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

☠ Dead n. ✎ 3

#8days8videos

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

#Ad

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

#blessed

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

-Core (Suffix)

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

-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

● Alive n. ✎ 2

/s

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

1-800-273-8255

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

1-Click

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

10,000 Steps

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

100 Emoji

💯 — '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

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

● Alive n. ✎ 3

10x Engineer

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

12-3-30

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

1v1 Me

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

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

◐ Dying n. ✎ 3

2048

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

2FA

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

● Alive n. ✎ 2

360 No-Scope

Spinning a full circle and killing an opponent with a sniper rifle without using the scope, first as a genuine trick in Halo 2 and Call of Duty 4 montages and by 2013 as the central sacrament of the ironic MLG meme. The record's entry for the shot that took ten thousand attempts and thirty seconds of dubstep.

▸ 2007 peak 2013 still up

☠ Dead n. ✎ 3

3AM Challenge

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

▲ Fossil n. ✎ 4

3D Pinball: Space Cadet

The one pinball table bundled with Windows from the mid-1990s to XP, played by everyone with a work computer and no internet. It was a cut-down version of a Maxis game, and it vanished from Vista in 2007 because, according to the Microsoft engineer who tried to port it, the ball fell through the table on 64-bit systems.

▸ 1995 peak 2001 †2007

● Alive n. ✎ 4

404 (Slang)

'Not found', applied to a person — 'he's 404', 'brain 404' — as the error code that became a state of mind, and the record's entry for the number that means absent, clueless, or gone. The 404 page itself became an art form, which is a separate entry the record has not written.

▸ 1999 peak 2008 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 3

4B Movement

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

● 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

◐ 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

5am Club

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

5Head

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

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

● Alive n. ✎ 3

75 Hard

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

80s Remix

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

↺ Undead n. ✎ 7

88x31 Button

A tiny rectangular badge linking to a friend's site or announcing your browser loyalties. Currently living a second life among people who have decided the first one was fine.

▸ 1996 peak 2000 †2006

☠ 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

▲ Fossil n. ✎ 3

=3 (Equals Three)

Ray William Johnson's three-times-weekly viral-video review show, '=3', begun in 2009, which was for a time the most-subscribed channel on YouTube and the template for every 'reacting to the internet' format that followed. The record notes the show's structure — a clip, a joke, a 'comment question of the day' — is now so standard nobody remembers it was invented, and that Johnson left it in 2014 and it ended in 2016.

▸ 2009 peak 2011 †2016

● Alive n. ✎ 3

@channel

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

● Alive phr. ✎ 3

[Citation Needed]

Wikipedia's tag for an unsourced claim, adopted by the internet as a joke to attach to anything doubtful — 'the best film ever made [citation needed]'. The record's entry for the bracket that became a punchline, and for the encyclopedia's most-quoted sentence.

▸ 2005 peak 2010 still up

☠ Dead n. ✎ 4

A Dark Room

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

☠ 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

☠ Dead abbr.

A/S/L

Age, sex, location, asked in that order of every stranger. Died when platforms began answering the question for you, permanently and in public.

▸ 1996 peak 2000 †2005

◐ 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

▲ 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

☠ 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

● Alive n. ✎ 3

Ace (FPS)

Killing every member of the opposing team in a single round, in Counter-Strike from about 2000 and in Valorant from 2020, where the game announces it and the clip goes on social media within the minute. The record's entry for the shooter's highest ordinary honour.

▸ 2000 peak 2020 still up

● Alive phr. ✎ 2

Achievement Unlocked

The pop-up and chime with which the Xbox 360 rewarded players for doing things from its launch in November 2005, and the phrase since attached to any minor real-life accomplishment ('Achievement Unlocked: Left the House'). The record notes the system was designed to keep players playing, and that it worked on a scale nobody at Microsoft had budgeted for.

▸ 2005 peak 2010 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

● Alive n. ✎ 4

Ad Blocker

Software that stops advertisements loading in a browser. Ad Muncher, from 1999, is among the earliest; AdBlock and uBlock Origin made it a default habit for a large part of the web. The record's entry for the long war between the people who want to show you something and the people who would rather not see it.

▸ 1999 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

● Alive n. ✎ 3

Adobe Firefly

Adobe's image generator, launched in March 2023 with the promise that it was trained only on Adobe's own stock library and public-domain work, which made it the model companies were allowed to use, and from May 2023 the engine behind Photoshop's Generative Fill, which extended famous album covers sideways for a month. The record notes the 2024 report that some training images had been made by Midjourney.

▸ 2023 peak 2023 still up

☠ Dead n. ✎ 4

Adobe Terms Backlash

The week in June 2024 when Adobe forced users to accept updated terms that appeared to give the company the right to access and analyse their work, through automated and manual review. Designers read this as training data by the back door and threatened to leave. Adobe said it did not train its generative models on customer content and rewrote the terms; the record notes the rewriting was the concession.

▸ 2024 peak 2024 †2024

◐ Dying n. ✎ 2

Adolescence

A four-episode British drama, each shot in one take, about a boy accused of murder, which became the most-discussed show of spring 2025, was screened in parliament, and made 'the 80/20 rule' and emoji meanings a topic in schools. The record's entry for a drama as a public inquiry.

▸ 2025 peak 2025 still up

◐ Dying n. ✎ 2

Adopt Me

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

Adpocalypse

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

☠ Dead n. ✎ 3

Adult Swim Bumps

Videos in the style of a television network's between-show bumpers — a quiet scene, the [as] logo appearing somewhere unexpected — which became a TikTok genre in May 2021 with a specific song and a lot of very good editing. The record's entry for a channel's branding as a fan format.

▸ 2021 peak 2021 †2021

☠ Dead v.

Adulting

Doing grown-up tasks, announced as an achievement. Made into a class you could pay for, which was the point at which it stopped being a joke.

▸ 2015 peak 2016 †2017

◐ Dying n. ✎ 2

Adulting Fail

The failure to do a grown-up task — forgetting the bins, burning rice — posted as an 'adulting fail' with a self-deprecating shrug. The record's entry for the mid-2010s genre of confessing incompetence charmingly, which the internet grew out of and the record did not.

▸ 2014 peak 2016 still up

● Alive n. ✎ 3

Advanced Voice Mode

The ChatGPT voice feature demonstrated in May 2024 with laughing, singing and a tone many called flirtatious, and shipped four months later without the singing, the Sky voice, or most of the flirting. The record notes that it was the first product to be delayed for being too charming, that the demo is the era's most-referenced, and that the version people got was good and much quieter.

▸ 2024 peak 2024 still up

☠ Dead n.

Advice Animals

A face on a coloured background, two lines of Impact, one character trait. The industrial phase of the meme, when anyone could make one and everyone did.

▸ 2008 peak 2011 †2014

☠ Dead n. ✎ 1

Advice Dog

A puppy on a rainbow background giving terrible guidance. Spawned an entire taxonomy of animals with opinions and was retired by its own descendants.

▸ 2006 peak 2008 †2011

● Alive n. ✎ 3

Aegyo

A performed cuteness — pouting, a squeaky voice, a small hand-heart — that Korean idols do on variety shows on request, and that international K-pop fandom named, catalogued and rated from about 2010. The record's entry for the word for cuteness that is, importantly, deliberate.

▸ 2010 peak 2016 still up