Booba is a comical emote depicting a smartly dressed Monka/Pepe the Frog noticing something before his eyes expand greatly reminiscent of the famous scene from Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood. On Twitch, this emote is now infamous to the point it gets used past its original meaning.
Shall we begin?
Booba Emote meaning
The booba emote signifies seeing something truly jaw dropping to the point it is the only thing on the mind of the person using it. The context is almost always sexual, as in they have seen something sexy and most likely a pair of boobs.. hence the name booba.
Fast forward to now and the meaning of booba doesn’t mean seeing something jaw dropping but any sight of boobs even if it’s just a hint.
You will typically see this emote being used in hot tub streams, just chatting where the host is female and any stream where the game features some sexualised characters. Basically, booba is used anywhere boobs can be found.
Booba Emote origins
There are two origins for the booba emote – the origins of the graphics itself and the origins of the emote being added and used on Twitch. We’re going to talk about both.
Booba emote graphic origins
Then origins of the eyes popping out come from Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding hood
from 1943, where the Big Bad Wolf can’t control himself when he sees the sight of the now adult Red Riding Hood. A slapstick scene ensues which includes the eyes popping out, among other things including the phrase “awooga”. Here’s a still:
And here’s the full scene
This has since been parodied a few times over the years well before the Booba emote became a thing. Our personal favourite is the almost identical tribute from the 1994 film, The Mask starring Jim Carrey.
So, as for the origins of Booba and the distinct eyes – know you know.
Origins of the Booba emote on Twitch
Before it came to Twitch, Booba started as “Awooga” as we preciously alluded to from Red Hot Riding Hood. The graphic of smart pepe with eyes popping out was accompanied by a large story of what the user was doing from December 2019, almost describing what Big Bad Wold was actually doing. Whether this was done ironically or deliberately (cringe post) we will never know. But here’s the first ever time the Booba emote was used.
Now we know the origins of the Booba emote, but how about the name? Well, it was originally Awooga before a user used the emote on a thread about Elizabeth Olsen where the word “booba” was used, below:
There are a lot of speculation about whether Booba was a misspelling of boobs, since “A” and “S” are right next to each other on a keyboard. But, another theory is that Boobs + Awooga = Booba. It really doesn’t matter which is true because the name was now officially adopted and Booba was born.
The next phase of course was to upload this emote to be used on Twitch. It was added to to FrankerfaceZ on January 24th, 2020 by Shadopi and BTTV on November 9th, 2020 by EduardoGATOO. Quite the gap between the two.
Conclusion
Some emote origins are pretty bland but Booba at least has some history that does pay homage to some very old cartoon animation. Although the booba emote is now most linked with Twitch, the credit must go to 4chan for the design and then the name afterwards. Twitch didn’t get this emote until 2020 making it relatively new but one of the most used emotes.
