A Former Twitch Employee Has One of the Most Reproduced Faces

Imagine having your likeness frozen in time becoming this famous. Look at his photo in 2015. It is obviously him but he grew out his hair, looks thinner, and he's aged (6 years!), then you see his own self on his shirt.

I mean its a bit different than being famous and having a famous photo taken of you. Most of the time the photo is famous because the person _and_ event are famous. But with this, it almost becomes a completely different person/thing when the "famous" aspect is just some random photo taken of you.

The question I have is does he own any rights at all to his likeness (from 2009) being reproduced? Twitch took that picture, and they own the rights to that photo taken, so I guess that part of it belongs to twitch. But now people are making statues of him and taking large photos of his head to eSports tournaments, so what rights does he have to say, "Whoa, those busts are cool, but I'm really uncomfortable with that. Take it down please"?

If I'm not mistaken it was popularized by the Fighting Game Community (FGC). There's a related subreddit (r/Kappa). PogChamp and Bible Thump (which are also on the list on the linked page) were also popularized by the FGC. The interesting thing is that in terms of viewers, Fighting games have a substantially less proportion of the total audience compared to MOBAs and FPSs. It's possible that FG viewers just spend much more time chatting than other spectators because the average Fighting Game match goes by in about 2 minutes.

Besides trolling, r/Kappa is also known for sponsoring many FG players to get to tournaments around the world, so you might come across players who list them as a sponsor (in the same way you'd maybe see someone sponsored by EG - Evil Geniuses).

In "twitch speak" the term can in some ways be used to indicate sarcasm, as replacement for "j/k", or just trolling in general.

eg. "This stream's quality is fantastic kappa!"

I've pretty much assimilated the word Kappa into my vernacular, just because of how popular its become in competitive video games. Its almost like the old /s that was popular on Digg, where it makes it way more obvious when you are joking about something, which is crucial in conversations where you can't see the other persons face. "You suck" and "You suck, Kappa" have completely different meanings. Its a little weird to use in real life and I only use it in private or joking with friend, but I've even got my girlfriend to understand the meaning and occasionally use it herself, even though the only video game she's ever played is The Sims.

It appears that while he technically may have one of the most reproduced faces, it's only because his face is an emoticon on Twitch that is constantly used, something like 800+ times/minute. So those unfamiliar with Twitch (like me) would have never seen this face or recognize it.

Also, fivethirtyeight is using the phrase "IRL." Is this in the dictionary or something now? I thought it was slang and not generally used in more reputable sites.

I was under the impression that Yao Ming held that distinction.

The Head of State in the UK, (aka The Queen), has quite a few reproductions. Every item of money (coins and notes) and a lot of stamps.

http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/circulation-coin-... - more than 50,000,000 coins in circulation. Then add notes and stamps, plus other commonwealth countries, plus tourist items....

and my hate for twitch chat related memes only burns hotter. Who needs to be original when you can just spam a meme?