AOC now streaming live on Twitch

[crickets]

115. Impressive.

I am not the biggest AOC fan in the world. She is so energetic and her heart is obviously in the right place, but there are times when I just :cringe: and think, "oo, you really do need a little more time, experience, and seasoning there." Then there are other times she just crushes it. She is obviously intelligent and highly motivated; it's amazing what she can get done. In other words, nobody's perfect and nobody can please everyone all the time, but you can tell when someone is trying hard and usually doing a pretty good job.

Last night, AOC really hit it out of the park. What started as an offhand tweet conversation swiftly got her set up with streaming equipment and training, a Twitch channel and lobby complete with custom graphics, a group of well known gamers and a fellow congress critter (Ilhan Omar) willing to play, and some practice games the night before so she could competently play this particular game. That happened in 24 hours, and she still took care of her day job.

Think about it: with all the teleworking and home schooling going on right now, getting the equipment at all was the first hurdle. Gamers helped her get it done, set it up, and learn to use it. Now, it's obvious she is already a gamer and has likely played online, but playing online and streaming online are two entirely different things, and after a little hesitance getting going (no more than I've seen from people who game/stream for a living - stuff happens) she was just pro. You would never know she hadn't streamed before. That alone was impressive. She was sitting in a room by herself. There was no one in the background helping her; it was all AOC. She maintained excellent composure while using a somewhat unfamiliar tech setup, playing a game she barely knew, with people she barely knew, and made it look easy.

Before the game started, she spent a good twenty minutes or so with chat and lurkers (raises hand) alike about making sure to vote, and to do that by having a plan to vote. In between games, players often end up hanging around in the game 'lobby' with some down time, and while it didn't come up every time, AOC used many of those moments to talk about voting. The chat was well moderated, and messages about voting (whether spontaneous or planned was unclear, probably both) constantly scrolled through all night.

The point is, it wasn't just game night with a 'vote!' tagline. Someone with weeks of lead time couldn't have done a better job. Her staff (and/or the gamers who helped her) must be so detail-oriented. The home page was spiffed with graphics links for all of AOC's social media sites, main web site, as well as voting info sites, and a post of the all important rules -- something that a less than net savvy staff might have forgotten. They remembered to get moderators for chat and found people who did a great job. At one point there was a bit of MAGA agitation and spamming, but no truly rude stuff made it through as far as I could tell. I hid chat during game play anyway.

The people playing with her came prepared to talk about voting as well, and it was obvious she found gamers (hasanabi in particular) who are politically aware and prepared to talk about politics and voting without it sounding forced or contrived. In fact, my only complaint about the whole night was that it was difficult to track down some of the other players, players well known to many but not to me until now. I did find pokimane and hasanabi, and loaded three tabs with their channels as well as AOC's so I could flip among them and watch the game from different perspectives. That only lasted about half an hour and then I couldn't keep them synched any more, even with two channels muted, but it was fun to do it that way for a while. I need to learn to pop out mini-windows to do that better next time, but whatever.

Kudos to Twitch. It was amazing that, with very little notice, they handled a crowd of over half a million people showing up to watch spread over the various channels. I though we'd crash at least once, and I did get a little lag at the peak of over 400,000 in AOC's channel. At one point I swapped from another channel back to AOC and found I'd lost her, but a tab reload quickly fixed it.

I'm not a millennial. I'm a boomer gamer. We're out there. I'm in my late fifties, female, and I've been video gaming since arcades were a thing and since computers became and stayed a thing. :waves cane: I love playing video games, I love watching other people playing them, and I cannot remember the last time I had that much fun watching online gaming. It was superb, went off without a hitch, and I stayed up way too late watching the gang continue playing after AOC and Ilhan Omar left. I found some new gamers to follow, whee!

Videos are available on her channel as well as Ilhan Omar's if you missed and want to watch it, and I highly recommend wandering over to take a look.
https://www.twitch.tv/aoc
https://www.twitch.tv/ilhan

Regardless of what you may think about AOC, regardless of what you may think about gaming, this event was a big deal, and I have no doubt that it made an important impact. Just the buzz about the event has made an impact. I'm convinced it not only worked to get out the vote, it opened up a whole new arena for reaching voters, younger voters in particular, in their own space and without talking down to them. Remember, "there are other times she just crushes it." This was one of those times.

Outstanding!