About

Bot is a slang term used in the gaming community to insult players who play poorly, the implication being that they're playing like a character controlled by A.I. This is not to be confused with alternative definitions of "Bot," such as an A.I. controlled character or software that helps a player gain an unfair competitive advantage.

Origin

[Researching]

Spread

On June 1st, 2018, Redditor niklass_ replied to a post on /r/Fortnite,^[1] defining the term as "It's a player who plays like a bot. No building horrible shooting cant run properly etc."

The term was added to Urban Dictionary on October 2nd, 2018, gaining over 550 likes^[2] (shown below). User "~j͓̽B͓̽~ Juiice " wrote, "You are a horrible player in a game, specifically CS:GO or C-ops (mobile game) and you just suck so badly that you play like a bot, otherwise a NPC or something that isn't humanly controlled."

The term has been associated with Fortnite streamer FaZe Tfue. On July 20th, 2018, YouTuber Phudo posted a video of Tfue dying to a "Bot" on stream, gaining over 10 million views (shown below, left). On July 26th, 2019, YouTuber Daily Clips Central posted a video in which Tfue called Ninja a Bot, gaining over 3.5 million views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References