In a recent event, Epic Games continued sparkling its emotive product line by introducing new ‘Gnarly – Katseye Icon Emote’ for Fortnite, and the players’ reactions are… well, at least they are quite gnarly. By spending 500 V-Bucks you will get a new emote which already has divided the community among the players and is creating a lot of discussions. Some gamers are loving it while others are calling it rubbish. The official Fortnite Twitter account described the new emote as ‘Jealous of my emote? Yes!’ and the thread that started from this was indeed very interesting.
What is this new emote really about? It is the song ‘Gnarly’ that inspired it; it has a strong, confident, and a bit sarcastic dance animation that one might perform while pretending to celebrate over an enemy squad’s defeat. However, the opinions differ. Some players left their comments on the announcement tweet showing that they are not fond of the new emote while others are saying it is hilarious, thus proving how disunited the Fortnite community can be even over something so trivial as a dance move!
Right from the beginning, there are gamers like Kuitooo who said that he needs the emote so much that he is even willing to buy it without a second thought. On the contrary, another player, ariotol_13, had the worst gaming moment of his life when he said: ‘I just ran out of v-bucks nooo ðŸ˜ðŸ’”’ – it is a very common case when we are not able to buy the hottest item just because it is waiting for us to fill our virtual wallet again. And the pain is really felt.
What a difference! Now the haters are coming in. Man567Triston openly declared, ‘This emote is ass, I am NOT jealous lol’, which is as unfiltered a critique one can get. Fuh_Yes chimed in, ‘I hardly dislike emotes but I’ve heard this song so much that I am really annoyed by it’ – it seems this track is playing a lot and the irritation is obvious.
The discussion became more than humorous when some players started discussing how the emote would look on different character models to which Billybob responded with the question, ‘Why does every dance look gay’? This triggered a reply from Timeless who elaborated, ‘Try any girly emote on any male character in the game and it is like that’ – showcasing how at times Fortnite’s animation system may produce… well, rather unexpected results when one type of emote is used on a different body type character.
Before long, a different side debate came up regarding the very quality of the song. Odog______ and AquatiKai were having quite a heated argument over whether the song was purposely made to sound bad or not, with AquatiKai going so far as to suggest, the song is called gnarly and I’m pretty sure it was purposely supposed a bad song idk tho’ – which indeed raises more questions than it answers. Like, is it so bad it’s good? Or just bad? The world may never know.
What really captivates us is how extreme the reactions to the emotes are. While some players consider it as the only worthwhile purchase, agora_cvnts goes totally over the top by announcing in huge letters ‘THIS INSTANT COP,’ because with these things you know, you just know. Others are already fed up with it even before it gets a chance. The problem is there is no middle-quality ground of emotes in Fortnite – you either love them or think they are garbage, although the in-between is rarely seen.
The cost of 500 V-Bucks is the standard price for this type of emotes, however, it still refers to actual money when you break it down into smaller units. That amounts to around five bucks USD which is not a big deal for some players but for others, it is a choice between purchasing this or saving for the next Battle Pass. The endless war over V-buck allocation continues.
It is amazing how much trouble a single little dance can cause. Actually, there were some pretty strong exchanges taking place in the reply section among the users who were arguing about… well, pretty much everything. From the quality of the song to the style of animation to whether people should even be allowed to express their opinions at all. It was a huge mess which is quite typical for gaming Twitter if we are honest about it.
This is the main reason why Fortnite is still so fashionable – even the smallest content drops let people talk. An emote is not just an emote, it is a conversation starter, a status symbol, and sometimes even a point of dispute. Whether you consider that the Gnarly emote is fantastic or it should not be there at all, you probably have an opinion about it.
The nice thing about Fortnite’s cosmetic system is that it caters to every taste. If you’re playing on PlayStation or Xbox, you can still enjoy these emotes.
