TotalBiscuit laughing with hand near chin, source of the LUL emote

LUL

2014twitch emoteclassic

Published September 5, 2026

LUL is a global Twitch emote showing video game reviewer John 'TotalBiscuit' Bain caught mid-laugh at a 2013 esports event. What started as a subscriber-only emote on Bain's channel survived a DMCA takedown and a forced redesign before Twitch made it default site-wide, and it spawned the LULW and OMEGALUL variants that live on FrankerFaceZ.

twitch emotes reaction memes twitch chat memes streamer memes facial expression memes

Overview

The image shows TotalBiscuit tilted back with his mouth wide open, cropped tight so the laugh reads even at emote size. Because Twitch chat scrolls fast, LUL usually appears in walls where dozens of the same face stack down the screen when a streamer misplays or delivers a punchline. On the site it fills the same slot LOL fills in normal text chat6.

Two variants extend the format. LULW is the same face zoomed in and tilted vertically upright, hosted through the FrankerFaceZ extension since November 20161. OMEGALUL is a stretched, distorted version also on FrankerFaceZ, indicating a bigger laugh than plain LUL2. Chat users often swap OMEGALUL in for the letter O in words like 'wow,' typing 'W OMEGALUL W' when something goes especially wrong.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitch
Creator
John 'TotalBiscuit' Bain
Date
2014

On June 23rd, 2013, Flickr user itsjustatank photographed John 'TotalBiscuit' Bain laughing during Major League Gaming Anaheim 2013. Bain, a British video game reviewer and esports commentator with a large Twitch following, began offering the picture as a subscriber-only emote on his channel in 2014 with the keyword 'cynicalLaugh'4.

How It Spread

In July 2014, the photographer sent Bain a DMCA takedown notice for using the picture as a paid subscription perk3. On July 9th, 2014, Redditor Ed_Cock posted alternative images to /r/CynicalBrit sourced from Google's 'visually similar images' search so subscribers could keep an equivalent emote3. The picture survived through third-party channels and by 2016 was distributed through the BetterTTV Twitch extension.

The FrankerFaceZ variants arrived that same year. User DourGent uploaded OMEGALUL to the extension on September 10th, 20162. User Ian678 followed with LULW on November 2nd, 20161. On September 1st, 2017, Twitch officially rolled LUL out as a global emote visible to every viewer on the site, with the artwork altered to sidestep the original copyright dispute4.

A July 2018 thread on /r/Twitch asked about the difference between LUL, LULW and OMEGALUL, drawing the answer that LULW was 'a filler of sorts' between the base emote and its expanded cousin5.

How to Use This Meme

Typing LUL in Twitch chat is the common convention for reacting to something funny on stream, filling the slot LOL fills elsewhere on the internet. Viewers often pile up the same emote to build laughter walls when a streamer messes up or nails a joke. LULW typically signals a stronger laugh, and OMEGALUL is often used for the biggest reactions or slotted into words as a stand-in for the letter O2.

Frequently Asked Questions