What does MonkaS mean? MonkaS is one of the most popular emotes in Twitch chat, but what exactly does it mean and where did it come from?
If you’re sitting in Twitch chat and see floods of sweating frogs, or a wave of people typing MonkaS, you may be baffled. But don't worry, that's just MonkaS, one of the most popular emotes in Twitch, with hundreds of thousands of channels using it across the BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ plugin,
But what does this hugely popular emote mean? Read on to discover the history, origin, and meaning of MonkaS
What does MonkaS mean?
MonkaS is used to show fear, nervousness, and when something scary is happening. This can be from in-game tension, potential mod intervention, or just the streamer telling a story that makes chatters nervous.
It’s also used to show tension. Team in a 1v5 clutch situation? Spam MonkaS. Streamer about to make a coin flip decision in-game. Spam the emote in chat! Tension, nervousness, fear — those are the emotions MonkaS portrays
Where did MonkaS come from?
MonkaS depicts Pepe the Frog sweating nervously. Pepe was a character originally from cartoonist Matt Furie’s Boy’s Club comic that was later co-opted by 4chan as a reaction image. The original Pepe images used a screencap from the comic with the caption “Feels Good Man” and was often used alongside stories of gross things that feel good.
This later evolved into an entire part of 4chan subculture, which transferred to Twitch Chat, as 4chan users were some of the earliest frequent Twitch chatters, with popular streams shared on the /v/ board.
With Pepe’s becoming popular emotes in Twitch chat thanks to plugins like FrankerFaceZ and BetterTwitchTV, user monkasenpai added MonkaS to their stream. MonkaS was originally short for MonkaScared, but has also been referred to as MonkaSweat.
I can’t see the emote, what gives?
If you’re seeing MonkaS spammed, but no emote, it’s likely you don’t have BetterTTV or FrankerFaceZ activated.
To enable BTTV, head to betterttv.com and click Download. Install the BTTV extension for your browser, then head back to betterttv.com and click Login. Authorize BTTV to have access to parts of your Twitch account, and you’ll now be able to use the BetterTwitchTV emotes.
To enable FrankerFaceZ, there’s a similar method. Head to the FrankerFaceZ site, and download the extension. Then head back to the site and click Connect with Twitch. Once your Twitch account is linked, you can use FrankerFaceZ emotes.