AOC and Omar Stream Among Us to Connect With Voters

By Maddie Zimmer

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, two members of the U.S. Congress, held a Twitch video game live stream along with other Twitch streamers as a tremendously successful youth voter outreach for the 2020 presidential election. The dynamic between AOC and the gamers was a hit with an overwhelming 439,000 viewers watching real time and approximately 5.2 million viewers watching the stream overall.

The congressional members were able to reach a mass audience of youth via the Twitch platform that politicians are not expected to ever reach. For instance, when Donald Trump and Joe Biden stream on Twitch for campaign events, total views peak at around 6,000 to 17,000. Ocasio-Cortez along with the other gamers were responsible to find the imposter in the viral game “Among Us.”

If you have no knowledge of the game, a selective pair of the group is given the role of “imposter” to slowly kill the other players in the game without getting caught until hopefully remaining as the last player standing. The other players simply rely on their critical gamer observation to contest whether someone should be held under suspicion as imposter, then a collective vote is made after each murder to vote the projected imposter out.

The stream started on a high note with a dramatic gasp from Ocasio-Cortez when given her role as the imposter, then subsequently accidentally reporting her own murder which immediately raised suspicion over her pink avatar. The game and its highlight moments were able to reach a popularity among the youth, that ultimately the Congress officials were able to get their message to vote throughout the stream. AOC and her already established online presence made this event so worthwhile during a pandemic where the youth of our nation is also desperately searching for current updated entertainment to keep up with. AOC often stated she was “voting early” when casting a suspect among the group, making sure to frequently reference her message of encouragement to vote in this upcoming 2020 election.

Although there was a predominant goal to encourage voter turnout, viewers so easily were able to see the genuine excitement Ocasio-Cortez had to willingly ask other gamers to play with her for a few hours while almost half a million people watched her attempting to get away with murder.