, contributing to a family of related expressions such as “Pog,” “PogU,” and other variants that extend the same viewer reaction beyond a single image. It became a symbol of shared excitement in chat rooms and online communities centered on livestreaming.

In January 2021, Twitch removed the PogChamp emote after Gutierrez posted comments praising the Capitol riot, stating that the face no longer embodied the positive community sentiment associated with the emote. Twitch then replaced PogChamp with a rotating set of emotes chosen from various community members to express the same reaction, and the original single-face PogChamp image was retired.

Today, the term PogChamp remains part of a broader vernacular for expressing hype on Twitch, with users turning to alternative emotes and the general “Pog” expression. The episode illustrates how platform policies and community brands evolve in response to public discourse.

See also: Twitch emotes, Pog, Kappa.