What does that whole "wwwwwwwwww" thing mean anyway? I assume it's an expression of shocked pleasure or something along those lines.
It comes from 笑う, "warau", which means "to laugh". It was shortened to "w" in internet slang, analogous to "lol", with wwwww being like "lololol". Much like "lol", it often doesn't indicate literal laughing, but can represent a range of emotions such as a vague feeling of amusement.
(There's also another slang term derived from this used to indicate laughing, 草, "grass", because wwwww looks like grass)
It must be FULL WITH w first off.
No, it doesn't have to be full-width. Spend any amount of time actually talking to Japanese people and you'll see both are used. FFS, the original title of this comic uses half-width "w"s, too: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/74592360
The idea of there being such a rigid rule around internet slang is preposterous. It's a real pet peeve of mine when weebs learn the tiniest, tiniest bit of information about Japanese and then go around on the internet pretending like they're an expert despite the fact that they've clearly never had a single conversation in Japanese.
last edited at Apr 2, 2020 2:24AM by