Monkas (or MonkaS as it’s sometimes spelled) is a popular Twitch emote. It is probably one of the most used emotes on the entire platform, so you can find it all over the place. It pops up on gaming streams, IRL streamers, pretty much anywhere and from any streamer in the Twitch directory. It isn’t a meme unique to Twitch, but the Monkas meaning on Twitch is probably the most well-known. If you’re watching a streamer hang out in real life or betting on Twitch streamers, you’re likely to see the Monkas emote at some point. Even if you don’t know what the meaning of Monkas, you’ll likely recognize the frog.
The Monkas emote means anxiety or generally sweating. In the sense of sweating due to anxiety or due to stress in a specific situation. As you can likely gather this has a lot of potential across Twitch. You can use it to express being uncomfortable, react to something a streamer said, or even to indicate they’re playing like a hard section of a game.
What’s Monkas meaning on Twitch?
As one of the more relatable memes or Twitch emotes, it is used in moments of intense action, anxiety-inducing sections or during otherwise emotive moments.
If you’re wondering what is Monkas or what does Monkas mean on Twitch, the illustration itself – commonly a Monkas PNG – shows the green Pepe frog sweating, with his eyes bulging and squinting a little.
In IRL streams it’s often used during rants, while in gaming chats, it tends to appear during tense or stressful gameplay moments. Monkas has been floating around Twitch for some time, along with other popular Pepe emotes. These include Pepehands, Poggers, Feelsbadman, and Feelsgoodman, among others.
On Twitch, you can throw out the Monkas emote to react to something the streamer is doing and indicate stress or being unconformable. Given that Twitch is nearly synonymous with controversy over streamer behavior, Monkas gets a lot of use out of mocking the person actually broadcasting.
MonkaS
As a twitch emote, used during a moment of high tension in video games (nervous moment).
Twitch emote is Pepe the Frog sweating and looking scared.
Streamer: Fortnite, solo squads epic clutch
Audience: “OMG what a play, that was some MonkaS shit right there.”
Variations include:
“POGGERS” is a Twitch emote and a variation of another emote, PogChamp. It features an edited “Pepe the Frog” with its mouth opened. It can represent multiple things: Excitement, Surprise, Amazement, etc.
It can also be used in an ironic way, when something or someone “child friendly” is shown on screen (for example Fortnite, Marshmello…)
“monkaS” is yet another Twitch emote, featuring another Pepe, but this time sweating profusely with his panicked eyes. This used, well, when something scary or worrying is show or going on.
MonkaS Origin
Monkas can be traced back all the way to 2011 when it appeared on a 4chan thread. Monkas wasn’t actually an emote until 2016, when it was uploaded through a Twitch extension.
Specifically, FrankerFaceZ’s Twitch extension added it into the site for a lot of players. A few months later, in February 2017, the emote had become pretty popular across a lot of different internet communities, not just the Monkas Twitch emote. From there, it really took off. After being used on Forsen’s community page, the rest of Twitch quickly picked it up and the Monkas emote spread.
Emotes tend to spread on Twitch because of their usability or humor, rarely solely spreading because of their aesthetics. The Monkas meaning is considerably different from how it physically looks, but it is linked to the more general Pepe the frog.
Who is Pepe the Frog?
This Twitch emote is probably best considered separately from the overall Pepe the frog thing. However, since the meme is literally a picture of Pepe his origin needs to be understood for the more general meme too. Pepe the frog is an anthropomorphic frog that originated in a 2005 comic, called Boy’s Club. The meme’s look is fairly rooted in that era too, looking more at home in flash games and rage comics.
The frog was a feature of memes since its image became exploitable online. By around 2015 it had become a pretty major feature of a number of meme templates. The Monkas emote is a great example of this. Pepe was a set of exploitable images of an odd-looking frog. They’ve been taken out of context and used as completely separate memes, with few who use these emotes knowing much about the comic it originates in.
The fate of Pepe the frog has been pretty strange since the emote was introduced. After being co-opted and used as a symbol of alt-right hate groups, the creator of the meme went to the lengths of physically killing off Pepe and suing those using the meme. This hasn’t stopped the use of Pepe memes, but it has done a bit to drop their popularity. This emote is simply a reaction image though. Despite its origin with Pepe the frog, its use on Twitch is completely separate from all that and doesn’t carry the same connotations as using a Pepe meme on a different platform.
Using Monkas emote
Monkas is available through the third party BetterTwitchTV add-on, along with several other versions of it. People were quick to come up with their own variations of the anxiety-ridden look, developing on the Monkas meaning. Adding different features and components to make the emote relate better The most popular variations include monkaOMEGA, monkaThink, Monkagiga, and monkaS. Although these don’t really change the answer to what is Monkas, each is used in a different context.
They all still indicate the same thing – a tense moment for the audience. By now though, it’s also used ironically and has even become a meme in and of itself, as often happens with popular emotes like this one. Unlike other Pepe emotes which are named after just what they display, this one has its own distinct name.
This is believed to be owed to a subscriber by the name of MonkaSenpai, who used the monkas emote as his own personal emote. He was a subscriber of Nymn, who eventually co-opted it and named it monkaS – at which point, it took off worldwide.
| MonkaGIGA |   |
| MonkaThink |  |
| MonkaMega |  |
| MonkaW |  |
How to Use “MonkaS”
Using Monkas depends specifically on the circumstances of the stream, even if the MonkaS meaning is essentially the same. Since these emotes can be used in so many different ways, it can be difficult to figure out the exact right circumstances. These are some examples of the right context to use this in:
- An Important Part of a Game – When a streamer reaches a tense point of the action, using the Monkas emote is a good call. Such as when hitting the top few players in a Battle Royale, or that single moment of RNG that a whole speedrun depends upon. This is commonly the answer to what does Monkas mean when you see it in a stream.
- A Streamer on a Rant – If a streamer heads into a bit of a rant, the type that might get into trouble, you can starting throwing out this emote.
- Sarcastically – Monkas can used ironically or sarcastically too, like when a streamer is talking about something completely wholesome or performing a particularly easy feat in-game.
Those are some examples. As you see Monkas being used in chat though, you’ll get the hang of when to use it yourself too.