Twitch chat can be scary sometimes, especially when tens of thousands of users are spamming nonsense all at once.
Through the flood of emotes, berating of streamers and fellow chatters, PogChamps, and more, there’s a phrase that can be confusing to some if you don’t know its origins: KEKW. KEKW took over Twitch chats in 2020, and if you’re not equipped with the meme knowledge to understand it, it can become quite annoying when the chat is filled with the phrase.
Here’s all you need to know about KEKW in Twitch chats.
What is KEKW?
KEKW is an emote for a Twitch extension called FrankerFaceZ. The extension adds countless new emotes for Twitch chatters to use on the desktop version of the website, but it does not work on the mobile version of Twitch.
The origin of KEKW is a video from 2007 when a Spanish comedian and actor named Juan Joya Borja burst into laughter during an interview on a TV show. The video has since been made into memes countless times, with creators adding fake subtitles to it.
If you see people in a Twitch chat spamming KEKW, they’re likely laughing at something that happened on the stream. KEKW functions in the same way that “LUL” or “LOL” does. In 2021, the famous personality behind KEKW passed away at age 65. Borja, also known for his stage name El Risitas, passed away due to vascular problems that originally hospitalized him in September 2020. However, his legacy lives on any time hilarity ensues on a Twitch channel.
According to StreamElements, the BTTV emote has been used more than 100 million times, making it among the top 50 BTTV emotes of all time. If you want to see KEKW and other FrankerFaceZ emotes, you can download and install the extension onto your desktop browser by heading to the website.
