About

Sup Son ¯\(ツ)/¯ refers to a commonly used pose by and show of support for professional Starcraft II player SeleCT. SeleCT is known for shrugging nonchalantly while playing Starcraft II and after a win as a show of victory. Around the same time he learned the phrase "sup son" as a taunt. SeleCT's fans combined the shrugging emoji and phrase for use online to support SeleCT, and used it to spam the streams of players facing him.

Origin

SeleCT, a professional Starcraft II player from South Korea for Team Dignitas at the time, is known to shrug when playing games as a sort of taunt or reaction. He used to stream on Justin TV, a site similar to Twitch. The phrase "sup son" became a catchphrase among fans of SeleCT as a sort of taunt after SeleCT began using it during games.

In May 2011, SeleCT played a series of matches with player haCkProTech against players Protech and Power, who were arguably displaying bad manners (or BM in Starcraft terms). This inspired SeleCT fans to go to Protech's Justin TV stream and spam "sup son? ¯\(ツ)/¯" (screenshot shown below).^[1]

Spread

SeleCT soon began wearing a shirt that read "sup son ¯\(ツ)/¯" regularly while playing, spreading the phrase. For example, in July 2011, blogger^[2] JINGNA ZHANG posted an image of SeleCT doing the pose and wearing the shirt after the North American Star League Finals (shown below).

On August 13th, Redditor u/schuwe posted a photo of SeleCT doing the pose to /r/Starcraft,^[4] garnering over 440 upvotes in 10 years (shown below).

On September 21st, Urban Dictionary user supsondefiner defined the term. On November 10th, SeleCT began selling 'sup son' t-shirts, announcing it on Twitter.^[3] Fans of SeleCT and Team Dignitas can often be seen with signs featuring the phrase and emoticon at gaming events (example shown below).

The pose has since been adopted by a number of other professional esports players, used most often after victorious matches. It was notably used by eSports commentator "Day 9" in November 2011 (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References