Twitch, the popular videogame streaming service, has its own language. Like English evolved from Latin, Twitch chat evolved from internet terms of yore, like “l33t” and “noob.” Trying to decipher this language can be difficult, a lot of it makes zero sense to the uninitiated. I’m here to try to give you some insight into these terms and why people spam them while watching grown men play video games.
Disclaimer : I am 24 years old and am already considered an old man by internet standards. I do not raise my kappas when I watch Twitch chat. These are findings solely from research and spending hours staring at a little text box that scrolls before you have any chance to read it yourself.
Twitch Emotes And You
First off, you should know what Twitch chat actually is. At the sidebar of every stream lies a white box where logged in users can type messages to their favorite streamers or whoever happens to be reading. For the bigger streams there are moderators to keep it as calm as possible, but it can be hard controlling thousands of screaming voices in the internet void.
Twitch emotes, which are tiny pictures created from typed terms, are a lot like hieroglyphics: pictures mean words. Take for example, Ttours , which is just a purple camera. Twitch chat has evolved this into something else entirely, spamming it when something goes wrong with someone’s webcam or a technical mishap happens on an eSports stream.
Many of these meanings evolved naturally,allowing many to understand what these pictures mean without any references. PJSalt is a salt shaker that is spammed when a player is upset or “salty,” MrDestructoid is a green robot that shows up when viewers think a channel is botting, or has fake viewers. My personal favorite, RalpherZ , is a cute dog face that gets spammed when an animal appears on stream.
When to Raise Your Donger or Trihard ?
Emotions can be difficult to convey on the internet, especially by a bunch of pubescent boys watching people play videogames for hours at a time. Twitch chat helps alleviate some of that stress by allocating different emotes for different emotions. Biblethump is a still of the main character of the Binding of Isaac crying and is used to signify sadness, Swiftrage is an image of streamer Swiftor that is used to convey rage and ResidentSleeper means they are bored or tired. Understanding your average Twitch chat is a lot like understanding a baby, if that baby was made of 10,000 different people.
Like Egyptian carvings, Twitch chat can be difficult to decipher. Some symbols’ meanings have absolutely nothing to do with their pictures and are impossible to understand unless you are an adamant Twitch user. Kappa , and it’s other forms KappaPride , KappaRoss and Keepo , are all pictures of an old Justin.tv employee (which is what Twitch used to be) that the internet just took to. It now serves as an indicator of sarcasm, since it’s impossible to tell tone on the internet.
Another weird one is PogChamp , which is the surprised face of a streamer named Gootecks . He made a video about Street Fighter joysticks where he played with pogs, deeming himself the “Pog Champ.” The emote was made to commemorate the video, and now means that something happy or exciting happened on stream.
There are so many others: Minglee, Smorc , Swiftrage , the list keeps on going. We haven't even touched on all the sub emotes, emotes given to subscribers on channels. I expect in a few years there will be college courses taught on the intricacies of Twitch chat. If you haven’t already, open up whatever stream is at the top of the channels list and watch the chat. Your brain will hurt afterwards and you will lose brain cells, but you’ll finally understand what goes on inside the head of the average video game player (spoiler alert: it’s scary).
