KEKW Meaning: The Laughing Man Behind Chat’s Hardest Laugh
By Alex Reed·
KEKW means you are laughing hard — not a polite “lol” but the helpless, can’t-breathe kind. The face is Spanish comedian Juan Joya Borja, known as El Risitas, mid-laugh in a 2007 TV interview. On Twitch it is a third-party emote you need FrankerFaceZ or 7TV to see; on Kick it ships in every chat.
Who the Laughing Man Is
The image is Juan Joya Borja (1956–2021), a comedian from Seville better known as El Risitas. In a June 2007 interview on Jesús Quintero’s show Ratones Coloraos he told a story about pans ending up in the sea at the beach restaurant where he worked, and could not stop laughing. The clip became the “Spanish laughing guy” meme around 2015, years before it reached Twitch. Joya died on April 28, 2021, at 65.
The name stacks two old gaming jokes. “Kek” is what Alliance players saw in World of Warcraft when a Horde player typed “lol” — cross-faction chat ran through an in-game language filter — and it also echoes “kekeke”, the Korean laugh that StarCraft players typed in Latin letters.
The emote itself is a zoomed crop of the laughing face, uploaded to FrankerFaceZ by a user named Keesual on August 21, 2019. Know Your Meme credits xQc and AdmiralBulldog with enabling it within weeks; FrankerFaceZ now shows that single upload in roughly 150,000 emote sets.
What KEKW Says That LUL Does Not
LUL is the everyday laugh. KEKW is for moments that actually landed, and they are usually at someone’s expense: the streamer walking into their own trap, a speedrunner dying one room from the end, a mod timing themselves out by accident. One KEKW is a laugh; a full screen of it is the room losing it together.
In the Streams Charts sample of Twitch chat (September 14–20, 2026), KEKW was the second most-typed token of all, behind only LUL and ahead of “lmao” and Kappa — despite rendering only for viewers with an extension. It turned up in about 51% as many channels as LUL, which is roughly the gap you would expect between a native emote everyone sees and one that shows up only where the streamer has added it.
A KEKW wall is also a handy clip marker: the densest burst in a VOD usually sits right on top of the funniest moment. Our clip guide covers cutting those moments.
KEKW on Kick: Built In, and the Biggest Emote There
Kick includes KEKW in its global emote set, next to KEKLEO, LULW and PogU, so every Kick viewer sees it without an extension. On September 14, 2026, Streams Charts counted KEKW in 2.8 million Kick chat messages across 7,214 channels — the most-used emote on the platform that day and more than 3 times the runner-up, HYPERCLAP.
The two platforms are counted differently (distinct messages on Kick, word uses on Twitch), so do not read the figures side by side. The ranking is the point: on Twitch KEKW is a strong second, on Kick nothing comes close. How Kick’s emote system differs is in our Kick emotes guide.
When a KEKW Flood Goes Wrong
Laughing emotes are the easiest way for a chat to pile on. If someone shares something personal, loses a match they cared about or asks a beginner question, a wall of KEKW tells them the whole room is laughing at them. Most mod teams leave it alone during a funny fail and step in when it is aimed at a person rather than a play.
If you want it gone for a while, Twitch lets you add any word to Blocked terms (Creator Dashboard → Moderation → Settings → AutoMod & Message Filtering). A third-party emote is just text inside the message, so blocking “KEKW” removes it for everyone, extension or not. Timed filters are easier with a moderation bot — compare them in our chat bot directory.
How KEKW Is Used in Chat
KEKW KEKW KEKW
The streamer sets a trap in a survival game and walks straight into it a minute later.
he said “trust me” KEKW
Chat quoting the streamer’s confident call right before it went wrong.
KEKWait
The streamer laughs off a noise in a horror game — and the noise answers.
KEKW I can’t breathe
A donation message roasts the streamer’s haircut and the streamer reads it out.
Variants and Related Emotes
| Emote | What it means |
|---|---|
| KEKWait | El Risitas with the laugh gone. The joke just turned worrying, or you are no longer sure it was a joke. On FrankerFaceZ since September 2019. |
| KEKLEO | Leonardo DiCaprio laughing. Used like KEKW, often when someone gets outsmarted. Part of Kick’s global set. |
| LUL | The native Twitch laugh — lighter, and visible to everyone. |
| OMEGALUL | A stretched, distorted LUL for absurd moments; about as loud as KEKW. |
| LULW | A tilted, zoomed crop of LUL. A global emote on Kick. |
| PepeLaugh | Pepe laughing at someone who has not yet noticed what is about to happen to them. |
Can't see KEKW in chat?
KEKW is a third-party emote (FFZ / 7TV). Without the matching browser extension or a chat client that loads it, you only see the word as plain text. How 7TV, BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ work — and which one to install — is in our Twitch emotes guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does KEKW mean?
Hard, uncontrollable laughter. It is a stronger version of LUL or “lol”, used when something is genuinely funny — very often a mistake the streamer just made.
Who is the man in the KEKW emote?
Juan Joya Borja, a Spanish comedian known as El Risitas, laughing during a 2007 interview on the TV show Ratones Coloraos. The clip became a worldwide meme in the mid-2010s. He died in April 2021.
What does “kek” mean?
It is an old gamer spelling of “lol”. In World of Warcraft, a Horde player typing “lol” appeared as “kek” to Alliance players, and it also echoes the Korean “kekeke” laugh from StarCraft.
What is the difference between KEKW and LUL?
LUL is a native Twitch emote everyone can see and works as a quick laugh. KEKW is a third-party emote from FrankerFaceZ or 7TV and signals a much bigger laugh. On Kick it is the reverse situation: KEKW is built in and LUL does not exist.
Is KEKW available on Kick?
Yes. KEKW is part of Kick’s global emote set, so everyone sees it without an extension, and in Streams Charts data it is by far the most-used emote in Kick chat.
What does KEKWait mean?
It is El Risitas mid-laugh with the smile gone — the moment a joke turns concerning, or when you realise what you were laughing at might be serious.