AOC is Among Us
Chijioke Agbam ‘21 Staff Writer
On October 20, 2020, exactly two weeks before election day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed the popular social deduction game, Among Us, on Twitch. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known for her initials AOC, is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. She has served in this position since 2019 and was recently re-elected during the 2020 election. After the election, she continued sharing her gameplay, streaming Among Us on November 28 with new streamers such as Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Seán William “JackSepticEye” McLoughlin. For those that don’t know, Among Us is a social deduction game that can be played with 4-10 people. At the beginning of the game, you
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AOC streaming on October 20. TWITTER/ SLATE.COM
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will be given one of two roles. You will either be a crewmate, who will complete tasks on certain locations of a map, or an imposter, who will sabotage parts of the map. As a crewmate, you can win by either finishing all of the tasks that are given or by voting out the imposter(s) during a meeting. These meetings can be called after finding a dead body or hitting the emergency meeting button that is placed in a designated area on the map. As an imposter, you can win by killing all of the crewmates or sabotaging a crucial area of the map and allowing the timer to reach zero. AOC played Among Us with many popular streamers such as Ali “Myth” Kabbani, Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo and Imane “pokimane” Anys. Her stream in October was considered one of the most successful to date, having 300,000 to 400,000 viewers on average. The stream was preceded by AOC tweeting, “Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote?” AOC’s Among Us stream was successful in generating voter turnout, as she was re-elected to her position as the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district. A graph presented by dataforprogress.org shows that the younger the average age of the voters, the larger the share of votes won by AOC. The November stream of Among Us was a fundraiser for food pantries and eviction relief, which raised $200,000 to help those in need.