On the second day of Brasil Game Show 2026, a small event caught my attention. The UmGamer team had just left the press room when we saw dozens of teenagers running toward the entrance to the event’s business area. They were looking for YouTuber and streamer Dona, who has 238,000 YouTube subscribers, more than 950,000 Twitch followers and 910,000 followers on Instagram.The young fans crowded together, holding their phones and cameras in the air, shouting Dona’s name and creating a scene that would make any attraction other than Hideo Kojima feel small. In this edition, almost literally: Al Hope, director of Alien: Isolation, took part in a Meet & Greet that same day. When the session began, the line had seven people.Part of the responsibility lies with BGS itself. Al Hope had not even been confirmed as a Meet & Greet guest until the afternoon before the event, while other guests at previous editions had already had schedules announced and planned weeks in advance. The other international guest scheduled for a Meet & Greet, Kenji Kanno, the developer of Crazy Taxi, also received a lukewarm-to-cold reception, with little or no public interest.The overlap between social media and the real world is not limited to this isolated event. If we look at Brazil’s 2026 elections, the most-voted candidates for the Senate and Chamber of Deputies were individuals with a very strong digital presence, while some candidates with a greater presence in traditional politics or major media outlets, such as Marina Silva, were swept aside and faded into obscurity.The two cases share a shift in the concept of the modern agora, which has moved from public squares and face-to-face encounters in workplaces and third places to social media, as well as a redefinition of Olympians for this new era.The Modern Agora and the New OlympiansAgora was the name given in Ancient Greece to spaces for public debate, where commerce, social activities and political discussions came together. Over the centuries, the agora took the form of public squares, condominium meetings, bars, markets, labor unions, libraries, universities, factory floors and more. Today, public debate is centralized in our hands, in front of small black screens and tiny keyboards, where we can interact with whatever we want, whenever and however we want—and our message can reach an audience it never would have reached through any other medium.This same environment has also taken over the space once monopolized by traditional media. Information and entertainment are no longer disseminated exclusively through television, radio and tabloids; instead, they spread organically or through coordinated movements led by thousands of users or bots that create the illusion that we are actively interacting with crowds. Because these environments are controlled by private companies whose recommendation systems affect the visibility of topics and people, they create boundaries that make the world smaller and segmented according to our interests, despite the cacophonous immensity of the information circulating beyond them.In short, we have never had greater access to information, but information has also never been so segmented and personalized. As writer Yuval Noah Harari says: "Information isn't truth".Workplaces and third places still play important roles in social life, but cultural identity and affinity-based relationships—who people recognize, which causes they support, what kind of content they consume and where they stand politically—are shaped predominantly by online experiences. The organization of digital communities influences what their members value offline, encouraging in-person activities that differ from expectations.Edgar Morin is probably the most important figure for understanding this phenomenon, both at the polls and at BGS. Morin coined the concept of the new Olympians. Mass cultures need heroes and role models; like the gods of Mount Olympus, celebrities are transformed into figures who inspire admiration and idealization, occupying an exceptional place in the collective imagination.Morin argued that the media needs these figures to stimulate consumption and leisure, highlighting the paradox that they must simultaneously become inaccessible enough to seem divine and relatable enough to remain human. On the one hand, viewers project their ambitions and desires for greatness onto them. On the other, they identify with and sympathize with their weaknesses and life stories.From Hollywood to PoliticsThe book in which Morin presented this theory (The Culture of Masses in the Twentieth Century: The Spirit of the Times) was published in 1962 and portrayed Hollywood, show business and the traditional mass media as the forces that turned celebrities into Olympians while benefiting from the system. Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Sylvester Stallone, Axl Rose and hundreds of others occupied this space over the following decades.After 64 years, society still longs for Olympians and exemplary figures, but the means through which it pursues them—and the places where it finds them—have changed. Hollywood and the major media still influence public perception, but they are no longer homogeneous, even within the areas they dominate. This has been driven by the universal availability of production tools and the pseudo-democratization of public recognition and its criteria: what once required an entire production crew can now be done with a smartphone camera and charisma from the comfort of one’s bedroom.The ease of access creates a space for debate in which anyone can become an Olympian and projects can succeed without relying as heavily on traditional media. The box-office hit Obsession was directed by Curry Barker, who began his career on YouTube. The CazéTV channel forced Brazil’s traditional media to adopt the live-streaming model in an attempt to adapt to the times during coverage of the 2026 World Cup. Television programming is no longer competing only with a Netflix series, but also with content from TikTok and Instagram, including fruit soap operas in reality-show formats generated by artificial intelligence.The transformation of the space for discussion into a digital environment has also turned the Olympian into an even more human, tangible and relatable figure. Its impact on politics is clear. Rick Azevedo, elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Rio de Janeiro in 2026, was a pharmacy clerk venting on TikTok when he went viral. Rick founded the Vida Além do Trabalho movement, an online public petition that surpassed 3 million signatures and opened the door to his political career and the vote to end the 6x1 work schedule.Lucas Pavanato, the most-voted federal deputy in the history of São Paulo, rose politically through confrontational opposition to the Brazilian Left’s causes in academic and public settings. Pavanato edited clips and posted them on social media to attract millions of views and engagement on short-video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.Neither of them was turned into an unreachable deity by their audiences. Rick was someone with whom thousands of Brazilian workers identified through their personal dilemmas; Pavanato grew through activism against progressive causes, combined with a style of politics entirely geared toward social-media algorithms. Both became spokespeople for particular segments of society and their discontent.From Show Business to InteractionLet us apply this same idea of the absence of divinity to other spheres. When an environment encourages identification rather than ambition, the relationship between the audience and the figure appears more genuine. Audiences can follow the daily routines of their idols and content creators through social media posts, videos, livestreams and constant interactions—the fan is now part of the Olympian’s day-to-day life, and although the relationship remains asymmetrical, it has never seemed so close.Followers know how a creator speaks, reacts, plays, jokes and behaves in particular situations. They may enjoy watching the creator stream while playing a game, feel happy when the creator reads one of their comments, and perhaps even have more contact with them than they would with their favorite musician or soccer player.That is the difference between YouTuber Dona and director Al Hope. The international guest may represent a figure of great importance to the video game industry, but that relevance depends on the audience knowing his work, and many people had never even played Alien: Isolation before Brasil Game Show. Dona, by contrast, occupies a more constant place in the collective imagination and in the daily lives of his followers, regardless of his previous work.It remains unclear whether this reflects a lack of charisma on Al Hope’s part within mainstream culture or a shift in the public’s cultural tastes, with the digital environment completely dominating the real world.Would other industry figures face the same problem? Hideo Kojima drew crowds at Brasil Game Show 2025, as did Yoko Shimomura and Naoki Hamaguchi. Before them, Neil Newbon also energized the Baldur's Gate 3 fandom. In 2023, Naoki Yoshida was BGS’s main attraction. Perhaps the blame lies with poor organization and a lack of effort to bring in guests who can genuinely draw crowds. Perhaps the event needs to reconsider what kind of attractions it really wants in future editions.It is also possible that cultural recognition increasingly depends on a recurring presence in the audience’s life and less on the historical importance of a person’s contribution. Being part of someone’s daily life also means being part of their imagination—as many people say: if it wasn’t posted, it doesn’t exist.The influence of digital structures on what becomes culture may signal the end of recognition as we know it. Combined with the fact that the digital environment is privately controlled and its algorithms distribute attention unequally, this creates a new race to reach the modern Olympus, in which commercial contracts, invitations and sales are won through capturing attention and mobilizing communities rather than through a résumé.In ConclusionThe digital agora has expanded the number of people capable of competing for public attention, but it has also transferred some of the power to decide what deserves attention to private recommendation systems. Visibility and the ability to mobilize audiences have become the most valuable resources of the present day, capable of influencing the cultural industry and even politics.This new generation of Olympians no longer depends on a résumé or historical contribution, but on the ability to occupy an audience’s daily life and earn its identification, remaining visible in a continuous flow and evoking intense emotions—positive or negative—inside and outside the bubble.The BGS 2026 case should not be treated as definitive evidence of the future of gaming conventions, nor as proof that the prestige associated with major industry figures is disappearing in favor of a stronger presence for digital influencers. It is wiser to see it as further evidence of how cultural relevance has changed: for younger audiences, a streamer like Dona was the Olympian. For those who follow video game history, perhaps what was missing was someone who could represent other forms of recognition.For 2027, expectations remain for lessons to be learned from an edition that promised little, delivered even less and ended with questions about "o que deu errado?". The main misstep was unequivocally failing to give the public guests capable of drawing crowds. We do not need another Hideo Kojima without proper planning and organization, but neither do we need guests so lacking in charisma that they can be overshadowed so easily.
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