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Filler Episode - The Ballad of PogChamp
455 Plays3 months ago
M is back, but unwell, so Josh delivers another bit of filler, this time indulging his love of language by talking about the origins of a bit of Internet slang that happens to have a conspiratorial tie-in. He chose to do this above talking about two different assassinations - one recent and unsuccessful; one historical and probably not an assassination at all - so sorry or you're welcome, depending on how much you like talking about assassinations.
The diagram that got Josh started on this can be found here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poggers
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Transcript
Introduction with Josh Addison
00:00:04
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Im Dintas.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and once again I'm flying solo. M is back from their travels around the world but I think coming home from Bucharest back to China They've contracted some. So it sounds like what I had two and a bit weeks ago. So a particularly nasty flu, which nevertheless tests negative for Covid. um But they're not feeling very well. So we figured no, no point recording an episode where one of us. Well, we're both of us are probably coughing and hacking. I still have a bit of a cough myself. So we'll let him rest up. Wish them a a get well soon. And I'll just do another quick filler episode for you this week.
Etymology of 'Poggers'
00:01:06
Speaker
So I looked through our um ah list we have of little little topics that we can talk about one day, which is usually a good source of filler episodes, and I was going to talk about the death of Ganpei Yokoi, who, long story short, was the head of the Nintendo R and&D division that invented the Game Boy, who then died in a car crash and some people thought he'd been killed by the Yakuza because at the time he had left Nintendo to work for a rival. But that' there's basically no evidence for that at all. And there's not a lot to say. um But I was going to see if I could get an episode out of it. But then yesterday, I happened to see online something that interested me more. ah So I'm going to talk about that instead. The thing that I saw
00:01:54
Speaker
was an etymological diagram of the word poggers. We'll talk about what that word means and and where it comes from and why it has conspiratorial connections ah just as soon as I play a chime.
00:02:13
Speaker
So poggers, I'm 48 years old. I feel no obligation whatsoever to be up with whatever the current slaying is. So it's not a word that I use, but it's a word I've heard of. It's internet slaying. Calling something poggers or just calling it pog means it's it's awesome. It's exciting. It's surprising, shocking. um It's used particularly on the Twitch streaming service. And like like the term rickrolling, its origin is kind of obscure and fairly convoluted, but it's also completely recorded on the internet for all posterity, so we know exactly how the world came about, where rickrolling came out of people messing around on 4chan with
00:03:03
Speaker
i think I think the short version of its origin is that they somebody had a macro that changed the word egg into duck, which meant that if somebody was trying to talk about an egg roll, they'd end up talking about a duck roll. And so duck rolling was the term. And then somebody morphed that from messing around words to changing links so that you thought you were getting a link to one thing. It was actually a link to Rick Astley. So duck rolling became Rick rolling. And there we go. Poggers is a little bit like that.
Origin of PogChamp and Gutex
00:03:33
Speaker
So it comes from a guy called Ryan Gutierrez who using the screen name Gutiks was and is as far as I know a streamer, a fairly popular streamer in a popular and in some cases professional competitor
00:03:49
Speaker
of fighting games, particularly Street Fighter. Now, he had a YouTube channel where his show with another guy called Mike Ross was very popular. And I like a bit of fighting games. I like a bit of Tekken, a bit of Marvel versus Capcom. That was always one of my favorites. Never really played Street Fighter much. But um playing those games and looking up stuff about them on the internet and finding out what people say about it, you know, This is a guy ah I knew of Gutiks and Mike Ross. I'd seen clips from their shows and stuff from from quite some time ago. And one episode back in 2011 of their show, they had a POG Championship. Now who remembers POGs? If you're my age, you probably do. If you're a bit younger than me, I'd be surprised. Or at least you'd you'd know what they are because of the because of the meme that we were getting into.
00:04:43
Speaker
Pogs, I remember pogs being a fad in the 90s. They were never big in New Zealand, never really big, but they were certainly big enough in America that we heard about them in New Zealand through pop culture. um I've never played a game of pogs. It's entirely possible I've never touched a pog in my life, but I knew what they were. And what they were were were these little little discs that you play a game with. but One of the things I never understood was how you actually play a game with them. It sounded like a bit like Tiddlywinks and a bit like marbles, but I think you get you made a stack.
00:05:18
Speaker
of these discs, you stacked them up and then you hit something else that you whacked them with and then and it's like you kept the face up ones and restacked the face down ones and whoever had the the most ones in the end one or something like that. It's a game it's a game that involves flipping discs around. um It's quite an old game. It was originally originally called milk caps, I think. And indeed, there are other games like much older than this doing a similar thing. But um they used to be people using the caps of milk bottles, flipping them and became known as pogs ah because people started using the caps from a fruit drink called pog. A bit more etymology for you here. The fruit drink was called pog because it was a mix of passion fruit, orange and guava. So
History of Pogs
00:06:05
Speaker
people people used these POG bottle caps. The game started being called POGs. And then in the early 90s, a company sort of tried to like tried to make it into a thing. and So POGs became not just using using the cap off of a bottle. They were sold as actual things. And and yeah in in the way of these things, they wanted to make them like collectible. They came with lots of different designs and patterns on them and stuff. So you could you could collect your POGs. You could trade your POGs.
00:06:32
Speaker
and you can play Pogs with your Pogs. And that's what Gutex and Mycross did. They played a bit of Pogs just for fun. and would say you This is 2011, so Pogs weren't really a thing anymore by that state, but it was a little bit of a, hey, who remembers Pogs? Let's do some of this. It'll be it'll be a funny jape. And Gutex won the game of Pogs, making him the PogChamp. And so This meme then came out of this when they posted a Bloopers reel for that episode on YouTube. And in the Bloopers reel, there's one particular shot where somebody, I think, bumps the bumps the video camera, the tripod or something, and there's a bit of a bump. And Gutex pulls a very silly face with his mouth mouth wide open in ah in a funny sort of a grin, looking sort of surprised and amused at the same time.
00:07:25
Speaker
And it was, yeah, a goofy enough face. People people thought it was a funny face. ah it And this still of his face making this expression became a bit of a meme and eventually became one of the more popular emojis on Twitch. I think he wasn't 100% happy. about um about his face suddenly being used everywhere on Twitch, but they came to some financial arrangement with him and he made a bit of money out of it. And we had this this emoji, which was was used to indicate any sort of emotion that Gutex's face was conveying. Surprise or shock or excitement or sort of an oh wow, an oh yay sort of a moment. And the emoji itself was known as Polchamp.
00:08:10
Speaker
um because that's what Gootex was in the moment. And then that got shortened to POG and then POG got lengthened to POGGERS because it's the English language and people like to do funny stuff like that. And the word was born. So apparently apparently later some people would claim that the POG in in POGGERS and what have you stood for play of the game, which I guess these days it probably people do use it to mean that, but but that's not the origin of the meme. or the origin of the word in that sense. As a completely irrelevant side note, if any time someone says a word comes from an acronym and that word dates before about World War II, it's almost certainly not true. Acronyms weren't really a popular thing,
00:08:56
Speaker
until people came back from the war bringing military jargon with them. The military liked their acronyms, but they weren't that popular at the time. and They certainly weren't popular at all 100 or more years ago because an acronym is based on the on on a word being written down. and When the majority of the population was illiterate, they just weren't a thing at all. so You hear those etymologies of how how golfers, gents, only ladies ah forbidden, and posh, is port out, starve at home, and and indeed, if you'll allow me a little profanity, fuck, being fornication under consent of the king, or for unlawful carnal knowledge. these No, then they're not. that Those words are much too old to be acronyms in anyone who says they are.
00:09:42
Speaker
is not correct so anyway anyway so far so linguistic it's a weird it's it's an interesting little word with a weird and obscure but but actually traceable origin we can we can we can sort of see this this is this is this is the sort of stuff I liked as as as a former linguist. you can You can watch language happening in real time. he Here's this word, we know what it means, we know where it came from, we know why and how, because the whole it's it's its entire birth and and life happened on the internet in front of all of our eyes.
00:10:17
Speaker
So then that's interesting to me. Like I say, this was something this this this was a topic that that that appealed to me personally. And since I'm the only one doing this episode, I can i get to do whatever I want. But of course, this is a podcast about conspiracy theories. And the reason why I feel justified in talking about it this time is because then there is a conspiratorial angle. Because um Mr. Gutierrez and Mike Ross, their show eventually fizzled out. It didn't last. I think Mike Ross kind of left the community all together, and Gutiks didn't have much success without him. And in more recent times, he's become quite the online
Gutex's Conspiracy Theories
00:10:57
Speaker
conspiracist. He has promoted various anti-vax, various QAnon-style conspiracy theories on his various social medias. This became quite apparent. Apparently there was a
00:11:09
Speaker
a group podcast stream on Twitch back in 2020, that that was sort of ah there was kind of a group discussion amongst a bunch of streamers about their responsibilities around spreading misinformation and and whether they had any. and and there was a bit of like ah Twitch apparently has has been notorious for not being entirely consistent in its rules about when people get banned or censored or kicked off and stuff like that. And though there was a talk about about yeah what as streamers, do they have a responsibility to to vet the information they present? Do they have a responsibility to, if they're spreading these sorts of theories, critique them or or whether whether it should just be that anyone should be allowed to say anything?
00:11:55
Speaker
Uh, so the gaming site Kotaku summarises this, um, what what happened as as follows. This all culminated in a moment when the hypothetical situation the assembled streamers had all just been discussing actually happened. Toward the end of the stream, one guest fighting game veteran Ryan Gutiks-Gutieres decided to explain at length why a growing number of people believe that Bill Gates is involved in a covert population control scheme involving vaccines. During this process, he said he was only, quote, relaying the information, quote, not necessarily endorsing it. But then after Nick Naan, this is Tyler Nick Naan, the man who was the the streamer who was sort of running the whole thing, reacted to his spiel by saying that everybody should vaccinate their kids and themselves. Gutierrez said, I think everybody should be free to do what they want with their body.
00:12:40
Speaker
In chat, some pushed back and questioned the wisdom of platforming Gutierrez's speech. Others said they'd heard the same things and believed them to be true. McNam, to his credit, tried to counter the anti-vaccine sentiment, but the segment also demonstrated the perils of platforming conspiracy theories in a live environment. Gutierrez went on for multiple minutes and touched on a dizzying array of topics. McNam would have needed a research on hand to shut down each specific point. One of the streamers on the podcast pushed back where they could, their efforts were by no means comprehensive. misinformation thrives when it's allowed to seep into small holes in people's knowledge, potentially sparking their curiosity, this conversation left a minefield's worth of them." So his views were fairly well known, and and by 2020 some people were petitioning Twitch to stop using this guy's face as one of their most popular emojis because of his his by that stage fairly well-known anti-vax QAnon type views.
Controversy of PogChamp Removal
00:13:32
Speaker
Twitch wasn't immediately interested in doing that but they eventually decided to stop using his face when on January the 6th 2021 he tweeted in basically in support. of the January 6 riots. um He tweeted, will there be civil unrest for the woman who was executed inside the Capitol today, or will the hashtag Magma Marta die in vain? And then claimed there was going to be video of, so that this is the woman who was shot trying to smash her way through a door, as I recall, that he was talking about. um So yes, that that was enough. That was enough for Twitch to actually step in and say, okay,
00:14:14
Speaker
we we we won't have this guy's face popping up everywhere on our streaming platform. And they removed the PogChamp emoji. Or rather, they removed Gutex's face from the PogChamp emoji. Instead, they replaced it with an image of every day they had ah a different image of a different streamer doing the PogChamp face. for They kept that up for a week or so. Eventually, they they read that there was another emoji of a Komodo dragon with its mouth open that looked a little bit like the PogChamp face as well. It was also Komodo Hype, I think that one was called. And so they ended up using that as the new PogChamp emoji for a bit. And then eventually in February of 2011, they had a Twitter poll, which they referred to as the PogChampioning.
00:15:02
Speaker
of of whether people wanted to keep the Komodo Dragon emoji or a different one and people went for the Komodo Dragon emoji and apparently now if you use the PogChamp emoji on Twitch what you get is the face of a grinning Komodo Dragon. And that is the ballad of PogChamp. Again, I just find this sort of stuff really interesting. you get you get where the the The way words just work, the way language is this organic kind of natural thing that's outside of the control of any one person and just just just develops and evolves, I find endlessly fascinating.
00:15:39
Speaker
And unfortunately, this is a particular case of of such such a phenomenon that involves a person going off the deep end as a as a online conspiracy theorist and um suffering as the result. Like I say, he had been he had been receiving, I don't know what you call it, likeness royalties or some some sort of compensation for the fact that Twitch was using his face. I assume that stopped right quick. And and that's all there is to it. So that's another short little filler episode for you for another Fortnite.
Future Topics Teaser
00:16:13
Speaker
Hopefully by by the time we're ready to record another episode, M will be back. I might have even shaken the cough that I've been suppressing all the time I've been recording this one.
00:16:23
Speaker
and we'll be able to get back to things as normal. In fact, Em has suggested that the workload may be returning to a point where we can go back to doing weekly episodes. Maybe, we'll see. p Depends some what what happens in between now and then. I mean, of course, now you probably thought when I started this episode, that that if I was going to talk about anything, it would be the fact that someone tried to shoot Donald Trump as far as conspiratorial things happening. That's probably the by far the largest one that's happened in the last fortnight. But that's not interesting, and it doesn't involve funny words and people finding funny faces. So I thought maybe Em and I will just be a little bit late to the game and talk about it next time, either in the main episode or possibly in the bonus episode, where we can have a good talk about it and where hopefully more will be known. but like At the time of recording I'm still not clear on whether Trump's ear was nicked up by a bullet or by a glass from his teleprompter being hit. that was that's That's one thing that I haven't had cleared up for me and we don't seem to know an awful lot about the shooter so maybe maybe it would be a good thing to wait for a little while anyway. so
00:17:32
Speaker
I'll leave you in anticipation of what we have to say about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and just leave you leave you pondering the word poggers and and its place in the universe. And while you ponder that, I'm just going to say goodbye.
00:17:53
Speaker
The podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy stars Josh Addison and myself. Associate Professor, M.R.X. Denton. Our show's cons... sorry, producers are Tom and Philip, plus another mysterious anonymous donor.
Listener Engagement
00:18:08
Speaker
You can contact Josh and myself at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider joining our Patreon.
00:18:33
Speaker
And remember, it's just a step to the left.