Normies and locals think its from tiktok egirls/boys or something but the history of "uwu" and "owo" is extensive and actually stems way back to ancient times AKA the early days of the internet. When a generation of furries was being born from watching saturday morning cartoons of their favorite furry friends, some were simultaneously consuming lots of anime and manga media. Thus the psychological attachment to anthropomorphic creatures was born and with nowhere else to go to share their furry passions besides furrycons and anime expo, they turned to the internet to perform roleplay and make furry art (this is where "owo" and "uwu" come into play bc it was often used along with *nuzzles* and "rawr!") so to make a long story short i basically just recalled what i could from a video explaining the origins of "uwu" and furries
- - - Post Merge - - -
also one of my brothers is a furry and owns actually owns a fursuit so my knowledge surpasses yours
Probably some Internet joke that got popular.
I'm not liking the way Internet is with memes and everything, especially the abusive words that people use on a regular basis. And from my experience all of the offensive stuff on the Internet comes from insecure people (even if they claim to be "secure").
As of "owo", "uwu" - it's just a funny word that looks like an emoji, so it got popular because of that.