Kek

"Kek" is what is displayed to Alliance characters when a Horde character says "lol" in Orcish. The word has since entered greater gaming and even real-world political vernacular.

History

Kek probably emerged from StarCraft's online service. The original version of the game did not support full Korean language, so the closest a Korean player could get to "Hahaha" in Korean was "Kekeke" as onomatopoeia for laughter.^[1]

Kek was later added to World of Warcraft, possibly as a reference to the StarCraft online service, but also possibly not, as there are many other 3-letter combinations that produce the translation "kek" other than "lol". Since "lol" was used quite often in the game by many players this translation became widely known, and many fans had accepted "kek" as kind of an official translation of "lol" into Orcish.

The word gained prominence outside of Blizzard Entertainment's games when "kek" started being used on 4chan, notably in the context of the "topkek" reaction image sometime in 2013.^[2]

From 4chan, the word then became associated with alt-right politics, notably in the context of the 2016 United States presidential election.^[3] Kek became associated to Pepe the Frog in the form of a parody religion surrounding the character by analogy with the frog-headed ancient Egyptian god Kek,^[4] and then with Kekistan posting.^[5]

Notes

• The Common equivalent is "bur", but has gained far less pop culture relevance than "kek".
• The wolvar character Kekek references the similarity between his name and "kek" in one of his dialogue lines: "Orcs always point and laugh at Kekek, but he get revenge one day."
• The phrase is included as an easter egg in the Siege of Orgrimmar trailer: near the end of the cinematic, boards flying away from an explosion behind Garrosh Hellscream spell out "kek" for precisely one frame.^[6]

See also

• Klaxxi'va Kek

References

External links