About

haHAA is a BTTV (Better Twitch TV) emote featuring Andy Samberg from The Lonely Island comedy music group, playing as Shy Ronnie. It is mostly used as a way to express discomfort, awkwardness or to deem something as Cringeworthy.

Origin

The emote is based on a scene from the Lonely Island music video for "Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie & Clyde (feat. Rihanna)," which first aired on Saturday Night Live on October 30th, 2010.^[1] At the beginning of the video (shown below), Ronnie (Samberg) can be seen making the hesitant smile found in the image. However, the "haHAA" comes from Ronnie's laughter, which serves as a break from his mumbling persona.

As of January 2018, the video, which was uploaded to YouTube on May 12th, 2011, has received more than 57 million views.

Spread

The earliest known mention of haHAA off Twitch was posted on October 26th, 2015 by Streamernews.TV.^[6] In an article entitled "Streamer News Guide: BTTV Global Emotes – What They Mean & When To Use Them," they explained the meaning of the haHAA emote as "Want to express that something is cringe? Here you go!"

In 2016, haHAA was added as one of the original BTTV emotes. It became extremely popular in the Speedrun Community event "GamesDoneQuick" as a way to express or say something is cringe. On May 13th, Redditor ^[5] alcatrazcgp posted "Where is haHAA Emote from?" in the /r/Twitch subreddit.

In June 2016, a copypasta featuring the image was added to the website Twitch Quotes.^[3]

On August 28th, 2016, Redditor^[4] Settleforthep0p claimed that haHAA could be blacklisted in the /r/reckful subreddit. Since originally, the GDQ Twitch channel had the word "Cringe" bannable, viewers started using the emote instead.

The emote became extremely related with the phrase "12 btw" as a way to express the immaturity of a 12 year old child. On January 16th, 2017, Urban Dictionary ^[4] user Duall defined "hahaa" as "Cringe lel xd Cringe haHAA Im 12 btw." The post (shown below) received more than 180 upvotes in one year.

In July of 2017, GDQ banned haHAA from chat, viewers then started dodging the automated bans by spamming variations of the emote, such as "heHEE" "haHAAA" "ha HAA".

On December 11th, 2017, FrankerFaceZ^[2] user ashl uploaded a variation of HaHAA to the site. This version shows a distorted version of the original image.

Search Interest

External References