AOC’s debut Twitch stream is one of the biggest ever - The Verge:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made her Twitch debut tonight to play Among Us and encourage viewers to vote. She also, very quickly, became one of the platform’s biggest broadcasters: her stream peaked at 435,000 viewers around the time of her first match, according to Twitch. (The stream had dipped to around 350,000 viewers as of this writing, after about two hours of playing.)

That peak viewership puts her broadcast among the 20 biggest streams ever, according to the third-party metrics site TwitchTracker, and much higher if you’re only looking at broadcasts from individual streamers. Ninja holds the record for an individual streamer, with more than 600,000 viewers during a Fortnite match with Drake in 2018. TwitchTracker’s metrics suggest that AOC’s stream could in the top 10 for an individual in terms of peak viewers.

Like it or not, this is the future of media — people from all walks of life connecting with different groups of people by meeting them where they are, and sometimes, that’s in a place which is mostly designed for gaming.

Also, I’m pretty sure we’re going to see a lot of hemming and hawing in the media about this, but let’s be honest — this seemed genuine as hell, and it’s nice to see someone in the world of politics (or, someones, given Ilhan Omar’s joining the stream) who seems to have a life outside of goddamned politics.