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'You Guys Can Call Me AOC. Mike Pence Can't Call Me AOC.': Just Some Highlights of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Streaming 'Among Us'

By Petr Navovy | Social Media | October 21, 2020 |

By Petr Navovy | Social Media | October 21, 2020 |

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For those of you who might not be aware, Among Us is a game. A free-to-play online multiplayer game available on Android, iOS, and Windows, in which you and a bunch of friends play the role of a spaceship crew running around your spaceship, trying to maintain it. Lest that sound a little bit banal, the twist is that one of you (or more, depending on the overall team size) is an ‘Impostor.’ The Impostor’s role is to try to murder all the non-Impostor crewmates one by one in the twisty and cramped hallways of the ship, all the while remaining undetected, unsuspected, and sabotaging the ship and sowing doubt and confusion among the crew as to who the real Impostor might be. That’s another key part of the game: Every time a body is discovered, the normal gameplay pauses and the players are placed into a discussion forum in which they try to figure out who the Impostor among them might be. Whoever the plurality votes for gets ejected out of the airlock and the game lets everyone know if they caught the right person or not. With each new body and with each wrong person ejected, the atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust ratchets up wildly. Think of the feeling present in John Carpenter’s The Thing and you won’t be far off. If the Impostor kills enough people or sabotages the ship enough, they win.

Developed by studio InnerSloth and originally released in mid-2018 to minimal attention, Among Us has seen an almost exponential explosion in popularity in the latter part of 2020 thanks to a variety of big-name YouTubers and Twitch streamers—first in Brazil and South Korea, and then a bit later America—picking up on it. As of September 2020, the game has had over 100 million downloads. Aside from the streamer boost effect, many people have highlighted how the game’s highly social nature would have helped it gain in popularity during a global pandemic that has isolated so many of us and deprived us of our usual social networks. Among Us has busted through the barriers of the traditional gaming world now, with memes inspired by the game spreading far and wide, and with a sitting United States congresswoman deciding to use it as a platform for encouraging people to vote ahead of the upcoming Presidential election. That’s right, here’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, putting out feelers on Twitter a few days ago:

Considering how hugely popular AOC is with younger demographics, the call was answered with a predictable amount of enthusiasm, with some of the biggest names in gaming (and politics) raising their hands with a desire to join in, or just voicing support:

And then, last night the announcement dropped:

Anticipation was high:

The stream was an insane success.

Here are some highlights, courtesy of the People for Bernie Twitter account:

(Minor note: The Tories do want to get rid of the NHS. But that’s a story for another time.)