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2 results for “explainers”

☠ DeadCNET AI Articles2023–2023The revelation, in January 2023, that the technology site CNET had for two months been publishing personal-finance explainers written by an AI tool u…
☠ DeadTorpedo Bats2025–2025A baseball bat shaped like a bowling pin, used by one team to hit nine home runs in a game, which produced a week of physics explainers, conspiracy t…

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Now

2026, so far

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

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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

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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. ✎ 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. ✎ 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. ✎ 3

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

● 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

↺ Undead n. ✎ 4

009 Sound System

An electronic project whose tracks became the default sound of amateur YouTube because AudioSwap replaced copyrighted audio with Creative Commons music, and an alphabetical list put 009 Sound System first. With a Spirit, Dreamscape, Holy Ghost and Space and Time were on thousands of videos nobody chose them for.

▸ 2008 peak 2010 †2014

◐ 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. ✎ 4

Amazon's ordering button, introduced in 1997, that charges a saved card and posts to a saved address on a single press, with no basket in between. Patented in 1999, licensed to Apple, out of patent since 2017. The record's entry for the shortest distance ever drawn between a thought and a receipt.

▸ 1997 peak 2012 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 2

The daily step target that every fitness tracker defaults to and every office worker fails — 10,000 steps — a number chosen in 1965 as the name of a Japanese pedometer because it looked good, and treated as science ever since. The record's entry for the round number that runs the world's wrists.

▸ 1965 peak 2023 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

☠ 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

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

● 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 phr. ✎ 3

The challenge to a duel, issued over Xbox Live in the late 2000s by anyone who had just lost, and by 2013–14 a meme ('1v1 me bro, Rust, quickscopes only') about the twelve-year-old who issued it. The record's entry for the honour code of a generation that settled everything in a private match and nothing at all.

▸ 2009 peak 2014 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 3

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

◐ 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

Exhume 48 more ⛏