In possibly my favorite bit of gaming news ever, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes a Twitch streamer! On Tuesday night, AOC streamed Among Us to hundreds of thousands of viewers. To say it was massively viewed is an understatement; with 430 thousand concurrent viewers, it was one of the most-watched streams ever! The representative was joined by numerous professional streamers, as well as other left-wing figures to play surprise hit Among Us.
AOC Is A Deceptively Good Alien
The stream was joined by AOC’s fellow US representative Ilhan Omar, though thankfully politics was largely left out of the stream. That’s not all though, as AOC was joined by some of the biggest streamers around during the roughly three-hour steam. Pokimane, DrLupo, and HasanAbi were among the streamers to join. This was a huge hit with gamers, and I’m willing to bet plenty of non-gamers also stuck their heads in just for the spectacle. It’s not often you see top politicians trying to sneakily assassinate games streamers (you would hope)! With 430 thousand viewers for AOC alone, this was a massive success. Combine that with the streams of the others in the game too, and the numbers rise to almost 700 thousand viewers! To put that into perspective, the previous Twitch record viewership was Drake and Ninja playing Fortnite, with 600 thousand viewers.
Gamer In Chief?
When you’re winning: pic.twitter.com/Fu7CMyCQDA
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 21, 2020
The stream gained a huge amount of mainstream attention for AOC. In the lead up to the US election, all eyes are on the big players. This may have been a play to get some breakout headlines in the run-up, but it was also just a lot of fun! Predictably there was some dissent in the comments, with “MAGA” being a common shoutout, with some less tasteful comments quickly removed by moderators. Left-wing topics were brought up occasionally, but thankfully politics did not dominate the stream. Overall though this will have raised AOC’s profile even further, and that of the Democrats, at a key moment for them. Now, I’m just hoping we can see Joe Biden and Donald Trump play a few games of Among Us next. That would be one to watch, preferably from a safe distance!
