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Comment by crazypyro | Hacker News Reader

I think you are overestimating how much of the popularity came from the FGC.

All of the popular emotes represent pretty common reactions, especially with respect to watching e-sports. BibleThump is a crying eyes, which is pretty much the best emote for sadness or, more commonly, faking sadness. PogChamp is a guy screaming so when people are demanding stuff (e.g. "FIX SOUND PogChamp") its an obvious choice, but it can also be used for things of excitement, so it has a lot of uses. I think, even without the FGC, the emotes that have risen to the most used would've been very similar, if not the exact same.

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> I think you are overestimating how much of the popularity came from the FGC.

I'm really not. PogChamp is Gootecks, host of Cross-Counter and FG player. The meme is based on an ad they did for MadCatz Fight Sticks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkBDZ8Davvg

"BibleThump" started out as meme involving an incident with streamer Spooky and FG player Wolfkrone.

http://36.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7921h1cU41qcriw6o1_1280.p...

BibleThump resembled Wolfkrone in that image so literally thousands of viewers started spamming it with the text "spooby pls" on Spooky's chat whenever something went wrong, or the stream was going to end.

That is why you'll often see people type "<topic> pls biblethump", eg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df_C79cFhoM

Right, but I'm saying past the origination of those emotes, I don't think a huge portion of their popularity is directly tied to the FGC. They grew out of the FGC, but they've long taken on meanings of their own across the entire site that have no relation to the FGC and center around what emotion the face represents.

They've expanded to use outside the FGC, but I would be the FGC viewers who also watch LOL/DOTA/etc is what spread them to the rest of the streaming world. At least with PogChamp (hell maybe DansGame too even though it isn't TECHNICALLY Floe it might as well be at this point).

The fighting game community has led the pack for memes and vernacular in esports for a long time. It seems natural to me for this to be so - the FGC had the first real English streams with commentators that were extremely colorful and embraced the idea of the hype man. On top of that, the FGC is much more of a communal group coming from the arcade scene as compared to the home PC scene.

I think you are not giving the FGC the credit it deserves for its role in the growing popularity of "esports" and its role in shaping the character of the "esports" fan.

I agree that the FGC deserves some credit, but it's weird to credit it with eSports much since they were the community most resistant to the term.

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Kappa/comments/26llfc/why_is_the_fg...

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