PogChamp is based on this video from 2000, but was given the name PogChamp because of a Mad Catz fight stick promo released in 2011 for a tournament that Gootecks was competing in. Polygon spoke with Don Caldwell, Know Your Meme’s managing editor, to help explain why some of these emotes are incredibly popular. The face in the Kappa emote is that of Josh DeSeno, a former employee of Justin.tv, which later evolved into Twitch.
- The emote’s name, based on the YouTube user who uploaded it, stars SourNotHardcore (a staff member at Twitch) dancing in a store.
- The best advice when using a LuL variation is to do a bit of research before using a specific emote.
- There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.
Other people may start using an innocuous emote designed around a popular streamer for insulting or harmful reasons. Being part of Twitch culture means tuning into emotes as they emerge and evolve. According to StreamElements Chat Stats, Kappa is the ninth top Twitch emote in use and has been sent over one billion times on Twitch. Different variations of Kappa including KappaPride, MiniK, KappaHD, or KappaRoss were added to the streaming site over the years, further adding to the Twitch emote’s popularity.
But even if you’ve never used livestreaming site Twitch before, you may have seen the phrase used online. The community subreddit for the original Twitch Plays Pokémon, the Twitch channel where hundreds of people play a Pokémon game at the same time. The term Kappa is now included in everyday conversations among the youngest people. Its popularity has crossed over into the world of streaming. The icon, which shows Jebailey being taken aback by surprise, is used when someone is trying to troll or bait a streamer or other viewers in chat.
The Various Faces of Kappa: Understanding Emote Variations
The black and white photo of DeSeno was used to create the iconic emote. The Kappa icon, predominantly seen on Twitch, represents sarcasm, irony, or a joke. When used in a chat, it suggests that the preceding statement should be taken with a pinch of humor or skepticism. Kappa became a meme because of its widespread use on Twitch as a way to denote sarcasm. Over time, its frequent and varied usage by the Twitch community transformed it into a recognizable meme.
Josh’s face was uploaded as an emote named “Kappa.” Its popularity grew, and Kappa became the main symbol/emote of Twitch.tv. Twitch users use the emote to convey sarcasm, trolling, or simple mischief, and sentences ending with the word “Kappa” should not be taken seriously. According to Know Your Meme, DeSeno was hired to work on the Twitch chat client in 2009 and keeping with tradition at the startup, added an emote based on himself on the site. The now-dissolved Justin.tv started off in 2007 when entrepreneur Justin Kan started livestreaming his daily life 24/7 through a webcam mounted on his head. The website allowed anyone to broadcast their video online for free through channels. The wide variety of content was divided into categories with Justin.tv separating its ‘Gaming’ section in June 2011 and creating a new site called Twitch.
What is a Kappa? (Intro to Esports)
Since then, the Kappa emote has grown in popularity and, in a sense, has become the face of Twitch. It is used well over a million times per day on the platform for a variety of reasons. DeSeno has explained that he was a huge fan of Japanese mythology and named his emote Kappa, after the turtle-like, Japanese water spirit of the same name. In 2009, engineer Josh DeSeno was hired to work on Twitch’s chat client. It was a common tradition at the time for Justin.tv employees to sneak in emotes (special emoticon- or emoji-like characters) based on themselves.
Now that you know all about Kappa, it’s time to get out there and start spam those chatrooms. One of the most popular variants is KappaPride, a rainbow version that was created after the United States Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were allowed to marry in 2015. Adding together all of the different variants of Kappa on Twitch, the emoticon as a whole is used about two million times every day. DeSeno chose the name “Kappa” for the emoticon because he was a big fan of Japanese culture. In Japanese folklore, a Kappa is a creature that lures people to lakes and pulls them in. The story was used by the Japanese to teach kids about the dangers of rivers and lakes and how dangerous they can be if you get too close to them.
Twitch users competed to see which channel could use the most Kappas per minute
This meant LUL could exist as an emote — a very, very popular emote — on Twitch despite the DMCA takedown. Extensions like BTTV make it easier for third-parties to integrate emotes into Twitch, circumventing the platform’s own rules. Not to mention that an emote’s meaning in one community can be totally different in another. Over time, this simple image detached from its original meaning. It transformed, becoming a symbol of irony and humor on Twitch and beyond. And just like that, a staff member’s ID photo evolved into one of the internet’s most recognized memes.
Josh DeSeno, worked during Justin.tv’s early years and when they started adding emotes to the platform, Josh uploaded the iconic Kappa face. A robot meme based on video game news publication Destructoid’s logo. The robot is mainly used when a glitch, error or computerized sound is made on stream. It’s also used, however, to poke fun at people’s robotic tendencies.
Released in December 2015, this emote is generally used as a substitute for Kappa during the holiday season. Elijah Watson is an internet culture and entertainment reporter. His work has been published by the Daily Beast, Vice, Complex, Bustle, Uproxx, and Okayplayer. Here, the Kappa meme had it’s breaking out party on WWE Raw. Much like any meme that grows and grows on the internet, Kappa eventually burst out into the real world, confusing the hell out of normies.
It is often used to convey sarcasm or irony or to troll people online. The Kappa emote is a black and white photo of a former Justin.tv employee named Josh DeSeno. Justin.tv was the main streaming platform before Twitch. Monkas tends to show up often on different streams because it’s relatable. It’s used in a moment of high intense action or something that’s particularly anxiety-inducing. During IRL streams, this may happen during a face-to-face encounter or when a streamer is ranting about something.
How did one face become the face of Twitch?
“We celebrated Kappa at TwitchCon simply because it has become so central to the way we all communicate on Twitch,” said Matthew DiPietro, Twitch’s vice president of marketing. Some popular ones include KappaPride, KappaClaus, Keepo, MiniK, KappaHD, and KappaRoss. Luci is a novelist, freelance writer, and active best math software blogger. A journalist at heart, she loves nothing more than interviewing the outliers of the gaming community who are blazing a trail with entertaining original content. When she’s not penning an article, coffee in hand, she can be found gearing her shieldmaiden or playing with her son at the beach.
How Josh DeSeno became the face of impish sarcasm is at once simple to explain and complicated to understand. In 2009, DeSeno was hired as an early engineering employee of Justin.tv, one of the first livestreaming video sites on the web. His first task was to rewrite the chat client for the gaming channel that would become Twitch, one of the many new community-based https://forexhero.info/ products Justin.tv was rolling out. Since many of the original Justin.tv staffers had inserted their faces as emoji easter eggs for the chat room,2 DeSeno decided to do the same, using the photo from his employee ID. In the early days of the video streaming website Justin.tv, before it was rebranded as Twitch Interactive, an employee named Josh Kappa worked there.
The emote was introduced in 2015, but didn’t pick up steam until 2016 thanks to the speedrunning community. The emote continued to grow, and was eventually banned by GDQ organizers because of the bullying connotation. HaHAA is based on a photo of Andy Samberg’s face from a Lonely Island music video that aired on Saturday Night Live in 2010. The specific “haHAA” is a text translation of the awkward laugh Samberg produces in the video, as seen below.
The popularity of Justin.tv declined over the years and the company was eventually dissolved in August 2014. Luckily for us, it was a common tradition for Justin.tv staff members to sneak in emotes based on themselves. DeSeno was no exception, using his employee ID to make what is now used on average a million times a day by twitch users alone. Kappa is the one of the most popular emotes on Twitch, and is likely the most reproduced photo of a human being on the planet. It is used over one million times every day in the site’s chats and shows no signs of letting up. Those numbers are so high partially because Twitch users don’t just post one kappa at a time.
While no one can pinpoint why the meme became so popular, DeSeno once theorized that it was perhaps due to the fact that “kappa” was one of the shortest names at the time. Or possibly it was due to his apparent smugness in his feigned smile; we shall never know the true reason. Sure, you have likely heard of Twitch, but have you heard of Justin.Tv? The precursor of Twitch.Tv was Justin.Tv, and kappa was widely used on that platform, too. The greyscale emoticon was first an image of Justin.tv staff member Josh DeSeno. The person behind the Kappa emote is Josh DeSeno, an employee from Justin.tv.
The only way to safely use emotes in chat is to be informed about the connotation and message being sent. Unlike TriHard, cmonbruh’s emote has always been slightly controversial. It’s difficult to pinpoint when CmonBruh really became a meme, but the earliest known mention dates back to 2016, according to Know Your Meme. The emote is primarily used to express confusion over something being said on stream, usually in response to a chat participant saying something with a racist connotation. The emote is also used, however, to illustrate a more general confusion — hence the “c’mon, bruh” language. PogChamp is still one of the most popular emotes, and part of the reason is because it’s pretty safe.
