Staredit Network > Forums > Null > Topic: Etymology of "Kek", Kekistan Keks et. al.
Etymology of "Kek", Kekistan Keks et. al.
May 15 2017, 7:50 pm
By: CecilSunkure  

May 15 2017, 7:50 pm CecilSunkure Post #1



What is kekistan?

Copy pasted from private IM today:

Quote
I just realized the etymology of kekistan

[12:37]
it comes from korea

[12:38]
typing kekekeke (korean) is equivalent to lolololol in english

[12:38]
it happened a lot in broodwar, something funny would happen and everyone would type lololol

[12:38]
then someone would type kekekeke in sort of a trolly manner

[12:38]
Fast forward, hearthstone came out

[12:39]
In hearthstone a common phenomena during gameplay is one player will draw a critical card off the top of their deck. The card can be so critical the game is immediately won, and the opponent falls into an unrecoverable position

[12:39]
When this happens, it's called a "top deck", as in drawing the winning card off the top of the deck

[12:40]
It happened very often in "arena" mode of hearthstone, where top decks were particularly powerful and dramatic

[12:40]
On livestreams of hearthstone arena, twitch chats would often times parade during this occasions with "TOP DECK"

[12:40]
and in a trolly manner, some users would say "TOP KEK"

[12:41]
kek as in korean type of "lol", or in other words, "top laughs"

[12:41]
in this way kek became sort of a trolly way to parody a funny event

[12:41]
and pretty sure kek, kekistan and keks or whatever all came from this timeline

I would probably add a little more to this timeline and talk about how kekistan and kek emerged in 4chan as a parody-style troll reaction to mainstream media's agenda of identity politics. Just to flesh out the timeline a little more.

Any thoughts or comments? Anyone have other insights, agree or disagree?



None.

May 15 2017, 8:25 pm ihjel Post #2



He skipped how in WoW when an Alliance character heard a Horde character say lol it translated to kek in Orcish. Also Top Kek was a popular expression on 4chan long before Hearthstone. There's also a Turkish cake brand called Topkek.



None.

May 15 2017, 10:03 pm Oh_Man Post #3

Find Me On Discord (Brood War UMS Community & Staredit Network)

Interesting to hear the intricate details of the origins of this fine country.




May 16 2017, 3:01 am CecilSunkure Post #4



Quote from ihjel
He skipped how in WoW when an Alliance character heard a Horde character say lol it translated to kek in Orcish. Also Top Kek was a popular expression on 4chan long before Hearthstone. There's also a Turkish cake brand called Topkek.

Interesting point on WoW! What was Top Kek used for in 4chan?



None.

May 16 2017, 6:30 am Lanthanide Post #5



Not sure why this is posted in the forum, seems like it is shout-box material.

Anyway, there are already these resources:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kek
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kek



None.

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[10:31 am]
NudeRaider -- blessed innocent soul knows nothing of the strife we had before EUDs were discovered :teehee:
[2026-6-23. : 3:29 am]
DarkenedFantasies -- Probably just didn't care. For example, at some point before release, they've updated the graphics of some of the Protoss buildings (Forge, CyberCore, Citadel, Observatory, Arbiter Tribunal), but instead of properly re-rendering them with edited 3D models, they did crappy copy-paste jobs on the rendered graphics.
[2026-6-22. : 8:35 pm]
Ultraviolet -- :wob:
[2026-6-21. : 11:38 pm]
Symmetry -- :wob:
[2026-6-21. : 4:56 am]
Ultraviolet -- I suppose we'll likely never know, but my guess would be that they already saw it operating successfully and there was no monetary incentive to finish the original work. And the dev cycle in old school Blizzard was so hectic, it's possible it just got forgotten about after the original game got released. Plus there's an element of existing MPQ files that were packaged with the original discs becoming outdated if they updated it. And it's not like they remade the original MPQs, they just made new ones for BW specifically
[2026-6-21. : 4:26 am]
Oh_Man -- so that makes me think maybe the theory they are unfinished is not true and its a deliberate design decision, coz why not finish them wen ur making brood war?
[2026-6-21. : 4:25 am]
Oh_Man -- the thing is thos buildings are from classic. that means they went ahead and made brood war without ever finishing the 'unfinished' buildings
[2026-6-20. : 6:15 pm]
Ultraviolet -- Yeah he's talked about a lot of that stuff in his casts before. It seems plausible. Especially knowing how Blizzard of yesteryear operated.
[2026-6-20. : 3:47 pm]
NudeRaider -- to clarify: couldn't recall the behavior for every single Protoss building but I was aware the disparity exists.
[2026-6-20. : 3:43 pm]
NudeRaider -- Contained nothing new for me. Didn't know all building's behavior, but very much all unit's. Also Terran balance whine - also nothing new :lol:
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