Kappa Emote In Twitch Chat: Origin, Use and Popularity

Kappa is a Twitch chat emote used to convey sarcasm 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.

Despite DeSeno’s exit from the company, the Kappa emote has remained incredibly popular on Twitch. DeSeno’s expression is widely used to communicate a sarcastic smirk or indicate that you’re joking.

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. The popularity of Justin.tv declined over the years and the company was eventually dissolved in August 2014.

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.

According to Dictionary.com, by 2014, Kappa got a Twitch-related Urban Dictionary definition and in 2015, Kappa was being used on Twitch an average of 1 million times per day on average.