LUL Meaning: Twitch’s Everyday Laugh and the Face Behind It
By Alex Reed·
LUL means “lol” — a quick laugh at something funny, and the default reaction in Twitch chat. The face is John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, the British games critic who died in 2018, laughing in a 2013 photo. It is a native global Twitch emote, so everyone sees it; OMEGALUL and LULW are louder third-party versions.
From a Flickr Photo to a Global Emote
The source is a photo of John Bain laughing at MLG Anaheim in June 2013, posted to Flickr. In 2014 Bain used it as a subscriber emote on his own channel, called cynicalLaugh; the photographer filed a DMCA claim over the paid use, and Bain later said Twitch then “wouldn’t touch it with a 10ft pole”, according to Know Your Meme.
The BetterTTV extension carried the face as LuL from 2016. Twitch made LUL a global emote on September 1, 2017, using a redrawn version rather than the photo — Bain called the difference purely legal. That drawing is still the image Twitch serves for LUL today.
After 2018: A Tribute That Stayed
Bain died of cancer on May 24, 2018, at 33. The next day Twitch posted that “the emote bearing his face represents the indelible mark that he has left on Twitch”, and it kept the emote as it was.
Not everyone is comfortable typing it. Some viewers object to the emote because of Bain’s public views, and a 2021 request on Twitch’s UserVoice feedback forum to replace it has drawn a few hundred votes and a long argument in the comments. Twitch has not changed it, and most people who type LUL today simply read it as “lol”. Streamers who would rather not see it can block the word in their own chat, the same way as any other emote.
How Loud Is the Laugh: LUL, LULW, OMEGALUL
LUL is the most-typed token in tracked Twitch chat by a wide margin. In the Streams Charts sample (September 14–20, 2026) it was used roughly 4 times as often as the runner-up, KEKW, and showed up in more channels than any other word or emote tracked.
That makes it close to punctuation: a light “ha” that says you saw the joke. OMEGALUL — a stretched, distorted LUL uploaded to FrankerFaceZ in September 2016 — is for moments that are actually absurd. LULW, a tilted, zoomed crop from November 2016, sits between the two. Typing OMEGALUL at something mildly amusing reads as sarcasm.
On Kick there is no LUL. Kick’s global set carries LULW instead, and Streams Charts counted it in 124,880 Kick chat messages across 3,554 channels on September 14, 2026. More in our Kick emotes guide.
When LUL Stops Being Friendly
Because it is the default laugh, LUL is also the default pile-on. A LUL under the streamer’s own mistake is teasing; a column of it under a viewer’s question or a personal story tells that person the room is laughing at them. Good mods look at who the laugh is aimed at, not at the emote.
If a raid or a viral clip brings in a crowd that spams it, emote-only mode will not help — LUL is a native emote, so it passes. Slow mode or followers-only mode calms chat down faster, and a bot can automate either; compare options in our chat bot directory.
How LUL Is Used in Chat
LUL
The streamer mispronounces a boss’s name for the third time.
OMEGALUL he jumped
The streamer misses a jump they have landed forty times in a row.
LULW he actually did it
The streamer follows a joke suggestion from chat completely literally.
LUL good one
A viewer’s pun gets a reply from the streamer.
Variants and Related Emotes
| Emote | What it means |
|---|---|
| LuL | BetterTTV’s global version, with a lowercase u. Same face, same meaning. |
| OMEGALUL | A stretched, distorted LUL for absurd moments (FrankerFaceZ, 2016). |
| LULW | A tilted, zoomed crop of LUL (FrankerFaceZ, 2016). Built into Kick. |
| KEKW | El Risitas laughing: the harder laugh for a fail that really landed. |
| PepeLaugh | Pepe laughing at someone who has not noticed what is about to happen. |
Can't see LUL in chat?
LUL is a native Twitch emote, so everyone sees it without an extension. How 7TV, BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ work — and which one to install — is in our Twitch emotes guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does LUL mean?
It means “lol” — a laugh. LUL is a native Twitch emote, so it works in every chat and everyone sees the image.
Who is the man on the LUL emote?
John “TotalBiscuit” Bain, a British games critic and commentator. The emote is based on a 2013 photo of him laughing at an MLG event. He died of cancer in May 2018.
Is LUL the same as lol?
In meaning, yes. LUL started as the name of the emote and is now also typed as a word, including on platforms where the emote does not exist.
What does OMEGALUL mean?
A much bigger laugh than LUL, for something absurd. The emote is a stretched, distorted LUL from FrankerFaceZ, so you need an extension to see it.
What does LULW mean?
A mid-sized laugh between LUL and OMEGALUL, shown as a tilted close-up of the same face. It is third-party on Twitch and a built-in global emote on Kick.
Why does the Twitch LUL look like a drawing?
Because of the original photo’s copyright. The photographer filed a DMCA claim when Bain used the picture as a paid emote, so the global version Twitch released in 2017 is a redrawn likeness instead.