Kappa

Kappa is the grayscale face of Josh DeSeno, an early Justin.tv engineer who worked on the chat client for the gaming channel that became Twitch. Justin.tv staff hid their own faces in chat as emote Easter eggs, and DeSeno used the photograph from his employee ID. He named it Kappa after the kappa of Japanese folklore, a mischievous water creature, because he was interested in Japanese pop culture and mythology.

Viewers turned DeSeno's slight smirk into Twitch shorthand for sarcasm, irony and statements that should not be read literally. That chat meaning became so closely attached to the face that adding Kappa to an ordinary sentence can change it from sincere to teasing without changing any other words.

Type Kappa in Twitch chat to use this emote. Viewers use Kappa after sarcastic comments, playful lies, teasing, ironic praise and jokes that should not be read literally.