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.
Latest death
☠ Dead
Character.AI Lawsuit
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
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
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 →
Gaming 657AI era 557Platforms & apps 503Memes 433Degen & memecoins 333Forums & Reddit 223Classic memes 188Aesthetics & -cores 156Fandom & stan culture 152TikTok 147Global slang 130Dating, work & life 118Textspeak & emoji 116YouTube & streaming 113Music & viral songs 112Slang 96Sports internet 71Tech & dev 64Brainrot 53Wellness 40Scams & security 37The old web 28
New on the record
- Soul Train Awards ReturnSeptember
- Kids' Choice on CBSSeptember
- Kenan on AGTSeptember
- Emmys 2026September
- Bartiromo OutSeptember
- Roman Space Telescope30 August
- Poland Volleyball Nations League2 August
- King Haakon VIII28 August
Rising this week
The full index →
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 Style3,422rulings
A Korean pop video that broke YouTube's view counter. Danced by the UN Secretary-General, which…
-
02
Chocolate Rain3,398rulings
A baritone leaving the microphone to breathe. Died when Dr Pepper hired him to sing about a sof…
-
03
Konami Code3,354rulings
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. Older than the web and hidden in more websi…
-
04
Wojak3,087rulings
A bald outline face, drawn to feel something. Has mutated into more documented subspecies than …
-
05
Betteridge's Law2,853rulings
Any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with no. Older than Betteridge, but he w…
-
06
Neopets2,655rulings
Virtual pets, a stock market, and a fandom that learned HTML to decorate its shop. Lost most of…
-
07
Blue Check2,454rulings
A badge meaning the account was who it said it was. Sold for $8 a month from November 2022, at …
-
08
Stan2,256rulings
To support obsessively. Began as a cautionary tale about a fan who drives into a river and ende…
The record
Showing 24 records
● Alive
n.
✎ 3
$100 Million Offer
The figure Sam Altman gave in a June 2025 podcast interview when describing Meta's attempts to hire OpenAI staff: signing bonuses of $100m and more, which he said none of his best people had accepted. Meta disputed the framing and reports of larger packages for other hires followed. The number became the era's standard unit of researcher value, quoted by people who earned in a lifetime what the offer paid on signing.
▸ 2025
peak 2025
still up
☠ Dead
n.
✎ 3
$3 Trillion Nvidia
The day in June 2024 when Nvidia's value passed three trillion dollars and, within the fortnight, made it the most valuable company in the world ahead of Microsoft and Apple. The number was quoted, charted and set beside the GDP of nations until it was retired in July 2025 by the four-trillion version, which got less attention because people had stopped being surprised.
▸ 2024
peak 2024
†2025
● Alive
n.
✎ 3
-Tok (Suffix)
The suffix that turns any subject into a side of TikTok — -Tok — as the 2020 habit of naming communities by their hashtag, so that books became BookTok, cleaning became CleanTok, and the record's own corner is presumably DictionaryTok. The record's entry for the most productive syllable of the decade.
▸ 2020
peak 2022
still up
☠ Dead
n.
✎ 3
100 Men vs a Gorilla
Whether a hundred unarmed men could beat one silverback. A month of serious tactical debate followed by MrBeast offering to stage it, which ended things.
▸ 2025
peak 2025
†2025
● Alive
n.
✎ 4
100x
The promised multiple. A hundred-times return is the standard unit of memecoin hope, quoted before a coin launches and never after, and its escalated form, 1000x, is used by callers who know a hundred is no longer exciting. The number describes what the caller wants to happen, not what has happened, and everyone using the term knows this.
▸ 2021
peak 2021
still up
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 3
2 Phút Hơn
A Vietnamese Vinahouse track that travelled worldwide as a remix — the KAIZ version, released on 28 November 2020 — and became a TikTok dance sound used by people who had no idea what the words meant. The record's entry for a remix that outran its original.
▸ 2020
peak 2021
still up
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 3
2014 Tumblr Revival
American Apparel skirts, Arctic Monkeys, a flower crown, a grainy filter and the specific sadness of a teenager in 2014, revived in 2024 by people who were nine at the time. The record's entry for a decade-later nostalgia cycle arriving on schedule.
▸ 2024
peak 2024
still up
● Alive
phr.
✎ 3
2026 Is the New 2016
A New Year's resolution the internet made for itself: bring back 2016 — flower-crown filters, the Mannequin Challenge, bottle flips, the dab, Zara Larsson on the radio. Part nostalgia, part protest against the present, and it actually moved a few 2016 songs back up the charts.
▸ 2025
peak 2026
still up
● Alive
n.
✎ 3
4o Image Generation
The image feature OpenAI added to ChatGPT in March 2025, which could keep a character consistent, render legible text and redraw a photo in another style, and which was used almost entirely for the last of these, in the style of Studio Ghibli, for a week. The record notes that Sam Altman said the GPUs were melting and that the feature was reported to add a million users in an hour.
▸ 2025
peak 2025
still up
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 2
5 to 9 Before 9 to 5
The video genre of doing a full day — gym, skincare, breakfast, a walk — between five and nine in the morning, before work, and posting it as a triumph. A 2023 trend among people who were, by their own account, very tired. The record's entry for the pre-day as a day.
▸ 2023
peak 2023
still up
● Alive
n.
✎ 3
7 Days to Die 1.0
The moment a zombie survival game left early access after eleven years, in July 2024, having sold well over ten million copies as an unfinished product with a seventh-night horde as its signature. The record's entry for the longest early access that anyone kept waiting for, and notes that the 1.0 was less an ending than a renumbering of the version.
▸ 2024
peak 2024
still up
☠ Dead
phr.
✎ 3
9.11 vs 9.9
A July 2024 wave of screenshots in which leading chatbots, asked which number is bigger, 9.11 or 9.9, chose 9.11 and defended the choice with confident arithmetic. The likely cause was training data full of version numbers and dates, where 9.11 does come after 9.9. Shared alongside the strawberry question as the summer's evidence that the machines could write a sonnet and fail primary school.
▸ 2024
peak 2024
†2024
● Alive
n.
✎ 3
99 Nights in the Forest
A Roblox survival game — build a fire, find the missing children, survive the deer — that became the third of the summer's Roblox monsters after Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot. Known for the deer, which are not deer.
▸ 2025
peak 2025
still up
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 3
999 Club
The thousand three-digit ENS names, from 000.eth to 999.eth, which in the spring of 2022 became a collectible club with a floor price and a Twitter list, followed by the 10k Club for four digits. Owners set the number as their display name; the names were trading for the price of a car for a few months and settled lower. The record's entry for the moment a domain name became a profile picture.
▸ 2022
peak 2022
still up
☠ Dead
n.
✎ 3
A Difficult Game About Climbing
A climbing game in which each hand is controlled by a mouse button and a slip means a fall to the bottom, released in March 2024 by a Swedish YouTuber and streamed by the same people who had streamed Only Up! and Getting Over It, for about a month, until they reached the top. The record notes that the title is accurate, which by the standards of game titles is unusual.
▸ 2024
peak 2024
†2024
☠ Dead
n.
✎ 3
A Robot Wrote This Entire Article
A Guardian opinion piece headlined as written by GPT-3, opening with the model claiming it had no desire to wipe out humanity, which circulated in September 2020 as the first machine-written newspaper article. The editor's note at the bottom explained that the paper had generated eight versions and stitched together the best paragraphs. The note travelled less far than the headline.
▸ 2020
peak 2020
†2020
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 3
A100
The Ampere-generation GPU announced in May 2020 that trained GPT-3 and most of the models that followed until the H100 arrived; the chip whose export to China was restricted in October 2022, and whose stockpiles in Chinese hands, reportedly including DeepSeek's, became a story in themselves. Retired from the cutting edge and still working everywhere else.
▸ 2020
peak 2022
still up
☠ Dead
n.
✎ 2
abcdefu
A breakup song built from the alphabet, written by GAYLE after a TikTok comment (later revealed to be from her label's team) suggested the idea, and released in August 2021. It went to Number One in Britain in early 2022 and became the era's most sung-along-to spelling lesson. The record's entry for the song that was crowdsourced, sort of.
▸ 2021
peak 2022
†2022
● Alive
n.
✎ 3
Abiotic Factor
A co-op survival game in which scientists trapped in an underground facility after an experiment goes wrong must craft, cook and hide from what came through, released into early access in May 2024 and immediately called 'Half-Life as a survival game' by everyone, including its developers. The record notes that a four-person survival game about being a physicist sold half a million copies in its first month.
▸ 2024
peak 2024
still up
● Alive
n.
✎ 2
Abracadabra Dance
The arm-crossing, finger-pointing choreography from Gaga's 'Abracadabra', learned by TikTok in a weekend and performed in kitchens and on cruise ships. The dance that made 'recession pop' a compliment.
▸ 2025
peak 2025
still up
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 3
Acubi
Grey, black and white, low-rise, a sheer top, a tiny bag and an expression of total indifference — Acubi — as the Korean-born minimalist aesthetic that TikTok named and adopted in 2022, somewhere between Y2K and Scandinavian office. The record's entry for the look that is a shrug in monochrome.
▸ 2022
peak 2023
still up
☠ Dead
n.
✎ 3
Adept
The agent startup founded in 2022 by ex-Google and ex-OpenAI researchers, including two authors of the Transformer paper, to build a model that used software on your behalf. It raised $350m at a reported $1bn valuation in March 2023, showed a model clicking through a browser, and in June 2024 saw its founders and much of its team hired by Amazon with the technology licensed.
▸ 2022
peak 2023
†2024
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 3
Adidas Into the Metaverse
Adidas's first NFT drop: thirty thousand tokens sold in December 2021 for 0.2 ETH each, reportedly raising around $22 million in a day, each redeemable for physical clothing including a tracksuit and a hoodie. The mint was slowed by a bot that bought hundreds at once; the tracksuit was shipped in 2022 to people who mostly kept it in the bag.
▸ 2021
peak 2021
still up
◐ Dying
n.
✎ 2
Adidas Samba
A 1950s football trainer that became the shoe of 2023–24 — on every street, every influencer and, in April 2024, on a British prime minister, which many declared the end. The record's entry for a shoe killed by a politician.
▸ 2023
peak 2024
still up
The whole file, letter by letter
The whole record, paged 60 at a time. Pick a letter or open the full index.