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At first I thought I was witnessing yet another “member-berries” nostalgia moment—someone dragging me baông xã lớn the 90s và our inexplicable love of stacking tiny circles of cardboard with printed images on them.
“Are Pogs making a comeback?” I wondered.
No, turns out not (sad, I know). So, I dug in. There are a handful of uses of this expression that I came across, though some are more common than others.
Primarily, we’ll be wading through some weird meme-ry from the heart of Twitch-streaming, but we’ll also go deep khổng lồ find every use of the term we can find. Here’s the basics:
What is the meaning of Poggers?
Nowadays, “poggers” refers lớn a specific emotibé available on Twitch which depicts a surprised-looking Pepe the Frog. The word “poggers” is used to lớn express excitement during a game when something exciting occurs.
Nature of Poggers
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Poggers, in its current, Twitch-based incarnation, is a sản phẩm of the mạng internet.
That means there’s no one official, Oxford English Dictionary definition và no one unified standard of usage.
Ask a dozen people what it means, or how to use it, and it seems you’ll get a dozen answers, each with their own nuance.
So, I’ll be discussing this word based on what I learned và where all the myriad thoughts about the term seem to point.
::best Patrick Bateman impression:: There is an idea of poggers, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real poggers, only an entity, something illusory…
Poggers & the Fam
“Poggers” belongs khổng lồ a sort of family of words that includes “PogChamp” and “MonkaS.” All three of these are derived from BetterTTV emotes used on Twitch.
I… should probably bachồng up and explain what some of those words mean as well. Let’s go in reverse order.
Twitch is a website where people can live stream from their computers. Basically, someone broadcasts their computer screen & a bunch of people watch.
Originally this was for gaming, but its uses have sầu spread lớn music, writing, & other sorts of general broadcasts.
Still, it’s primarily focused on gaming, và the world of Twitch gaming is where this article is going to focus.
Alongside the streaming đoạn phim there is always a chatroom, và here is where the emotes come in…
Emotes are basically just emojis on steroids. Whereas emojis are limited, you can tải về as many emotes as you lượt thích khổng lồ pepper into lớn your chat text khổng lồ color things up.
They’re tiny images that can often create a sense of personality or community or simply liven up the discussion.
As mentioned, emotes need khổng lồ be downloaded, và many require purchase or subscription. This brings us lớn BetterTTV.
BetterTTV (aka Better Twitch TV aka BTTV) offers a bunch of miễn phí services when you tải về them for your browser.
Included in this are a huge library of emotes, including Poggers & the aforementioned MonkaS.
Pogger Precursor
::best Freud impression:: To understvà zee Pogger, vee must first underst& its antecedent in zee dual mother-und-father-figure, zee PogChamp…
Searching for information on PogChamp brought me lớn the Know Your Meme site and a poorly sourced reference page with a slew of comments remarking that it “needs work.”
Glancing around the internet offered little more help. From Twitter to lớn Quora khổng lồ Reddit—nothing.
Then, finally I clichồng a xanh link: Dictionary.com. Finally! A clear explanation.
PogChamp is the O.G. emote in this story, debuting on Twitch in 2012. It features the face of vlogger/streamer Gootecks making a goofy, surprised face.
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The emote is used, or the expression “PogChamp” is said, in order khổng lồ express surprise when someone does something particularly awesome in the gaming stream.
The image itself dates back lớn November 2010 when, during a stream, Gootecks made the face in response to his camera being knocked inkhổng lồ.
The term “PogChamp” would arrive sầu almost a year later on October 26 in another đoạn Clip. In that video, Gootecks offers a MadCatz gaming controller in a promo featuring the old 90s game of Pogs (we’ll return lớn that later).
At the kết thúc, he says, “Pog champions.”
Gooteck’s face spread across the internet, first simply being cut & pasted onkhổng lồ other images—typical meme-style—with “PogChamp” being the term used khổng lồ refer to lớn it.
This PogChamp meme, for a while, became the face of Team Fortress 2 raffles.
Then, in November 2012, his surprised face got added khổng lồ Twitch as an emote. Beyond Twitch, PogChamp entered meatspace as an actual spoken expression of excited surprise.
There is some suggestion online that “POG” stands for “Player Of the Game,” và while this may be a term used elsewhere in gaming, I can find no reliable sources that suggest it is directly related khổng lồ the PogChamp meme.
This seems to be a case of a backronym forming.
Poggers on Patrol
Poggers is an emote which became available on September 24, 2017.
It features a surprised Pepe the Frog & is used in place of Gootecks’s PogChamp lớn express even more excitement. Like PogChamp, “Poggers” is also a spoken or typed expression.
That’s… that’s basically it.
Wait—who’s Pepe the Frog you ask?
Oh dear…
Pepe the Frog: from silly zine to lớn troublesome toad
Pepe the Frog has its origins way back in 2005 in a proto-zine called Playtime by a cartoonist named Matt Furie.
The character grew to lớn popularity in the zine Boy’s Club. However, it didn’t become a meme until 2008, when it was uploaded to lớn “/b/” on 4chan.
If you don’t know what “/b/” and 4chan are, consider yourself blessed và investigate no further. I certainly won’t be elaborating here.
All you need to lớn know is that 4chan is a sort of mạng internet diễn đàn focused around pictures.
The image of Pepe saying, “Feels Good Man,” shot to lớn memetic notoriety và took on a life of its own.
Wide variations of Pepe were distributed far and wide. For a long, long time, Pepe was just a simple, harmless meme.
Pepe’s last moments in an uncritical spotlight was in năm trước.
One year later, during the United States Presidential election, Pepe would be taken over by far-right voices và his innocence would be lost forever.
Since then, Pepe has gone through many transformations, and can still be seen in some less, er, extreme lights, but overall his image—whatever image he once had—has been tarnished.
While I don’t know if “Poggers” itself has any far-right connotations, it may be wise lớn take the history of Pepe the Frog inkhổng lồ trương mục if you wish lớn use the “Poggers” meme.
