“Creatures of kek:” Affordance and enregisterment within “kek” on 4chan's “/pol/” board

Abstract

This paper examines the relation of affordance and enregisterment in the socialization of users through the popular 4chan phrase “kek.” This word, overwhelmingly used as an equivalent for “lol” (netspeak for “laugh out loud”), has taken up several other meanings within “/pol/,” the politically incorrect subforum on 4chan, an anonymous imageboard forum. Drawing from both enregisterment and affordance theory, I claim that the processes of mobilizing kek in very community-specific ways allow for users within this digital media space to not only enregister what a /pol/ user should “sound like,” but that it creates an environment which socializes a very specific kind of user itself. These branching paths of kek explored in this article situate kek as first, an affective assessment marker within interactive speech; then, as a lamination of the word, and deification of chaos magic and mischief celebrated on 4chan, represented by the frog-headed Egyptian god Kek; and finally, as a sovereign nation, known as “Kekistan.” Through these examples, I argue that a “creature of kek” is a socially constructed, enregistered framework of “knowing,” by which users on /pol/ legitimize themselves to new users, and in broader digital spaces.