Internet Culture Dictionary Since 2008

The internet forgets. We keep the record. for 18 years

Every meme, game, app and turn of phrase — with the year it was born, the year it peaked, and the day it stopped being funny.

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📅 Today's 10: have you seen it? ▶ Free play Browse A–Z

Latest death ☠ Dead Character.AI Lawsuit n. · b. 2024 · †2026 A wrongful-death suit filed in Florida in October 2024 by the mother of a fourteen-year-old who died by suicide after months of conversations with Ch… Read the record → Newest record ● Alive SpaceTime n. · b. 2026 A community memecoin and self-described archival project on Robinhood Chain commemorating Spacetime Industries, the corporate name under which the co… Read the record → Record of the day · 4 Sep ◐ Dying Ultimate Chicken Horse n. · b. 2016 Four animals take turns placing a trap on a platform level, then all of them have to run it, and points only come if some of you fail. Made in Montre… Read the record →

2026 so far

Soul Train Awards Return Kids' Choice on CBS Kenan on AGT Emmys 2026 Bartiromo Out Roman Space Telescope Poland Volleyball Nations League King Haakon VIII Character.AI Lawsuit GPT-4o Anthem Sora Shutdown Munich Security Conference 2026 Islamabad Memorandum Soul Train Awards Return Kids' Choice on CBS Kenan on AGT Emmys 2026 Bartiromo Out Roman Space Telescope Poland Volleyball Nations League King Haakon VIII Character.AI Lawsuit GPT-4o Anthem Sora Shutdown Munich Security Conference 2026 Islamabad Memorandum

Now

2026, so far

196 born · 15 died · the week's traffic on Pulse

New on the record

Everything born in 2026 →

Rising this week

The full index →

Just died

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From the blog

Hawk Tuah, Very Demure, Chill Guy: The Viral Stars of 2024 and Where They Are Now4 Sep

What Is Doomscrolling? Meaning, Origin and How to Stop4 Sep

Streamer Slang Glossary: 50 Words from Kai Cenat, IShowSpeed and Twitch Chat4 Sep All 5,155 posts →

Then

The canon

The records with the most testimony on file, born before 2016. Where the language came from.

Ranked by testimony on filestatus · years · rulings

01
Gangnam Style ☠ Dead2012–2013
A Korean pop video that broke YouTube's view counter. Danced by the UN Secretary-General, which…

3,422rulings
02
Chocolate Rain ☠ Dead2007–2008
A baritone leaving the microphone to breathe. Died when Dr Pepper hired him to sing about a sof…

3,398rulings
03
Konami Code ● Alive1988 – now
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Older than the web and hidden in more websi…

3,354rulings
04
Wojak ● Alive2010 – now
A bald outline face, drawn to feel something. Has mutated into more documented subspecies than …

3,087rulings
05
Betteridge's Law ● Alive2009 – now
Any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with no. Older than Betteridge, but he w…

2,853rulings
06
Neopets ↺ Undead1999–2020
Virtual pets, a stock market, and a fandom that learned HTML to decorate its shop. Lost most of…

2,655rulings
07
Blue Check ☠ Dead2009–2022
A badge meaning the account was who it said it was. Sold for $8 a month from November 2022, at …

2,454rulings
08
Stan ● Alive2000 – now
To support obsessively. Began as a cautionary tale about a fan who drives into a river and ende…

2,256rulings

The full ranking →Fossils Elder internet

Tools15 ways to use the record ⌘ Slang translator ☠ Is it dead yet? ☺ Emoji meanings ⚠ Cringe meter ▶ How online are you? All tools →

The record

Showing 24 records

All Alive Dying Dead Undead Fossil

A–Z Newest Oldest Shortest life Longest life Most entries

Born Any time Before 2000 2000s 2010s 2020s

☠ Dead n. ✎ 3

A release strategy: eight music videos over eight consecutive days, each premiered on a different streaming site so no one platform owned the week. The album became Yankovic's first number one in a 32-year career, and the first comedy album to top the Billboard chart in over 50 years.

▸ 2014 peak 2014 †2015

● Alive abbr. ✎ 2

The three-character disclosure that turns a post into an advert — #ad — adopted by influencers from about 2015, made mandatory in spirit by regulators in 2017, and placed, wherever possible, where nobody will see it. The record's entry for the smallest legal notice on the internet.

▸ 2015 peak 2019 still up

☠ Dead adj. ✎ 7

Grateful, in a way that showed the boat. Used sarcastically by 2014 and then not at all.

▸ 2011 peak 2013 †2016

● Alive n. ✎ 2

The suffix that turns any noun into an aesthetic — -core — as the fragment that travelled from hardcore punk through 'normcore' in 2013 to a 2020s vocabulary in which cottage, goblin, clown, bloke, tennis, mermaid and 'under-consumption' could each have a core. The record's entry for the most abused four letters in the dictionary, including its own 'corecore'.

▸ 2013 peak 2021 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 2

The sarcasm tag — '/s' at the end of a sentence — from a joke HTML closing tag into the internet's most-argued-about punctuation: necessary, say some; ruins the joke, say others. The record's entry for the mark that tells you it was a joke, which was, itself, the joke.

▸ 2010 peak 2016 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 3

A song titled after the phone number of the United States National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, about suicide prevention. After the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards performance the Lifeline reported calls rose by around 50 per cent. The record's entry for a title that was also a working phone number.

▸ 2017 peak 2017 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 2

💯 — 'keep it a hundred', total agreement, full marks — as the emoji that means 'exactly' and 'honestly' at once, from 2014 to now, and the record's entry for the number that became a mood.

▸ 2014 peak 2016 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 3

A programmer ten times as productive as an ordinary one, as an industry myth and, after a 2019 thread listing their habits ('dark backgrounds, hates meetings'), a joke. The record's entry for the unicorn of engineering, and for the thread, which was sincere and ratioed.

▸ 2010 peak 2019 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 2

Treadmill at 12 per cent incline, 3 miles an hour, 30 minutes — 12-3-30 — a routine Lauren Giraldo posted in 2019 and re-posted on TikTok in 2020, after which every gym's treadmills were occupied by people walking uphill at the same speed. The record's entry for the workout that is three numbers.

▸ 2019 peak 2021 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 3

Sliding tiles together until they reached a number. Made in a weekend, played by everyone for a month, and still installed on the phones of people who forgot.

▸ 2014 peak 2014 still up

● Alive abbr. ✎ 2

Two-factor authentication — the six-digit code from an app or text that stands between your password and your account, which Google offered everyone in February 2011 and which everyone turned on after being hacked, not before. The record notes '2FA' entered ordinary speech around 2020, that 'do you have 2FA' is now what 'do you have a lock' used to be, and that the code always arrives on the phone in the other room.

▸ 2011 peak 2020 still up

☠ Dead n. ✎ 1

30-50 Feral Hogs

A sincere question about protecting children from wild pigs, asked in the middle of a gun-control argument. About four days of the best jokes of the year and then, correctly, silence.

▸ 2019 peak 2019 †2019

☠ Dead n. ✎ 3

The 2017 video format in which a creator does something ordinary — plays a game, orders a pizza, calls Siri — at three in the morning, in the dark, and is visited by a ghost, a clown or a man in a mask who is a friend. The record notes the titles were in capitals, the thumbnails were red, and the genre lasted about eighteen months before the audience learned the time.

▸ 2017 peak 2017 †2019

● Alive n. ✎ 3

The South Korean feminist stance of the four 'no's — no dating, marriage, sex or children with men — '4B', which drew a wave of American attention in November 2024 as women posted about adopting it after the presidential election. The record's entry for the movement that became a search trend overnight.

▸ 2019 peak 2024 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 3

5-Minute Crafts

The channel of fast, wordless 'life hacks' — a hot glue gun, a plastic bottle, a result that does not work — launched in 2016 by a Cyprus-based content company and for a while the most-subscribed non-music channel on the platform. The record notes the hacks were tested by other channels and found wanting, and that this was also content.

▸ 2016 peak 2019 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 3

Waking at five as a philosophy — the 5am club — from a self-help book into the morning-routine video, in which a man drinks water and journals and tells you about it. The record's entry for the hour as a virtue, and for the people who are, at five, simply awake.

▸ 2018 peak 2020 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 2

An emote of a streamer with an enlarged forehead, spammed for a clever play — and, ironically, for a stupid one. The record's entry for the Twitch word for 'genius', which is used sincerely about a third of the time.

▸ 2019 peak 2020 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 3

Seventy-five days of two workouts, a gallon of water, a diet, ten pages of reading and a progress photo, with any slip resetting to day one — a 'mental toughness' programme that became a TikTok genre of day-count videos and a way to lose friends for two and a half months. The record's entry for the challenge as an identity.

▸ 2019 peak 2023 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 3

A video genre in which a current pop song is rebuilt as though it had been released in the 1980s: gated drums, analogue synths, a saxophone that nobody asked for. The record's entry for a format whose entire content is a decade, applied to something else.

▸ 2017 peak 2019 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 3

The notification that reaches everyone, used by people who should not have it — '@channel does anyone have a charger' — as the record's entry for the broadcast as a crime. '@here' is the same for those currently awake, which is the same crime.

▸ 2014 peak 2019 still up

☠ Dead n. ✎ 4

A text page with a button that says 'stoke fire', then a stranger, then wood, then a village, then a map, and then something else. A browser game by a Canadian developer released in June 2013, it was ported to iOS by a different developer and reached number one in the App Store in April 2014 with no pictures at all. The record files the first button.

▸ 2013 peak 2014 †2015

▲ Fossil n. ✎ 3

Abbottabad Live-Tweet

The night a resident of Abbottabad, Sohaib Athar, posted on Twitter about a helicopter over the town at 1am without knowing it was the raid in which US forces killed Osama bin Laden. President Obama's announcement followed within hours, and Twitter set its record for posts per second. The record's entry for the first breaking news that broke itself.

▸ 2011 peak 2011 †2011

◐ Dying n. ✎ 2

The Roblox pet-raising game that launched in July 2017 as a role-play about adopting babies, pivoted to pets, and in 2020 held nearly two million concurrent players and a trading economy with its own scammers. The record's entry for the game that taught a generation the word 'legendary' meant 'expensive'.

▸ 2017 peak 2020 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 2

The 2017 crisis in which major advertisers pulled spending from YouTube after their ads appeared beside extremist content, leading to sweeping demonetisation and the word 'adpocalypse' for any subsequent revenue collapse. The record notes the first adpocalypse was March 2017, the second late 2017, and that creators now count them the way farmers count droughts.

▸ 2017 peak 2017 still up

Exhume 48 more ⛏