The etymology of botssi 🗿
By: nutab1e
Valorant, like riot games' other title League of Legends, is a truly global game. It engages hundreds of thousands of players from every continent every day. With that global presence comes many different language speakers that came to be engaged with the new and promising valorant esports scene. Several forum websites emerged to discuss these esports, but it soon became clear that vlr.gg was the most popular.
Due to India's long history and large population, the average Indian esports fan that first came to vlr was very nationalistic and hopeful for India to emerge as a powerhouse in Valorant. From early domestic tournaments during the COVID-19 era, Ganesh 'SkRossi' Gangadhar looked like one of the most promising talents coming from India. Many naïve Indian fans would flood esports discussions with his name.
Many of the other users that came to vlr.gg had spent more time on esports forums like hltv.org or came from other Asian countries like Indonesia that had rivalries with India spanning many different sports and generations. Users soon found that making fun of SkRossi and Indian Valorant had a high success rate in baiting out reactions from Indian fans. This would give these 'baiters' a quick rush of dopamine from the attention, which they lacked from the physical figures in their lives. The back and forth baiting dominated vlr threads, far out of proportion from SkRossi's actual success and fame.
The term 'bot' is used as a derogatory term for a player who acts like a robot in game. Players of games around the world reach for this term to describe other players who's decision making defies all common sense, so they characterize them as not human. The phrase 'bot' also can be an abbreviation for 'bottom' , indicating a players position on the leader board of frags or kills. By the time Valorant was released in 2020, both of these uses for bot were already common slang for english speaking gamers. The conjuncture of the word 'bot' with the names of players was also common practice already. Since many of these players from other games went to Valorant and brought their fans with them, these funny names dominated low intellect discussion very quickly on vlr.gg. Some of the earliest names were botdell and botster, with botwell by far being the most popular early on.
Since most of the discussions around Skrossi came from Indians and other Asian countries, they often took place in other languages or in broken English. As time passed these young fans spent more time in English classes at school and absorbing English Valorant content from YouTube, Twitch, and the forums themselves.
As Valorant went international, the western and eastern sides of the forums found more common ground to make discussion on vlr.gg. While slowed by the timezone difference, these two sides of the forum gradually began to engage with baiting each other. The first conjuncture of a derogatory term into the name SkRossi can be found here with the name 'Skdogshit' https://www.vlr.gg/post/778266/prx-are-just-like-ge
A few months later, we would see the term 'bot' being injected into the mix with names like 'Skrrbot' and finally 'Skbotsii' and 'Skbotsi' https://www.vlr.gg/post/1668927/sugerz3ro
https://www.vlr.gg/post/1676395/top-3-player-by-roles
https://www.vlr.gg/161778/skbotsi
As time went on, overall patience with SkRossi discussion fell among forum users, and Western and Eastern users alike were quick to bury or downvote posts to oblivion. Then, a new user emerged named Domination who was uniquely committed to SkRossi baits regardless of how many downvotes he got. He made Indian vlr users so mad that they doxxed his IP address. https://www.vlr.gg/post/1829527/indonesian-prodigy-fatpoipoiii-joins-sentinels
During this wild run of baits and constant SkRossi discussion, Domination innovated on other variations and posted Botrossi https://www.vlr.gg/167859/skrossi-hatersss-come/#20 , which garnered a healthy reaction from Indian users. This was the first time that the 'Sk' prefix of SkRossi's name had been dropped when adding 'bot' to his name. This was quickly followed by the first post of botssi https://www.vlr.gg/post/1752613/skrossi-by-a-brazilian.
The 'Moai' or 'Moyai' emoji became a meme outside of esports roughly in 2018 with the popularity spiking in around the time when botssi was first created https://imgur.com/a/aXSS0So https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moai-emoji
Right around when Domination was posting botssi, he was also incorporating the moyai emoji on the end of his posts for comedic effect. Following his first botssi post, he posted hundreds more, always with the phrase: botssi 🗿. Over time, the baits became more and more dumbed down, sometimes just being posted as that phrase alone. This quickly became Domination's personal brand and many baiters came to respect and recognize him for that and the fact that he would post it in the face of many downvotes.
Over time, this phrase was picked up by lots of vlr users and also incorporated into the spoiler effect, where people will try to catch each other off guard by surprising the reader with that phrase in completely unrelated conversations. This was to copy the way that domination would often force botssi into completely unrelated posts to earn the downvotes of users who were tired of hearing it.
In conclusion,
BOTSSI 🗿
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