Twitch emotes are a great way to stir your chat to participate in streams. They can also be a great way to tempt lurkers out of the shadows. When watching your favourite streamer playing a game, sometimes you’d simply want a message to help add to the atmosphere. That’s where emotes like MonkaW come in.
MonkaW meaning
You may be familiar with MonkaS: a particularly anxious looking, sweating Pepe. MonkaS is another BTTV Twitch Emote, used primarily when the streamer is in an intense or anxious setting.
MonkaW takes that sentiment to the next level. A zoomed-in variant of the MonkaS Pepe, MonkaW is often spammed when a streamer finds themselves in a very intense situation. For instance, when they enter a dark lit hallway and chat foresees that a jumpscare is imminent, it’s not unusual to see a MonkaW spam.
However, unlike MonkaS, MonkaW also tends to be used sarcastically, mocking those streamers who find themselves in a worrying situation. Apart from that, MonkaW is widely regarded as having good natured connotations and it isn’t considered to be particularly controversial.
MonkaW origins
MonkaW is a member of the Pepe the Frog meme family, being a zoomed-in variant of the MonkaS emote.
Created in 2005 by Matt Furie, Pepes have come to dominate online meme culture – and Twitch emotes are no exception. Both MonkaS and MonkaW appear to be variants of the Nervous Pepe illustration, which has been linked back all the way to a /lit/ board post on the 16th of July, 2011.
MonkaS, the full scale version of MonkaW, was first uploaded to the Better Twitch TV extension on March 16th, 2016. The title was derived from the uploader’s username, MonkaSenpai. MonkaW is one of 11 main variations of the MonkaS emote, although arguably the least strange. Other favourites include monkaThink and monkaOMEGA.
Because MonkaW is spammed to accompany periods of anxiety, it is used a lot on Twitch. As of October 2019, MonkaW is the 16th most used emote on the platform.
