pog

Pog is a hype word from Twitch chat. It means something exciting just happened, roughly “let’s go!” or “no way!” It can be an exclamation (“POG!”) or an adjective (“that was so pog”).

What it means

When a streamer lands an impossible shot, opens a rare item or gets a huge donation, chat fills with “Pog,” “Poggers” and “PogChamp.” It’s pure excitement, and like most chat reactions it can be sarcastic too: a flat “pog” after something mildly interesting means “wow, amazing” in the dry sense.

Examples

• “He hit that from across the map. POG.”
• “We got tickets! Pog!”
• “Free shipping? Pog.” (not very excited)

Where it came from

Pog comes from PogChamp, a Twitch emote showing the shocked face of fighting-game streamer Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez. The image came from an outtake posted in 2010 to his YouTube channel, Cross Counter TV, and the name from a 2011 video called “Pogs Championship,” where he plays the 1990s game Pogs. Twitch made it a global emote in 2012, and it became one of the most-used emotes on the site: Wikipedia counts more than 813 million uses between 2016 and its removal.

On January 6, 2021, Twitch removed the emote, citing posts by Gutierrez that it said encouraged further violence after the attack on the US Capitol. For a few weeks the emote showed a different streamer’s face each day, and in February 2021 viewers voted for a permanent replacement. A Komodo dragon emote called KomodoHype won with 81% of the vote. The word “pog” kept going regardless.

You may see “pog” explained as “play of the game.” That’s a backronym, invented after the fact.

Pog vs. poggers

Same meaning. Poggers started as a separate frog emote in 2017 and is a little more playful. Pog is shorter and has drifted further into everyday speech.

Related terms

• poggers: the frog-emote version of pog
• Kappa: the Twitch emote for sarcasm
• clip it: save that moment
• W: a win

See more terms like this in our gaming slang dictionary.