Will Twitch Be Responsible for Disrupting Politics?

Recently, New York City Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, better known as AOC, streamed on the Twitch gaming platform the game Among Us, together with the most popular Twitch streamers out there today, such as Pokimane, DisguisedToast, DrLupo, Myth and more. The streams have a purpose which is what AOC intended, to introduce and promote voting to young people. Because of this, many are wondering whether politicians might begin their own stream in order to connect with young voters just like AOC did.

As we know, the Twitch gaming platform continues to grow in popularity especially amid the coronavirus pandemic. The live-streaming on Twitch continues to expand beyond gaming, and is poised to disrupt politics in the 2020s just as Twitter did in the 2010s. On the stream that AOC made, they managed to pull in more than 400,000 viewers on AOC’s main channel and over 100,000 more on other Twitch streamers channels.

The stream has also ranked third among the platform’s all-time concurrent viewer numbers. AOC is undoubtedly not a stranger to the gaming genre. She managed to build among gaming fans through her social media channels, a key reason for her stream’s success. Her newly created channel on Twitch has quickly gained a massive following of more than 700,000 followers.