KEKW Twitch Emote Meaning & Origin

The KEKW Twitch emote is the easiest out of all Twitch emotes to understand – it means laughter.

KEKW twitch emote

If you’ve been around Twitch.TV long enough, then you’re probably familiar with the emote “KEKW”.

This emote has been around for a while and is actually one of the most used emotes on the platform overall, this emote was coined during a small period of time in Twitch emote renaissance where emotes such as ResidentSleeper, Pogchamp, MonkaS, LULW, Kappa were founded.

Just like those emotes KEKW was coined by the Twitch audience for themselves. 

From being a random video on the internet, to turning into one of Twitch’s most used emotes, this article will explore the meaning, origins and trivia and facts surrounding the infamous KEKW emote. So without any further ado, let’s get into it!

What does the KEKW emote mean on Twitch?

The meaning of KEKW is honestly the easiest out of all Twitch emotes to understand; laughter. That is all that this emote symbolizes, it is a picture of an old man laughing, and that is exactly what this emote means too. The emote is most commonly used to express a sort of tear jerking laughter during Twitch streams, if you have seen the video, you know the sort of laughter that I mean!

How did this emote get the name KEKW? Well to simplify it for the readers, KEK is the Korean equivalent of Western side of the world’s LOL. KEK is also how World of Warcraft transcribes LOL between factions that are opposing each other, so for example if an Alliance player types KEK in the game chat, the Horde player will read it as Bur (for some reason) but if you flip that around, and the Horde player types LOL in the game chat then the Alliance player will read it as KEK. It’s quite funny how this functions. The W at the end of KEKW is just there to because of this emote “xWx”, this emote means the x’s are the eyes (as in XD or Dx ) and w is the equivalent of “3” in :3. It means content and silly. 

For example; a player tries to sabotage other players in Fall Guys and gets eliminated doing so, or if someone tells a joke that is extremely funny, you use the KEKW emote to show them let them know they messed up or express your appreciation of their joke!

What is the origin of the Kekw Twitch emote?

The emote features the Spanish Laughing Guy, the face of the emote is a Spanish actor and comedian named Juan Joya Borja, the video that the emote is from is definitely going to make anyone that watches it laugh even if they don’t really understand a single word that the man is saying in it, there’s an entire collection of memes where people put subtitles about mocking something on this video for non-native Spanish speakers and it’s always funny as heck.

It instantly became a hit, the video ended up racking in views in millions and so did the memes, turning into one of the videos that became a part of the internet’s humongous catalogue of memes, after which it didn’t take long until people decided to get it added to Twitch’s catalogue of emotes too! The KEKW meme represents extreme laughter.

Kekw Facts

  • KEKW, at the moment, is one of the most used emotes in on Twitch, and has managed to place itself in the top 15 twitch emotes of all time in terms of users.
  • KEKW also sort of replaced the LUL, OMEGALUL and ROFL emotes almost entirely!
  • In the original video, the actor Juan Joya Borja going by his stage name called El Ristas is actually telling a story about trying to wash some pots in the sea, which probably led to a messy situation since sea water is literally evil.
  • There are a couple different variations of the KEKW emote, the most popular ones by far are the KEKWhat and KEKWow variations.

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