Oct 20, 2020 11:42 PM

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Storms Twitch

More than 400,000 people tuned into AOC's stream of a marathon Among Us session with representative Ilhan Omar and Twitch luminaries.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the interactive politician. She knocks on doors; she receives neon Post-it devotionals at her Capitol Hill office. She makes macaroni and cheese and fields climate policy questions on Instagram Live. Tonight, she went live on the streaming platform Twitch to do something she says she hates more than anything, in front of 440,000 live viewers: lie.

Ocasio-Cortez was playing Among Us, a recently viral game with Mafia-like mechanics. On Monday she had soft-launched her Twitch channel with a coy tweet asking whether anybody might be interested in playing with her. In a parenthetical, she added, “I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun.” The response was frenetic. A who’s who of internet celebrities threw their blue checkmarks in the ring—makeup YouTuber James Charles, KindaFunny’s Greg Miller, actress Felicia Day, even Chelsea Manning, who is currently building her own gaming PC. Also coy, lefty politics streamer Hasan Piker—noted AOC fanboy and Young Turks alumni—responded with a lowercase “hi!”.

Then came the gamers. Imane “Pokimane” Anys replied, “it’d be an honor” with crying and prayer hands emojis. Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo wrote he would “offer myself as tribute.” Fortnite star Ali “Myth” Kabbani proposed to “do wires together.” Esports got in there, too, with FaZe Clan inviting AOC to an Among Us tournament and the Overwatch League team Washington Justice offering to help “rep DC.”

Courtesy of Twitch

Ocasio-Cortez is far from the first politician to go where the gamers are. Bernie Sanders’ fireside chat on Covid brought over 50,000 viewers to his channel in March. Twitch temporarily banned Donald Trump’s channel, launched late last year, for violating policies against “hateful content.” Joe Biden’s campaign has one, too, with a bafflingly low 2,500 followers.

But other politicians’ Twitch streams are, for the most part, chats, rallies, or if you’re the Biden campaign, lo-fi train footage. Ocasio-Cortez games. And fellow first-term congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who created her own Twitch channel, joined her, her Twitch icon a stoic Gundam. By the time Ocasio-Cortez went live at 9 pm ET Tuesday night, over 260,000 people had hit “Follow” on her Twitch channel. Twenty minutes before she signed on, 50,000 viewers sat in wait, filling her chat with encouragement and emotes.

Piker’s chat was effusive as well. “What a wonderful day,” said Piker, grinning into the camera. Chat rolled on: “TOP QUEEN ON TWITCH” and “LET’S GOOOOOO” accompanied crying Pepe the Frog faces. An ad for the Marines played. Then, Anys went live. “I’m so hyped I want to throw up,” she said to 30,000 viewers. “I think this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life, actually,” she said.

Next came Ocasio-Cortez. “This is pretty insane,” she said from a tiny square at the bottom of the screen to 163,000 live viewers. Soon, 200,000 more would arrive. Admitting she just started playing Among Us Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez described how, with two unscheduled hours on Monday, she ran into Best Buy asking for webcams and mics. There weren’t any, because of the pandemic, so she outsourced to her community. Grassroots.

“Is it weird we’re calling you AOC?” Piker asked. “You guys can call me AOC. Mike Pence can’t call me AOC,” she replied with a laugh. She troubleshooted her audio a little, with chat’s feedback.

X content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

In the first match, Ocasio-Cortez was named the imposter, tasked with murdering and sabotaging her cohort. “No!!!” she yelled. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” She buried her face in her hands. Back when she was doing community organizing work, she confided, someone asked if she’d ever considered going into politics. “Oh, no way,” she said at the time. When they asked why she said, “It’s because I’m a bad liar.”

Ocasio-Cortez killed her first player, the singer-songwriter Maia “mxmtoon,” and accidentally reported it to the group herself, a possible giveaway that she was responsible. As they debated who the imposter was, Ocasio-Cortez buried her face in her hands. The next round, after much deliberation, she killed Anys, Twitch queen bee with over 6 million followers. After Ocasio-Cortez stuck a knife in her back, Anys accepted her fate: “It was an honor. It was an honor to serve you.” She bows.

Ocasio-Cortez is no stranger to Twitch. Last January, she dropped in on a Donkey Kong 64 stream to raise money for transgender kids alongside games YouTuber Harry “Hbomberguy” Brewis. As recently as July, after the military launched Twitch channels in attempt to recruit gamers, Ocasio-Cortez introduced an amendment to prohibit “the use of funds for recruiting via video gaming and e-sports platforms.” (The House voted it down.). Ocasio-Cortez also isn’t new to gaming. She’s ranked a respectable Silver III in League of Legends, although she says she hasn’t played in a while, and in May made virtual house calls to Animal Crossing: New Horizons players’ islands.

Uproariously funny, the Among Us stream was a Large Hadron Collider of online celebrity. Evolving from shy quiet to finger-wagging accusations, Ocasio-Cortez leaned into the deception, and the Twitch environment, strategizing out loud and issuing low Oooooohs in spicy deliberations. Chat moved so quickly, it was impossible to read and often broke, haltingly publishing messages. Occasionally, Ocasio-Cortez mentioned Iwillvote.com or “voting early”—a reference to Among Us’ voting system and, of course, the upcoming election. Twitch streamers nearly matched her enthusiasm for democracy, with Ali “Myth” Kabbani referencing his first time voting ever (early) and Hasan Piker suggesting to viewers that, if they care about net neutrality, they might want to vote blue. (Ocasio-Cortez said one goal of tonight was to “officially declare orange sus.”)

Three hours in, they were still going strong. “I think I’m too task-focused,” said Ocasio-Cortez of her playstyle. “I need to be running around and finding people.”

Correction 10-21-2020, 1:00 am ET: A sentence stating that Tyler "Ninja" Blevins did not reply to Ocasio-Cortez's initial tweet has been removed, as he did retweet it.