Yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unexpectedly sparked one of the biggest Twitch moments of 2020 when she delivered "Among Us. The U.S. Congresswoman teamed up with fellow Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and popular Twitch personalities like Imane "Pokimane" Anis and Hasan "Hasan Abi" Piker to encourage the public to vote.

By focusing on an important topic like voting and combining it with a popular game like "Along Us," AOC attracted a large audience; according to TwitchTracker, AOC averaged 325,000 viewers throughout the 3.5 hour stream and attracted over 420,000 concurrent viewers. Over 420,000 concurrent viewers, with TwitchTracker reporting that she averaged 325,000 viewers and over 420,000 concurrent viewers throughout her three-and-a-half hour stream. Considering that this stream put AOC in line with shroud (516K) and Ninja (617K), it was a tremendous debut.

Despite having never streamed before, AOC quickly set up her streaming setup: she tweeted her interest on October 19, and the next day she had her channel ready and assigned mods. The panel in her Twitch About section pointed viewers to iwillvote.com to remind them of the importance of registering to vote and provided important date and deadline information.

The overall tone of the stream was friendly and easygoing, and it was clear that the other streamers were very excited to play Along Us with AOC. After starting the stream by sharing information on how to vote in the US elections, Ocasio-Cortez joined the group's Discord and was eager to participate in the first match. While preparing for the first match, one of the streamers asked if it was appropriate to refer to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as "AOC." She replied, "Mike Pence can't call me AOC, but you guys [can].

Twitch chats can sometimes be less than friendly, even on the popular streamer's channel, but the community seemed very pleased with Ocasio-Cortez's foray into live streaming. She worked with Jeremy "Disguised Toast" Wang as an "imposter." She managed to defeat several of her crewmates and even managed to outlast Disguised Toast, but was captured by the remaining four players. During one round, AOC successfully cornered and eliminated Pokimane, who was working on a task. Pokimane exclaimed, "It was an honor to serve you," and then burst out laughing.

However, more serious arguments also occurred between matches. At one point, AOC and Harris "Hbomberguy" Brewis discussed how the medical care system differs between the UK and the U.S. AOC wanted to know what happens when someone sees a doctor in the UK: "I can't even imagine that interaction without a credit card or cash payment," she said. Hbomberguy explained how easy it is to see a GP in the UK and how cheap it is to pick up a prescription.

Twitch viewers are always curious about streamers' PC specs, and Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar did not disappoint. The rig she borrowed belonged to her deputy communications director, Isi Baehr-Breen, and was quite impressive with an Intel Core i7-10700K CPU, RTX 2060 Super, and a whopping 32GB of RGB RAM. While this huge rig is a bit overkill for playing games like Among Us, with 1TB M.2 NVMe and 6TB SSD, it is definitely something that many would want to run at home.

Over the past year, more and more U.S. politicians have used streaming platforms to get their message out. A quick look at Donald Trump's broadcasts shows feeds from his recent rallies across the country. Similarly, Bernie Sanders has previously posted virtual rallies on Twitch. More recently, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden opened his own "Animal Crossing" island to appeal to voters. The success of Ocasio-Cortez's stream will encourage more politicians to venture into gaming and live streaming to reach a different demographic of voters.