A Komodo dragon has been crowned Twitch’s permanent PogChamp replacement

Source: The Verge

On January 6th, the day a riot of pro-Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, Twitch removed the iconic PogChamp emote because the person it depicted made statements calling for further violence. Two days later, the company committed to rotating in a new version of PogChamp every 24 hours, meaning many streamers briefly became the new face of the emote — but they were sometimes subjected to harassment following their new site-wide prominence.

On Friday, the Twitch community voted to crown a new face for PogChamp — and the winner isn’t the face of a streamer. It’s a Komodo dragon.

If you’ve hung out in Twitch chats, you may actually recognize this emote: it’s the beloved KomodoHype. And I can see why it won the community vote. While the original PogChamp was Twitch’s hype emote, I think this Komodo dragon’s face is even better at expressing hype, especially with its shockingly huge maw that somehow seems to be smiling.

KomodoHype was selected over another excellent PogChamp done by streamer UmiNoKaiju. If you want to watch the full stream about the vote, you can check it out on Twitch.

Quote from dummi

its not the same, but its something! at first i was a bit upset pogchamp was gone bc it was such a meme, a phrase popped into my mind, "separate the art from the artist" but i guess the artist in question was doing a lot of harm. cute emote tho tbh

Quote from rainbowblink224

It's okay, I understand where people were coming from and why they changed it. It's still legendary and in my heart forever but I'm happy they changed it at the same. Just to be safe :)

Yeah it's unfortunate Gootecks has gone off his rocker. I know it's just an emote but it was an iconic one to the community.