MonkaS is a Twitch emote of Pepe the Frog with wide eyes and a sweat drop, used to express anxiety or tension in chat.

Where did MonkaS come from?

The source image comes from an archived 4chan /lit/ thread from July 16, 2011, and Twitch user Monkasen uploaded the cropped face to Better Twitch TV on March 16, 2016.

What does MonkaS mean?

The name combines the uploader's handle (Monkasen) with 'S' for 'Scared', so monkaS reads as 'monka Scared'.

How do you use MonkaS?

Post it in Twitch chat during a tense moment, such as a clutch esports play or a horror game jumpscare, when you want to convey secondhand panic.

Is MonkaS still popular?

It became a fixture of Twitch chat vocabulary, with 11 monka-family variants ranked among the platform's most used emotes by early 2018.

MonkaS

2016emoteclassic

Published September 6, 2026

MonkaS is a Twitch emote showing Pepe the Frog with bulging eyes and a fat sweat bead, uploaded to Better Twitch TV in March 2016 by user Monkasen3. Chat spams it during clutch esports moments and horror game jumpscares, and by 2018 it had spawned a whole family of 'monka' variants sitting inside Twitch's most used emotes4.

twitch emotes pepe reaction memes twitch chat memes facial expression memes

Overview

The emote works as a live emotional gauge for Twitch chat. When a CS:GO pro pulls a 1v5 on gun round or a streamer tiptoes through a Resident Evil hallway, chat floods with monkaS to signal collective panic1. The design does the heavy lifting: whites of the eyes bulging, a single fat sweat drop, no caption needed. That visual compactness is why it slotted so cleanly into the fast scroll of a live chat.

MonkaS also works as a template rather than a single asset. Emote artists produced monkaW (a more terrified zoom on the same face), monkaGIGA (a huge exaggerated version)2, monkaThink (dread crossed with the Thinking Face) and monkaOMEGA. Each variant tunes the anxiety dial up or down, letting chat pick the exact flavor of dread. The 'S' at the end of the original name is short for 'Scared'3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

4chan (source image) / Twitch (viral spread)

Creator

Monkasen

Date

2016

The sweating, nervous Pepe the Frog drawing that would become the emote first surfaced in an archived 4chan /lit/ thread posted on July 16, 20113. The image kicked around image boards for years with no name attached to it. Twitch user Monkasen, then going by MonkaSenpai, uploaded the cropped face as a Better Twitch TV emote on March 16, 2016, and the name was built directly from theirs (monka + Scared).

How It Spread

Growth was slow at first, then quick. On February 17, 2017, Redditor kucykzaglady posted the emote to /r/forsen, the subreddit built around Twitch streamer Forsen where monkaS already had heavy circulation3. That same month, monkaS landed in the TwitchQuotes database of chat copypastas, giving it a canonical entry outside the emote extensions.

The crossover moment came during Reddit's April 2017 /r/place experiment. Twitter user @nanilul organized an attempt to draw a giant monkaS on the collaborative pixel canvas on April 1, dragging the emote in front of a much wider audience. Nine days later, on April 10, a Redditor posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop asking what the slang word 'monkas' even meant, a clean sign the emote had leaked past its native Twitch bubble.

By mid-February 2018, StreamElements data showed 11 different monka variants sitting inside Twitch's most used emotes list4. From that point on, monkaS and its cousins became default vocabulary for tension across esports channels, IRL streams and horror playthroughs.

How to Use This Meme

Typing monkaS in Twitch chat signals nervous tension in real time. Common conventions include spamming it during a clutch round of Counter-Strike or Valorant, right before a streamer opens a door in a horror game, or when a pro takes a risky play with money on the line1. Chat often escalates through the variant ladder, moving from monkaS to monkaW to monkaGIGA as the on-screen stakes climb.