"9/9/2026, 4:41:43 PM" version for "cmonBruh" article

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cmonBruh

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Come on, brother

cmonBruh emote

The emote cmonBruh features John Imah, an ex-employee of Twitch, face of the emote and owner of both cmonBruh Twitch and Twitter Accounts. Around its emergence in 2016, it became particularly associated with reacting to racist comments or racial slurs in Twitch chats of different streamers. Historical references put its early spread around February 2016, including its appearance in discussions surrounding a Reckful stream where someone used a racial slur.


Video below shows part of the interview with John Imah taken from John Imah speaking reel Video uploaded to Gotham Artists YouTube channel on September 16 2022. Due to unknown circumstances that video was later removed from Gotham Artist's channel but it was preserved in This is Twitch’s Most Controversial Emote video made by YouTuber Syrmaa.

John Imah, the man behind the emote

He not only worked for the previously mentioned platforms twitch.tv and Snapchat, but also for other tech giants such as Samsung and Meta. By 2022 he co-founded SPREEAI an artificial intelligence fashion-commerce platform that provides photorealistic virtual try-ons and fit guidance. Working as his CEO the company at the time of writing this, middle of 2026, reached a valuation of $1.5 billion dollars (Who is this guy?).

"Fear narrows your options. Calm expands them.

That’s true in business, leadership and life."

- John Imah on X August 14th, 2026.


Another fun fact about him is the love he possess for luxury vehicles:


Images taken from his Instagram account @iamjohnimah

Streaming on Twitch

During October 1st and 2sd the face of cmonBruh goes live in twitch, sharing an interesting story about the origins of said stream, where he explains how he got recognized by a surgeon right before the procedure:

“For the procedure, they were getting ready to gas me so I could got to sleep. And one of the guys was like ‘you look familiar.’ And I was like ‘I do? Who?’ and he was like [...] are you cmonBruh? You kinda look like him but you’re not orange.”

- John Imah October, 2022


Emote usage

This emote was a double edged sword in the community, sometimes the bajs hivemind was challenged into just spamming cmonBruh over any other emote, or it was being used with entirely racist context with addition of other emotes like TriHard:


And on the other hand Forsen himself had moments when he was baiting chat into using the emote:

Standard in rap, bros.


One of the bajs even made a compilation of what might look like as an average Swedish dialect which forsen was using during his streams.

cmonBruh removal incident

On April 15th, 2022 during one of his classic CS streams, forsen had enough of cmonBruh being used in a wrong way and did something that baj community will never forget. After Forsen noticed that snipers got into his faceit lobby he quoted "I do see something that I don't like right now", which resulted in classic cmonBruh spam in the chat. That stream of pixels triggered Forsen one last time and he claimed:

"Chat, this cmonBruh shit is getting old, alright. Fucking Christ, do I have to remove this fucking emote? Like what the fuck. Like you are feeding the fucking racism honestly at this point."

After that statement the chat started spamming "cmonBruh LAST SPAM" but this didn't last for long as the janitors of forsen chat added a pajbot timeout to anyone typing the emote in the chat.



X (Twitter), ForsenUpdates - Retrieved August 9th, 2026 (Archive).

The news about removal of the emote were scattered across the platforms like Twitter (nowadays X) and popular r/LiveStreamFail subreddit.

"yall just overused it to the point of literally any context saying black would get cmonBruh spam. not even about the solving racism thing it's just boring."

- r/livestreamfail redditor, Retrieved August 9th, 2026 (Archive).


"MODS BAN cmonBruh, permaban"

The last cmonBruh ever recorded in forsen's chat.

After the Baj riots of 2022, asking for the re-installment of cmonBruh, one of the head mods of forsen's channel (Landon144), shares the original idea behind the removal when replying to the post of a angry Baj in the subreddit.

"[...] The idea was to remove it for only one stream. But the reactions have been so over the top insane, mostly on this subreddit, that I really don't want to bring it back any time soon. [...]"

- Landon144 on r/forsen April 17th, 2022.


Landon would stand by his decision to permanently remove the emote multiple times, including other posts and offline chat:

"Well, seeing all the RlyTho's instead of the cmonBruh's was actually quite refreshing. It's not much, but atleast it's something new for once"

- Landon144 on r/forsen April 17th, 2022.


RlyTho reigns supreme

RlyTho emote

Even after removal of cmonBruh emote, bajs creativity did not know boundaries and they easily found an alternative that they can use instead of deleted emote - RlyTho . Because of the resemblance to the original cmonBruh emote RlyTho was used in exactly same way as cmonBruh was originally used.


The RlyTho emote features streamer BassCornbread. To this day RlyTho emote can be still used on Forsen's channel and he did not provide any statements regarding that alternative to cmonBruh.




Other channels

XQC

Forsen's channel wasn't the only one who lost cmonBruh emote. Some of the other streamers also removed the emote for the same reason, one of the examples being xQc. He explained that he decided to remove the emote from his channel because it was so closely connected to racism and that it was simply a "mood killer."


I'm just gonna fucking remove the emote bro it's so bad dude... Actually mods remove it right now dude. Just dude... Just fucking block this thing right now. I... I... I'm... I've had enough of this dude. I can't take it anymore. Just remove the fucking emote.
It's such a mood killer, every time we have something good I fucking hate it... Guys I'll explain it. It's just trash dude, that like, it's always like "cmon bro, oh guys is he triggered by pixels guys? removing emote cuz triggered?" It's not like it's triggering, literally nobody is triggered. It's just trash that a lot of people think that they are creative like "There is a monkey on the screen - I will type cmonBruh, he said black - I will type cmonBruh, the character said "fried chicken" - I will type cmonBruh", like fuck off with that shit dude. Now it's just overdone. It just kills the mood dude.

Also after that statement xQc mentioned that he will not remove the TriHard emote, another emote that was used with the same context.


References