A Guide To The Most Popular Twitch Emotes

With the advent of Twitch in 2011, the platform has established itself as the go-to space for streamers and those who love watching them. During March 2021, Twitch had an average of 2.93 million concurrent viewers. Twitch chat emotes are a huge part of Twitch culture. Viewers and streamers use emotes to express a number of feelings in chat and celebrate epic moments, poke fun at fails, and become active members of the community. Streamers also use Twitch emotes to reinforce their brand and personalities.

Many of the Twitch emotes are based on Twitch streamers or Twitch staff like Kappa, HeyGuys, MingLee, and Jebaited.

Kappa

Kappa is a Twitch chat emote used to convey sarcasm, wry humour and sometimes used to troll others. It is a grayscale picture of Josh DeSeno, who at that time worked for Justin.tv., the website whose gaming section was later separated and rebranded as Twitch. DeSeno added the grayscale version of his employee ID photograph and named it Kappa after a demon or imp in Japanese folktales, dating back to the 19th century.

Find out more about Kappa’s origins and variants here.

HeyGuys

The HeyGuys emote is used in Twitch chat as a greeting to say “hello” or “Hey Guys.”

LUL

The emote version of laugh out loud, LUL features a picture of the late content creator John “TotalBiscuit” Bain. The emote is typically used to indicate laughter.

OMEGALUL

OMEGALUL is an alternate way to say ROFL or LUL. The emote has also made its way to other social media platforms. LUL, OMEGALUL and LULW are all based on John "Totalbiscuit" Bain who originally uploaded his face as a Twitch emote in 2013.

Find out more about OMEGALUL here.

ForsenE

ForsenE is a Twitch emote based on a warped image of the Twitch streamer, Forsen’s face. It is a subscriber-only emote and does not mean anything in particular. The Twitch emote is popularly spammed by Forsen’s fans. According to Know Your Meme, the original unwarped image of Forsen comes from a Viagame Q&A video recorded during DreamHack Summer 2015.

Find out more about ForsenE here.

TriHard

TriHard is a Twitch emote based on the smiling face of the streamer and speedrunner, Mychal “Trihex” Jefferson. The emote is usually used to express excitement or hype. According to Know Your Meme, the picture comes from Trihex’s time at the Akon-23 anime convention in June 2012.

PogChamp

PogChamp, also known as “Play of Game Champ”, Pog Champion, Poggers, or just Pog, is one of the first emotes on Twitch. The emote was used to express hype both genuinely and sarcastically whenever something happens on a Twitch stream. Twitch announced that the PogChamp emote has been removed from the platform because Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez (who the emote is based on) published controversial tweets during the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.

Go here to find out more about PogChamp.

PogU

PogU is another FrankerFaceZ extension emote, featuring Ryan "Gootecks" Gutierrez. The emote became popular in 2018 as a way of expressing hype or excitement.

KEKW

KEKW is a combination of the viral video of a Spanish man laughing during an interview and popular World of Warcraft slang. KEKW is a FrankerFaceZ emote and became very popular on Twitch in 2020. The emote has stayed popular throughout 2021.

Find out more about KEKW here.

Jebaited

The emote Jebaited is usually used when a streamer is tricked or trolled in-game, by another person, or in chat by viewers.

Find out more about the history and significance of Jebaited here.

NotLikeThis

The NotLIkeThis Twitch emote is used to express disappointment or disbelief when something goes very wrong. It is also used as a reaction to cringe. The emote features Benjamin Swartz, a former Twitch employee reacting to a player getting beaten in a fighting game. According to Know Your Meme, the picture was taken when Swartz was watching HugS86 lose a tournament game at an EVO event in 2015. The phrase which now became the emote was taken from the first Matrix movie.