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During an IRL stream, Twitch streamer Sushipotato noticed an elderly Japanese man who looked very familiar. The streamer noticed the man looked very similar to a classic Twitch emote, KEKW.
Getting the elderly man’s attention, the streamer pointed out the emote, and how he looked very similar to the laughing emote. This created a hilarious moment where a stranger looked like one of the most popular emotes on Twitch.
Twitch streamer Sushipotato sees the KEKW emote in real life
The clip starts with the Twitch streamer getting the elderly Japanese man’s attention, asking him to watch her stream. The elderly man watches on, as Sushipotato tells the Japanese man what’s going on.
“You look the same as the KEKW emote!”
The man smiled as he watched the KEKW emote get displayed in the chat, as the Twitch streamer told chat the man wished to see the emote. The two strangers laugh together as the chat spammed the KEKW emote over and over, creating a heartwarming moment.
A Reddit commenter also noticed it and said the KEKW emotes inspiration is still with us. This is regarding Juan Joya Borja, the man featured in the original Man Behind Laughing Guy meme. Juan died in April 2021, at age 65.
KEKW itself is in the top 15 emotes on Twitch and is used virtually everywhere across the channel. Emotes are one of the most prominent and common forms of communication across Twitch. Twitch has a global audience, and while language is not universal, emotes are.
Emotes convey a variety of feelings, and while each Twitch streamer's community has their own, some are universal, like KEKW.
Origins and meaning of KEKW
The KEKW emote is also known as Spanish Guy Laughing or Man Behind Laughing Guy, and is based on comedian Juan Joya Borja. While not everyone speaks Spanish, the way the man laughs, his facial expressions, and how he speaks make the laughter contagious.
The KEKW emote is an image of Juan Joya Borja mid-laugh, mouth open. On Twitch, it’s used to represent laughter, but KEK itself has a pair of sources. KEK is the Korean equivalent of LOL, but it also has origins in World of Warcraft. If a player on the Horde side writes LOL in chat, Alliance players see it as KEK.
The W in the KEKW emote is a suffix. It’s a sign of an exaggerated expression, like a really big laugh. KEKW really took off when streamers like xQc used it, and now it’s a global phenomenon. So when the KEKW emote is shown, people know something worth laughing at is going on.
