Imagine having your likeness frozen in time becoming this famous. Look at his photo in 2015. It is obviously him but he grew out his hair, looks thinner, and he's aged (6 years!), then you see his own self on his shirt.
I mean its a bit different than being famous and having a famous photo taken of you. Most of the time the photo is famous because the person _and_ event are famous. But with this, it almost becomes a completely different person/thing when the "famous" aspect is just some random photo taken of you.
The question I have is does he own any rights at all to his likeness (from 2009) being reproduced? Twitch took that picture, and they own the rights to that photo taken, so I guess that part of it belongs to twitch. But now people are making statues of him and taking large photos of his head to eSports tournaments, so what rights does he have to say, "Whoa, those busts are cool, but I'm really uncomfortable with that. Take it down please"?
Technically he uploaded the picture himself when he was working at Twitch (then Justin.tv) -- it used to be an employe e benefit that you could add your face to the emoticon list.
If I'm not mistaken it was popularized by the Fighting Game Community (FGC). There's a related subreddit (r/Kappa). PogChamp and Bible Thump (which are also on the list on the linked page) were also popularized by the FGC. The interesting thing is that in terms of viewers, Fighting games have a substantially less proportion of the total audience compared to MOBAs and FPSs. It's possible that FG viewers just spend much more time chatting than other spectators because the average Fighting Game match goes by in about 2 minutes.
Besides trolling, r/Kappa is also known for sponsoring many FG players to get to tournaments around the world, so you might come across players who list them as a sponsor (in the same way you'd maybe see someone sponsored by EG - Evil Geniuses).
In "twitch speak" the term can in some ways be used to indicate sarcasm, as replacement for "j/k", or just trolling in general.
I think you are overestimating how much of the popularity came from the FGC.
All of the popular emotes represent pretty common reactions, especially with respect to watching e-sports. BibleThump is a crying eyes, which is pretty much the best emote for sadness or, more commonly, faking sadness. PogChamp is a guy screaming so when people are demanding stuff (e.g. "FIX SOUND PogChamp") its an obvious choice, but it can also be used for things of excitement, so it has a lot of uses. I think, even without the FGC, the emotes that have risen to the most used would've been very similar, if not the exact same.
BibleThump resembled Wolfkrone in that image so literally thousands of viewers started spamming it with the text "spooby pls" on Spooky's chat whenever something went wrong, or the stream was going to end.
That is why you'll often see people type "<topic> pls biblethump", eg.
Right, but I'm saying past the origination of those emotes, I don't think a huge portion of their popularity is directly tied to the FGC. They grew out of the FGC, but they've long taken on meanings of their own across the entire site that have no relation to the FGC and center around what emotion the face represents.
They've expanded to use outside the FGC, but I would be the FGC viewers who also watch LOL/DOTA/etc is what spread them to the rest of the streaming world. At least with PogChamp (hell maybe DansGame too even though it isn't TECHNICALLY Floe it might as well be at this point).
The fighting game community has led the pack for memes and vernacular in esports for a long time. It seems natural to me for this to be so - the FGC had the first real English streams with commentators that were extremely colorful and embraced the idea of the hype man. On top of that, the FGC is much more of a communal group coming from the arcade scene as compared to the home PC scene.
I think you are not giving the FGC the credit it deserves for its role in the growing popularity of "esports" and its role in shaping the character of the "esports" fan.
I've pretty much assimilated the word Kappa into my vernacular, just because of how popular its become in competitive video games. Its almost like the old /s that was popular on Digg, where it makes it way more obvious when you are joking about something, which is crucial in conversations where you can't see the other persons face. "You suck" and "You suck, Kappa" have completely different meanings. Its a little weird to use in real life and I only use it in private or joking with friend, but I've even got my girlfriend to understand the meaning and occasionally use it herself, even though the only video game she's ever played is The Sims.
It appears that while he technically may have one of the most reproduced faces, it's only because his face is an emoticon on Twitch that is constantly used, something like 800+ times/minute. So those unfamiliar with Twitch (like me) would have never seen this face or recognize it.
Also, fivethirtyeight is using the phrase "IRL." Is this in the dictionary or something now? I thought it was slang and not generally used in more reputable sites.
Yeah, I was going to say "this makes me feel old", but I've never been a gamer so even in my younger days I would have been unfamiliar with this level of "popularity". I think the Internet encompasses so much of life now that being neck-deep in tech is no longer enough to guarantee you'll feel plugged in to all of the latest trends/memes.
They used it in the same sentence as the emote itself, so I'd imagine it's not meant to be taken too seriously. The Kappa face is not generally used in more reputable sites, but this is a internet subculture piece, so I think it fits.
> Also, fivethirtyeight is using the phrase "IRL." Is this in the dictionary or something now? I thought it was slang and not generally used in more reputable sites.
To give an idea how much Kappa is spammed in Twitch chat, here is a wordcloud from the chat of a popular Twitch streamer: http://i.imgur.com/ntoEaLt.png
Kappa dominates over all other emotes and even simple words such as "is"
Sentence #5:
"Outside of the queen and the other famous people on currency, how did DeSeno’s face become perhaps the most reproduced one in human history?"
I mean its a bit different than being famous and having a famous photo taken of you. Most of the time the photo is famous because the person _and_ event are famous. But with this, it almost becomes a completely different person/thing when the "famous" aspect is just some random photo taken of you.
The question I have is does he own any rights at all to his likeness (from 2009) being reproduced? Twitch took that picture, and they own the rights to that photo taken, so I guess that part of it belongs to twitch. But now people are making statues of him and taking large photos of his head to eSports tournaments, so what rights does he have to say, "Whoa, those busts are cool, but I'm really uncomfortable with that. Take it down please"?