The Etymology of UwU

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00:24 wo oo woo oo woo I imagine that you are
00:29 familiar with oooo as a meme something
00:31 people say when they're kind of trying
00:33 to be annoying or ironic or make fun of
00:35 this overly cutesy way of speaking that
00:37 you associate with furries or cat girls
00:40 is that what the kids are doing these
00:42 days cat girls but have you ever asked
00:44 yourself why what why what is this ooo
00:49 that's not similar to any sort of
00:50 existing English word why are we saying
00:53 that how did we as a society land on
00:55 this being a normal thing to say well
00:58 okay I'm going to be real I was feeling
00:60 a little bit uninspired this week
01:02 nothing on my long list of video ideas
01:03 that I have was really doing it for me
01:06 so of course I took to Tumblr I asked
01:08 for video idea suggestions and somebody
01:10 suggested I look in to the history of
01:12 oooo and I immediately thought oh my God
01:14 yeah what is the deal with ooo creative
01:16 block just immediately obliterated thank
01:18 you this is what I have decided I need
01:20 to know about tasty treat for my brain
01:22 and for yours now as well because I am
01:24 very excited to tell you that oouo has a
01:26 surprisingly interesting and winding
01:28 internet history but before we go any
01:30 further further a word from today's
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02:09 on to 500500 and now I return you to
02:12 your regularly scheduled content what we
02:13 know for certain about oo to start off
02:16 is that it was never intended to be a
02:17 word it started out as an emoticon an
02:20 expressive face made out of keyboard
02:21 characters to help convey tone when
02:24 typing you know in like ye olden days
02:27 before emojis were a thing there have
02:28 been two cited supposed origins or
02:32 earliest known usages of Ooo a Yu-Gi-Oh
02:35 fanfiction from 2005 which was thought
02:37 to be the earliest for a long time and a
02:40 post on a furry Forum from the year 2000
02:42 which was found more recently are either
02:44 of these
02:45 things legitimate milestones in the
02:47 history of oo I'm going to tell you
02:49 because surprisingly despite how old
02:51 both of these posts are I have managed
02:53 to talk to the authors of both and I've
02:55 got some answers for you regarding the
02:56 Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction it's entitled Genie
02:58 of the puzzle and was posted to
02:59 fanfiction on that in October of 2005
03:02 the opening author's note States we
03:04 Sarah reu lover forever was my 200th
03:07 reviewer I'm sorry this took so long
03:09 smack self again feel free to throw
03:11 squids and fish at me oo woo I know I
03:14 deserve it this is just a little filler
03:15 to prove I'm not dead things start
03:17 getting interesting next chapter the
03:18 person who contacted me claiming
03:20 authorship of this fanfiction was
03:21 upfront about the fact that they do not
03:23 have access to the account anymore and
03:25 can't exactly prove that it's them but
03:28 given that they wanted to remain
03:29 anonymous anyway and weren't making any
03:31 sort of bold claims like having invented
03:33 ooo like I don't really see what there
03:35 is to gain from lying about this I don't
03:38 think I have any reason not to believe
03:40 them so I asked them a couple questions
03:42 about how oo made its way into their
03:43 vocabulary around 2005 so according to
03:46 the author of one Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction
03:48 that is probably older than some of you
03:50 watching this video right now according
03:51 to them it was like a common alternative
03:53 to almost like a smiley face emoji
03:55 except mimicking a cute anime character-
03:58 like expression so at the time it was
03:60 just a genuine cute Emoji it didn't have
04:02 any of the irony you usually associate
04:04 with it now at least in my circles it
04:06 was just a genuine smiley face but cuter
04:09 and more anime I also 100% did not make
04:12 it up I don't know the technicalities of
04:14 how they landed on my Fick for it but it
04:15 was widely used in like aim IRC all the
04:19 popular weeb chat channels of the time
04:21 which is how it got into my vocab at
04:22 this point the oooo emoticon already had
04:25 a lot of really similar looking emoticon
04:28 siblings and these emoticons had logic
04:30 to them the U's in ooo were closed eyes
04:33 the W was a cat-like mouth thus giving
04:36 oo this General Vibe of cuteness and
04:39 serenity and general happiness so that's
04:41 where it was at in 2005 but we can go
04:45 earlier at some point in the past year I
04:47 think so so pretty recently an even
04:49 earlier usage of Ooo was discovered it's
04:51 from a post on a very old furry Art
04:54 website called vcl or Vixen controlled
04:56 Library I don't think this website
04:58 exists anymore I think we just have this
05:00 post from archives here's a close-up
05:02 portrait of Felina I kind of messed up
05:04 with the Photoshop on this one I think
05:06 the burn tool would have been better
05:07 than painting over the lines oo woo it
05:10 was made on April 11th 2000 which is
05:12 wait oh my God what day is it today it's
05:14 April 9th the day that I'm filming this
05:16 oh my God edit this video in 2 days so I
05:19 can post it on the 24th birthday of oooo
05:22 no the sponsor will not approve it in
05:23 that short of a time it would have been
05:24 so good it would have been so good so
05:26 this post was made by an artist named
05:27 jlan delier I am pronouncing that to the
05:30 best of my ability his Twitter bio
05:32 claims creator of oooo though he told me
05:35 that there very well could be earlier
05:37 usages of it found because it really
05:39 wasn't that unique as far as he
05:41 remembers and it it was 24 years ago but
05:44 as far as he remembers ooo was a variant
05:46 that he created on this Emoji which was
05:48 already a variant of this Emoji but
05:50 remember the U's in oouo are swapped in
05:54 as opposed to other eye variants to
05:56 signify closed eyes and in this context
05:58 jlan says he was using it to Cony
06:00 sadness actually he was disappointed
06:02 with the way that the drawing he posted
06:04 that day had turned out while the closed
06:05 eyes of oo were later agreed upon to be
06:08 Serene and happy his intuition behind
06:10 giving it closed eyes was to make it sad
06:12 which I think is so interesting um in
06:14 the earliest example we have of it being
06:15 used it's being used to mean the
06:17 complete opposite of what it means now
06:19 this is at this point the earliest usage
06:21 of oouo that we have but it probably
06:24 isn't the origin of oouo like it's not
06:27 like he created it in this post and then
06:30 it caught on from that specific point I
06:32 think g l was extremely informative um
06:34 when he told me about how it it was very
06:36 influenced by previous otoc cons and
06:38 other people easily could have come up
06:40 with it as well and I think that is
06:41 likely a lot of people probably did
06:43 think of something like this
06:45 independently and you know eventually a
06:48 meaning was widely agreed upon by the
06:51 community so now we need to talk a
06:52 little bit more about emoticons in the
06:54 early 2000s both jlan delier and the
06:56 author of the Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction
06:57 brought up camoji Japanese emoticons
06:60 with a decidedly cute aesthetic
07:02 emphasizing large eyes while Western
07:04 emoticons have typically focused on the
07:05 mouth to convey expression Japanese
07:08 mocon focus more on the eyes they're
07:10 thought to have originally been
07:11 popularized by manga fans in Japan in
07:13 the ' 80s and '90s and later in the late
07:15 '90s early 2000s made their way into
07:17 Western internet users vocabularies
07:20 through anime fandom which of course has
07:23 a not in significant overlap with
07:25 furries and I think we can absolutely
07:27 see the influence of cjis on ooo
07:30 especially when we look at the camoji
07:31 cat face other examples like the the
07:34 camoji used in that that popular hold my
07:36 flower tumblr post these are I think the
07:38 predecessors to oo I think that oo and
07:41 its similar looking cousin emoticons
07:44 were easy ways of typing almost camoji
07:47 looking emoticons on Western keyboards I
07:50 received a lot of testimonies from very
07:52 helpful people on Tumblr regarding the
07:55 early 2000s popularity of this kind of
07:58 calois on Western keyboards hybrid
08:01 emoticon style that was going on I
08:03 remember seeing it on AIM in the early
08:04 2000s I always saw it as an offshoot of
08:06 this more popular style of emotes it
08:08 used W as the mouth because it looked
08:10 like a monster or an animal mouth so a
08:12 lot of furries and weebs would use it
08:14 it's possible that it had multiple
08:15 heritages though mixing together
08:17 Japanese and western style emotes oh
08:19 yeah playing around with the mouth used
08:20 in emotes was a common thing people did
08:22 smiley face mouth versus this smiley
08:24 face mouth versus V mouth or the three
08:27 for the mouth or line mouth versus dot
08:29 mouth versus three mouth for vertical
08:31 ones so using W as a mouth was kind of
08:33 just another one of those I remember
08:35 seeing the line and the dot mouths the
08:37 earliest to the rest coming later in the
08:39 mid 2000s I knew someone who used it
08:41 alongside this emote and they said this
08:43 one is kind of like a happy face and ooo
08:45 is more pensive and I don't know what to
08:47 think anymore with the popular usage
08:48 nowadays I remember it being part of the
08:50 random aesthetic I.E oooo gomsu oh my
08:54 God thank you for that from what I
08:56 remember from the early 2010s on Tumblr
08:58 and Deviant Art it was used as an the
08:59 Micon representation of a relaxed but
09:01 happy cutesy anime face it kind of
09:04 became this way of showcasing you were
09:05 an anime loving glomping squeeing kind
09:08 of person trying to evoke the mannerisms
09:10 and movements of a cute anime girl not
09:12 necessarily all mutually inclusive at
09:14 least that's how it was used in circles
09:16 I was in folks have said it but as
09:17 someone who has been in the anime
09:18 Community Minds for years it's basically
09:20 simplified camoji a lot more elaborate
09:22 camoji using stuff in Japanese keyboards
09:25 or obscure symbols I'm not sure if I saw
09:27 ooo specifically in my deviant art or
09:29 Gaia days because no one was being
09:30 bashful there which is what ooo
09:32 originally kind of indicates it's like
09:34 Serene closed eyes and Cat mouth but I
09:37 saw plenty of this and this and the
09:38 occasional Oho people mention seeing it
09:41 on a whole variety of sites Dev in art
09:43 omigle for Affinity Guy online live
09:46 Journal Myspace and even anime roleplay
09:48 communities on Facebook so it was very
09:50 popular in those sorts of spaces but not
09:53 outside of them in fact association with
09:56 with those particular fandom subculture
09:59 niches kind of made oooo cringe FES and
10:02 anime fans get a lot of [ __ ] okay we all
10:05 we all know that they they get made fun
10:07 of a lot um and so ooo was considered uh
10:11 like a signifier of cringe and then
10:13 around the mid 2010s oh my God it
10:16 breached containment the first posts
10:18 that more widely called attention to oo
10:20 being a thing were Tumblr posts I
10:22 believe generally these posts leaned
10:25 into the fact that it was considered
10:26 cringe sprinkled it in to get a reaction
10:28 out of people to make their trolling
10:30 extra annoying to make fun of the type
10:32 of person who would unironically use oo
10:34 apparently there was a brief Kur fuffle
10:37 created by like Tumblr social justice
10:39 types basically saying that oooo was
10:41 going to become a way for old creeps to
10:44 mimic the speech of young kids and
10:46 pretend to be young kids on the internet
10:47 to pray on
10:49 them really really dumb but it all
10:52 contributed to the larger internet's
10:54 knowledge of Ooo existing and it's not
10:57 necessarily easy I think to decipher
10:60 ooo as like an emoticon something that's
11:02 supposed to look like a face at a first
11:03 glance you know at least to Western
11:05 audiences who are used to looking at
11:07 Western emoticons this doesn't
11:09 necessarily look like one at first to a
11:11 lot of people so they started
11:12 pronouncing it as a word we're so
11:14 accustomed to hearing it out loud now
11:16 like we're so accustomed to saying it
11:18 oooo it's oooo is a word that you can
11:21 say with your mouth um but it's it's
11:24 really significant I don't want to gooss
11:26 over this point because it's really
11:27 significant that it went from an image
11:30 like a soundless image of a face a an
11:33 emoticon the fact that it went from that
11:36 to a word that you say is huge and that
11:39 was the result of it breaching
11:41 containment of these small communities
11:44 that understood how it was supposed to
11:46 be read it totally changed what ooo is
11:49 but we're not done because in the late
11:50 2010s ooo just absolutely skyrocketed in
11:54 popularity alongside of course its
11:56 variant Oho following emoticon logic oh
11:60 wo would be a version with like wide
12:02 open eyes therefore making it more
12:04 shocked or curious hence the hence the
12:07 popular phrase oh wo what's this and
12:10 then there
12:11 was and then there was the copy pasta
12:14 the copy pasta that starts raar nuzzles
12:16 you how are you pounces on you you're so
12:18 warm oo woo uh and then proceeds to get
12:20 extremely sexual from there that copy
12:22 pasta there was that and then in 2018
12:25 somebody decided to make a rap version
12:27 of it and post it on YouTube
12:30 XTR nozes pounces on you oo you're so
12:32 warm and um yeah that this happened it
12:35 became an extremely popular Tik Tok song
12:38 one of you told me on Tumblr that oo Woo
12:40 is for and I quote catg girls with
12:43 purple LEDs on Twitch um and others
12:46 noted this kind of mysterious Resurgence
12:48 and popularity among the younger
12:50 generation or connected it to Tik Tok
12:52 Fashions and you guys are not crazy okay
12:54 we have the graph not not that we have
12:58 the graph so this talk TR adapted from
13:01 this YouTube video adapted from this
13:03 coffee pasta uh adapted from I guess a
13:06 wider culture of ironically or making
13:08 fun of oooo um is the reason why it is
13:11 so popular right now what's really
13:14 interesting to me is that if you look at
13:16 the copy pasta that was you know
13:19 responsible for this huge Trend that
13:21 made oo popular ooo isn't spelled oooo
13:24 in it it's spelled like this but the
13:27 video that adapted it pron anounced it
13:30 oooo oooo has transcended oooo do do you
13:35 understand do I understand okay let's
13:38 look at another post that is famously
13:39 associated with oo the hello Mr Obama
13:44 then Parish roleplay post from T I'm
13:47 sorry if you don't know what I'm talking
13:48 about hello is anybody there cave slowly
13:51 begins to fill with water hello please
13:54 somebody help me hello you can feel the
13:57 surface of the water barely lapping at
13:59 you no no no no hello hello help me God
14:03 West your soul hello ma'am why are you
14:06 doing this to me hello help me
14:10 please Mr Obama is that you hello please
14:14 help me I seem to be in a little bit of
14:17 trouble Mr Obama hello hello M Please Mr
14:22 Obama please save me I don't want to die
14:24 hello Mr Obama are you still
14:27 there m Mr Obama please I'm drowning
14:30 hello I'm scared I'll do anything for
14:33 you Mr Obama please help anything
14:36 anything for you Mr Obama then perish
14:40 oooo never appears in this post either
14:43 just hello and please and other sort of
14:46 oooo ified words oooo speak has come to
14:49 mean either like a cutesy childlike
14:52 voice uh such as we see used in the song
14:55 version or this like fully oooo ified
14:58 language as is very nice nicely put by
14:60 this tweet oooo is a way of life oooo is
15:03 a way of life now it's a word you say
15:06 rather than just an emoticon you use
15:07 when you're trying to convey that you
15:09 are cute it's a way of speaking in a
15:11 cutesy way it's a way of typing words to
15:14 convey that you're speaking in a cutesy
15:15 way it's a word you say when you're
15:17 trying to be annoying or ironic and make
15:19 fun of people who want to be cute and
15:21 finally at the very bottom of the list
15:22 you may somewhere still find people who
15:25 are using ooo as an emoticon that looks
15:29 like a a happy cat-like face oo woo
15:32 continues to transcend and I wish you
15:34 all of the oo wooing you could ever
15:36 desire in your life I this honestly this
15:39 was a fun thing for my brain to chew on
15:41 this week if you guys have any more
15:43 suggestions that are kind of up this
15:44 alley of like things I can research kind
15:48 of quickly but that are still like
15:50 surprisingly interesting like weird
15:52 little tidbits of Internet history like
15:53 this if you know of anything like this
15:55 doesn't have to be related to emoticons
15:57 or language or anything like that if it
15:59 that's great but it doesn't have to be
16:00 that but anything that's kind of just
16:02 like a weird tidbit of Internet history
16:04 like this tell me your suggestions I
16:06 will be reading the comments thank you
16:07 so much for watching and I will see you
16:09 in another video next week