The Etymology of UwU

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