Twitch and the general livestreaming community has famously introduced countless new words into the vernacular of viewers and creators alike. The community’s emote system and general lingo has led to many unique words popularizing and even taking a new life off the immediate platform.
With more and more memes and emotes emerging from Twitch by the week, staying up to date on the newest slang can be an insurmountable task. Malding however is among the most popular phrases on Twitch that has existed and maintained popularity among viewers for several years, earning it a coveted spot as a Twitch dialectic mainstay.
This is the meaning of the phrase, how the popular saying came to be, and how malding has proliferated across Twitch and beyond.
What does malding mean and where does it come from?
Malding is a combination of the words mad and balding, and means to infer that someone is so mad that they start balding. Unlike many other recently developed and informal words, malding does not have an accompanying emote, though it has since been incorperated into many streamer specific emotes since its popularization.
The word malding was first used in Twitch streamer Forsen’s chat. While playing Hearthstone, viewers would commonly type ‘so mad, so bad’ as well as ‘so bald, so mad’ which eventually combined into the single word ‘mald.’ Malding has since launched off on Twitch, encroaching into countless Twitch streamer’s communitiers. In June 2019, YouTuber Jkhan released a video called ‘The Malding of Twitch’ which provided multiple clips of popular male streamers balding.
While the term malding has been around Twitch for quite some time, it shows no indication of slowing down, as the phrase continues to appear in reference in many content creators. Now adopted by many streamers, esports players, and even organizations, malding has appeared to reach a much wider audience than initially anticpated.
