Twitch’s Official Stance On Poop, Butt, And Orgasm Emotes Is Amazing

Last week, there was some commotion on Twitch over the removal of certain butt emotes. This week, Twitch clarified its new standards for emote approval, and man, some of these guidelines are golden.

According to Twitch, all butts are not made equal:

Butts and “booty” have taken on a silly but friendly cultural meaning outside of being overtly sexual, much like Kreygasm. However, not all butts (or ‘gasm emotes for that matter) are OK. We rejected all butts to reset the baseline and clear up confusion going forward. Here is how we will review butts (you can re-submit a recently rejected emote if it meets these standards):

Yes: Drawn depictions of clothed human butts are generally OK. The same goes for drawn animal butt depictions. “Fruit butts” are OK if the image is obviously a fruit. Here’s a couple of ‘Yes’ samples from our own GeersArt. The words “butt” and “booty” are generally OK in proper context.

No: Nude human butts depictions, anuses (we’re well aware of what a butt is without the anus), or pictures of an actual human or animal butt. This also includes those butt depictions that could be confused with a nude human butt.

But hey, at least there’s some allowance for butts. The same cannot be said of “breasts, genitalia, crotch bulges, bikinis, underwear, overt sexual innuendo,” all of which Twitch no longer allows as emotes.

Here’s Twitch on poop:

Cute poop emojis are OK thanks to smartphones. The act of defecation however is not. No defecating and no “shit/shit on” or similar references/depictions.

But my favourite of the new emote guidelines is the one related to orgasms:

Kreygasm is a legendary emote on Twitch. Similar to Homer Simpson salivating over doughnuts, this “O face” has become the emoticon for those things we desire the most. We accept face/head only ‘gasm depictions, with a preference toward the broadcaster’s own face.

Orgasms may seem like a strange thing to have any rules about, especially since Twitch itself says it ways to avoid “overt sexual innuendo,” but on this point, they have to be flexible. One of the most iconic emotes available looks like this:

I used to stream on Justin.TV from 2008 until 2011 when Twitch was created. In March 2011 I was asked if I wanted an emote. Believe it or not, I declined at first. During a stream a few months later, the term Kreygasm was made up, and I decided it’d be funny to make an emote of myself doing an “O” face.

Now you know. Still, while Twitch’s lax stance on orgasms makes sense, I still can’t get over the fact they need rules about it in the first place. What were the meetings and conversations hammering these specifics out at Twitch HQ like, I wonder? ‘No, we can’t get rid of Kreygasm…they will ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ RIOT ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ!!’

“We know there will always be some new phenomenon in emotes, so nothing is written in stone as much as provided in guidelines that, like the ToS and RoC, apply to the community at large,” Twitch says. I can’t wait to see what ridiculous new Twitch emote meme happens next.