Confusion Surrounding Streamer Awards Trophy Explained
The first annual Streamer Awards premiered on Twitch last Saturday to an audience of over 350,000 viewers. Planned and organized by variety streamer QTCinderella, the show honored streamers from a diverse range of Twitch categories. The categories for each award included best MMO streamer, best speedrunner, best streamed event, and more. While the reception to the event has been positive, especially within the Twitch community, there are some who were confused by the award show's trophies.
Every great award show has its own iconic trophy. The Oscars, for example, give out trophies with a silhouette of an Art Deco knight holding the hilt of a sword. For The Streamer Awards, QTCinderella and other organizers settled on handing out statues of a rather notorious Internet figure: Pepe the Frog. It's not clear whether the likeness was supposed to be Pepe or his cuter derivative, Peepo, but the resemblance was enough for some viewers to voice their dissatisfaction.
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Pepe the frog was originally created by Matt Furie for a 2005 comic called Boy's Club, and his status as an early Internet meme was generally unproblematic. Yet to many who first learned about the frog via mainstream news outlets, Pepe symbolizes deeply controversial and hateful right-wing political views. It started around the end of 2015 when Pepe's likeness was incorporated into various racist depictions. This trend's circulation continued into 2016 and increased during the U.S. Presidential race. Ultimately, the Anti-Defamation League added Pepe to its Hate Symbol Database, where it remains to this day.
However, this bleak history is in stark contrast to much of Pepe's usage today. A large number of emotes used on Twitch contain
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