About

HeyGuys is a Twitch emote featuring a woman's face waving, and is used as a welcome or greeting symbol.

Origin

The face of the emote is that of Selen Akay, the former recruiting director for Twitch and who streams as HeyGuys on the platform.^[2] The emote of her face began seeing use at the end of November, 2014.^[1]

Spread

The emote became one of the most popular on Twitch over the following five years, and regularly gets millions of uses a day.^[5] On February 28th, 2015, Twitter user @ChasejustChase posted a picture of her (shown below, left). Akay appeared on Twitch's Facebook page on February 25th, 2016, with MingLee^[4] (shown below, right).

On January 4th, 2017, Akay explained to Twitch's Facebook account the origin of the emote.^[3] In early 2019, she posted a video in which she introduced herself to kids who recognized her from the emote (shown below).

Search Interest

External References