How Josh DeSeno became the face of impish sarcasm is at once simple to explain and complicated to understand. The origin story is pretty straightforward. In 2009, DeSeno was hired as an early engineering employee of Justin.tv, one of the first livestreaming video sites on the web. His first task was to rewrite the chat client for the gaming channel that would become Twitch, one of the many new community-based products Justin.tv was rolling out. Since many of the original Justin.tv staffers had inserted their faces as emoji easter eggs for the chat room,2 DeSeno decided to do the same, using the photo from his employee ID.
Josh was an employee back when I dropped by the JTV office a lot to pickup gear or see friends. I didn’t recognize the icon was him until I saw the photo blown-up here on the article linked.