Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was already known for her innovation in political messaging on social media networks like Twitter and Instagram, but she took things to a new level Tuesday night in a widely viewed Twitch stream.
Hitting almost 440,000 viewers simultaneously at one point, AOC brought a massive audience to the video game streaming site to watch her play the game Among Us.
With her peak falling somewhere over 435,000 viewers about an hour into her stream, that would put Ocasio-Cortez just off the top five for most concurrent views on Twitch in its history, with her peak edging out NASA for the sixth spot.
Among Us involves deductive reasoning with players, known as crewmates, communicating over voice chat or within a chat room in the PC game.
Each crewmate is given tasks to complete across the ship, while one or two players out of the group are randomly selected to be the "impostors," who are assigned to kill off each of the crewmates in order to win the game. Players must then call meetings to deduce which crewmate is responsible and vote to eject them off the ship in order to claim victory.
AOC's stream generated buzz on social media when it was revealed she was the "impostor" in the first round of the game, after revealing to viewers that she hoped she wouldn't be chosen.
Ocasio-Cortez launched her channel to get out the vote, inviting celebrities to come join her. Fellow congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar, also joined the game, even playing a round where she was the "impostor."
In the stream, Ocasio-Cortez oftentimes put in her vote early on who she believed was the "impostor," encouraging viewers to do the same and cast their ballot early in the 2020 election.
