Records in V
Letter by letter, 60 at a time
- v0 n. ● Alive 2023– Vercel's tool for generating a web page from a sentence, launched in October 2023 and the first of the 'describe it and it appears' builders to be wi… 3
- Vaccine Selfie n. ☠ Dead 2021–2021 The photograph of the arm, the plaster, the card, posted in early 2021 as a milestone and a signal, and the discourse about whether it was a flex. Th… 3
- Vaguebooking n. ◐ Dying 2009– Posting something deliberately vague to provoke concern — 'some people just don't get it' — as the Facebook art of 2009–12, and the ancestor of the s… 2
- Valheim n. ● Alive 2021– A Viking survival game made by five people in Sweden, released into early access in February 2021 and selling five million copies in its first month … 4
- Valid adj. ● Alive 2019– Acceptable, understandable, fine — 'that's valid' — the internet's way of agreeing without agreeing, borrowed from therapy and applied to opinions ab… 3
- Valorant n. ● Alive 2020– Riot's tactical shooter, released to a closed beta in April 2020 that could only be entered by watching Twitch streams with drops enabled, which prod… 4
- Vampire Survivors n. ● Alive 2021– A game that costs a few pounds, plays for thirty minutes and asks nothing of you except walking away from bats, released into early access in Decembe… 4
- Vanilla Girl n. ☠ Dead 2023–2023 Cream, beige, a soft cardigan, a vanilla candle and a specific kind of calm — the January 2023 aesthetic, criticised within weeks for being a whitene… 2
- Vaporwave n. ↺ Undead 2010–2016 Slowed-down mall music, Roman busts, and Japanese text. A genre about the feeling of a shopping centre that has closed, which then closed. 0
- VeeFriends n. ◐ Dying 2021– Ten thousand two hundred and fifty-five hand-drawn animals with a personality trait each — 'Empathetic Elephant', 'Patient Panda' — by the marketing … 3
- Velvet Sundown n. ☠ Dead 2025–2025 A band with a million monthly listeners, a back catalogue, band photos, and no members. Exposed in July 2025 as generated end to end. The first AI ac… 3
- Venice Wedding n. ☠ Dead 2025–2025 A three-day billionaire wedding that took over a city, drew protests with inflatable crocodiles, and produced a week of memes about the guest list, t… 3
- Veo 3 n. ● Alive 2025– The video model that shipped with sound, and the reason the summer of 2025 was full of Bigfoot vlogs, stormtrooper diaries and fake street interviews… 2
- Veronika the Cow n. ● Alive 2026– A Brown Swiss cow named Veronika, reported in January 2026 as the first known example of multi-purpose tool use by a cow: she used both ends of a sti… 4
- Very Chinese Time n. ☠ Dead 2025–2025 A phrase from the RedNote fortnight: Chinese users telling American arrivals it was 'very Chinese time' — evening — and the exchange of daily rhythms… 2
- Very Demure phr. ☠ Dead 2024–2024 Very mindful, very cutesy. Two weeks of joy, a trademark dispute, and White House use, in that order, over a single August. 6
- Vibe (Noun) n. ● Alive 2019– The atmosphere of a thing, as the decade's most-used noun — 'it's a vibe', 'the vibes are off', 'vibe check' — a 1960s word revived in 2019 and insta… 2
- Vibe Check n. ● Alive 2019– An assessment of someone's mood or energy — 'vibe check' — first as a joke about hitting someone with a bat, then as a real question, then, by 2023, … 3
- Vibe Check (AI) n. ● Alive 2023– Judging a model by talking to it rather than by a benchmark — 'the vibes are good' — which became the internet's actual evaluation method for every n… 2
- Vibe Coding v. ● Alive 2025– Writing software by describing it and accepting whatever comes back. Collins Word of the Year in 2025; the software is running somewhere. 2
- Vibe Shift n. ● Alive 2022– The moment a culture's mood changes and the old things become embarrassing — named in a 2022 magazine piece about a trend forecaster's newsletter — a… 3
- Victory Royale n. ● Alive 2017– Fortnite's on-screen phrase for winning a match, from the mode's launch in September 2017, and the thing a hundred players enter each game so that on… 3
- Video Game Voice Actors Strike n. ☠ Dead 2024–2025 The eleven-month SAG-AFTRA strike against the largest video game publishers, called on 26 July 2024 over AI protections and ended by a contract ratif… 4
- Video Reply n. ● Alive 2020– The TikTok feature that turns a comment into a sticker on a new video, introducing the 'Reply to @username' era in 2020 — where the comment supplies … 3
- Video Response n. ▲ Fossil 2006–2013 A video posted as a reply to another video and linked beneath it — a video response — as the 2006–2013 YouTube feature by which vloggers argued with … 3
- Viking Row n. ● Alive 2026– The Norwegian football chant in which a whole stand rows an invisible longship: a horn sounds, a drum sets the beat, and thousands of supporters perf… 4
- Villain Era n. ◐ Dying 2022– Deciding to stop being nice and announcing it. Lasted about a year as a phrase, which was longer than most of the eras. 4
- Vine n. ☠ Dead 2013–2017 Six seconds, looping. Still supplying the shared reference library of an entire generation nine years after it was switched off, which is more than m… 4
- Virgin vs Chad n. ◐ Dying 2017– Two figures — one hunched, one striding — with a list of traits each: the virgin walk, the chad stride. The 2017 comparison format that was used for … 2
- Virtual Happy Hour n. ☠ Dead 2020–2020 Drinks on a video call, in March 2020, which was novel for a week, mandatory for a month, and quietly abandoned by June when everyone realised a call… 3
- Virtuals Protocol n. ● Alive 2024– A launchpad on Base where anyone could mint an AI agent with a token attached and let it post, trade and reply on its own, which in late 2024 turned … 3
- Virtue Signalling n. ● Alive 2015– Expressing an opinion to look good rather than to do good — virtue signalling — coined in a 2015 magazine column and applied since to every public st… 2
- Vishing n. ● Alive 2006– Phishing by phone call — vishing — in which a person claiming to be your bank, your tax office or your own IT department talks you through handing ov… 3
- Visible Confusion phr. ● Alive 2017– '[Visible confusion]' — a subtitle from a game cutscene, adopted as the caption for any face that does not understand, and the record's entry for the… 3
- Vision Board n. ● Alive 2006– A collage of the life one intends to have — houses, bodies, cars, the word 'abundance' — the vision board, a Secret-era practice of 2006 that Pintere… 3
- Vision Pro Guy n. ☠ Dead 2024–2024 The men filmed wearing a $3,500 headset on the subway, in a Tesla, and at a wedding, in the fortnight after launch, gesturing at nothing. The record'… 2
- Vitalik's Dog Coin Dumps n. ● Alive 2021– The recurring event in which memecoin projects send a large share of supply to Ethereum's co-founder's public wallet as a stunt, and he sells, gives … 2
- Vlogmas n. ● Alive 2011– The practice of uploading a vlog every day from 1 to 25 December — Vlogmas — as the YouTube advent calendar in which the doors are all a person buyin… 2
- Voice Chat n. ● Alive 2003– Talking to strangers while playing — voice chat, 'VC' — from TeamSpeak into Xbox Live into Discord, and the record's entry for the room where friends… 2
- Void Cat n. ● Alive 2016– A black cat, especially in a photo where only the eyes are visible — the void — and the record's entry for the internet's rehabilitation of the unluc… 2
- Volcel n. ● Alive 2015– 'Voluntary celibate' — celibate by choice, as the counter-term to incel, said sincerely by some and as a joke by everyone whose choices were not enti… 2
- Volkswagen Elis Regina Ad n. ☠ Dead 2023–2023 A Brazilian car advert in which the singer Elis Regina, who died in 1982, drives a vintage Kombi van and duets with her living daughter Maria Rita in… 4
- Volume Bot n. ● Alive 2024– A program that trades a coin with itself to fake activity, so that the coin appears on 'trending' lists and screening sites show buyers where there a… 4
- VRChat n. ● Alive 2014– A social platform of user-made worlds and avatars, playable in a headset or on a monitor, in which anyone can be anything. The record's entry for the… 4
- VSCO Girl n. ☠ Dead 2019–2020 Scrunchies, a Hydro Flask and sksksk. Named in July, parodied in August, explained in the Times in September; and I oop. 0
- VTuber n. ● Alive 2016– A streamer represented by an animated avatar — the body is a rig, the voice is real — from a 2016 Japanese YouTuber to a global industry by 2021, wit… 3
- VVVVVV n. ◐ Dying 2010– Captain Viridian cannot jump, only flip gravity, and looks for a crew of five in a Commodore 64-coloured space station. Made by an Irish developer an… 4