Kappa
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About
Kappa is a graphic emoticon commonly used by trolls as a postscript to a sentence to convey sarcasm on the live streaming video platform Twitch; it's popularity has also lead to the emoticon being used as a form of spam.
Origin
The Kappa emote is based on a grey-scale photograph of Josh DeSeno[1], then an employee of Justin.TV working on the chat client, which was uploaded during the early days of Justin.TV, along with others emotes based on JTV employees.[5][6][7]
Spread
As of February 2014, the emote is used 900,000 times on average per day;[2] by June 2015 this had already increased to around 1 million times on average per day. Twitch has added a total of four emotes featuring Kappa: Kappa (
KappaClaus
In December of 2015, Twitch introduced the KappaClaus emote,[8] a version of the Kappa emote with a Santa Claus hat on his head (shown below). The emote has typically seen an increase in use around December.[9]
KappaPride
KappaPride is a Twitch emote featuring Kappa with a rainbow background used to affirm or inquire about one's homosexuality. A thread about the emote was posted to Bungie forums[10] in October of 2015. In October of 2015, a study by FiveThirtyEight[12] found that the emote was the second most-used emote on Twitch behind regular Kappa. On November 15th, 2016, Urban Dictionary user defined it as "Rainbow version of twitch emote Kappa. Can be used to affirm or ask about someone's homosexuality."[11] There are several variations on the image available on Twitch.[13]
Various Examples
ASCII Variation
There's also a popular ASCII used as a replacement for emoticon variantion:
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Search Interest
External References
[1] AngelList – Josh DeSeno
[5] Reddit – The Face Behind Kappa
[6] LazyThunk – The Kappa Page
[7] Quora – What does 'Kappa' mean with respect to the Twitch emote or when people say Kappa?
[8] Streamer News via Way Back Machine – Twitch Introduces The KappaClaus Global Emote
[9] Twitch – KappaClaus Emote
[10] Bungie – Define KappaPride
[11] Urban Dictionary – Kappa Pride
[12] FiveThirtyEight – How Kappa Became The Face Of Twitch
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