The tale of Kappa begins in the early days of Justin.TV, a platform that laid the foundation for today's live streaming giant, Twitch. The Kappa emote, an unmistakable grey-scale face, originated from a photograph of Josh DeSeno, one of Justin.TV's early employees. It quickly found its place as the go-to emoticon for conveying sarcasm, irony, and, of course, a hearty laugh at internet absurdity.
By February 2014, Kappa was already making its presence known, with users employing it a staggering 900,000 times on average per day. Jump forward to June 2015, and that number had swelled to over a million uses daily. Kappa's fame grew so vast that Twitch decided to crown it with not one but four emotes: Kappa, Keepo, MiniK, and KappaHD. And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, they even introduced KappaRoss, which adorns the legendary face with the iconic hair of Bob Ross.
The Kappa phenomenon didn't stop at emotes; it gave birth to a subreddit, r/kappa/, in February 2012, amassing over 13,900 readers. Urban Dictionary couldn't resist either, featuring Kappa as the poster child of internet sarcasm.