Platforms & apps

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

Corporate Memphis

Flat people with tiny heads and enormous purple limbs, doing teamwork. Every tech company drew the same person for five years and then, over one year, stopped.

▸ 2017peak 2020†2022

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

Covfefe

Half a word, posted at midnight and left up for six hours. The press secretary claimed a small group of people knew what it meant, and the joke was already over when he said it.

▸ 2017peak 2017†2017

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

Distracted Boyfriend

Three people, three labels, one joke, approximately four million times. Retired not by disapproval but by arithmetic.

▸ 2017peak 2017†2019

● Alivev.✎ 3

Flex

To show off, particularly a purchase. 'Weird flex but ok' was the correct response for one year in 2018.

▸ 2017peak 2019still up

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Mixer

Microsoft's Twitch rival, born as Beam in 2016 and renamed Mixer in May 2017, which in August 2019 paid Ninja a reported $20–30 million to leave Twitch and stream there instead, and in July 2020 shut down anyway, releasing its streamers to Facebook Gaming, where many declined to go. The record notes Ninja's exclusive deal was the most expensive advertisement for Twitch ever purchased by a competitor.

▸ 2017peak 2019†2020

● Aliven.✎ 4

Mocking SpongeBob

A sponge crouched like a chicken, plus text in aLtErNaTiNg CaSe. The only meme that added a typographic convention to the language, and the convention has outlived the picture.

▸ 2017peak 2017still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Notch

The black cut-out at the top of a phone screen housing the camera and Face ID, introduced by the Essential Phone in August 2017 and made unavoidable by the iPhone X a month later, after which every Android maker copied it while claiming to hate it. The record notes the notch was mocked for five years, replaced by the Dynamic Island in 2022, and is now what people miss.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

● Alivev.

Ratio

To attract more replies than approval, and to be told so. A metric repurposed as an insult, which is the entire history of social media in one word.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 3

Roll Safe

A man tapping his temple — 'you can't be broke if you don't check your bank account' — as the 2017 format for bad advice delivered as wisdom. The record's entry for the tap as a logic.

▸ 2017peak 2017still up

☠ Deadn.

Salt Bae

A chef sprinkling salt down his forearm. Turned into a restaurant chain charging $1,000 for gold-wrapped steak, the fastest documented conversion of a gesture into a price.

▸ 2017peak 2017†2017

● Aliven.✎ 3

Snap Map

Snapchat's map, launched June 2017, on which your Bitmoji stands wherever your phone is, visible to every friend unless you turn on 'Ghost Mode', which every parent article of that summer told you to do. The record's entry for the feature that made 'where are you' unnecessary and 'why were you at his house' possible.

▸ 2017peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Spam Account

A second Instagram account, private and low-effort, where a young person posts fourteen times a day for thirty close friends — the finsta's successor as a word, without the 'fake' and without the shame. Spotted around 2017 in bios as 'my spam', it named the account where you can post a blurry photo of a bus and a paragraph about your day. The record notes 'spam' here means volume, not fraud, and that the word has completely reversed for the under-twenties.

▸ 2017peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Substack

The paid-newsletter platform, founded in 2017, on which journalists who had been fired, opinion writers who had been asked to stop and novelists with a grievance discovered they could charge $5 a month and call it independence. Peaked as a word in 2021, when 'I'm starting a Substack' became the standard announcement of leaving a job. The record notes it is also a verb, a genre and a warning.

▸ 2017peak 2021still up

● Alivephr.✎ 2

Take the L

Accept the loss — 'take the L' — from gaming into everything, and the Fortnite emote that made it a dance done over a defeated opponent. The record's entry for the loss as a letter, and the gesture as a taunt.

▸ 2017peak 2020still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Toot (Mastodon)

A post on Mastodon, called a 'toot' because an elephant does, until the platform quietly renamed it 'post' in 2022 because nobody could say it with a straight face. The record's entry for the noun that was too whimsical to survive its own users' migration.

▸ 2017peak 2022still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Alignment Chart

A three-by-three grid — lawful to chaotic, good to evil — with anything sorted into it: pasta shapes, ways to eat a Kit Kat, cats. The 2016 format that made everything a moral question. The record's entry for the grid as a taxonomy.

▸ 2016peak 2019still up

☠ Deadn.

Arthur's Fist

A cartoon aardvark's clenched hand, used for every minor injustice. PBS asked people to keep it clean, which they did not, and it wore out in two years.

▸ 2016peak 2016†2018

● Aliveadj.✎ 3

Bad Faith

Arguing without meaning it — in bad faith — as the internet's word for the opponent who is not really asking, and 'good faith' for the one who is, and the impossibility of telling which. The record's entry for the accusation that ends a debate by declaring it was never one.

▸ 2016peak 2020still up

☠ Deadn.

Bee Movie Script

The entire screenplay of an animated film about bees, posted in full, then sped up, then sung. The one-joke format that required most disk space.

▸ 2016peak 2016†2017

☠ Deadphr.✎ 1

Cash Me Ousside

A teenager challenging a studio audience to a fight, in an accent that spawned a catchphrase. She became a rapper; the phrase became a T-shirt; both outcomes were worse.

▸ 2016peak 2017†2017

☠ Deadn.

Chewbacca Mom

A woman in her car laughing helplessly inside a Wookiee mask. Facebook Live's most-viewed video; Kohl's sent her a car full of merchandise and it was over by June.

▸ 2016peak 2016†2016

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Clap Emphasis

Putting 👏 between 👏 every 👏 word 👏 for emphasis, as the 2016–17 way of making a point loudly, and the record's entry for the applause that was also a lecture, and that everyone found exhausting by 2018.

▸ 2016peak 2017still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Confused Math Lady

A woman frowning with equations floating around her head — a Brazilian soap actress and some floating maths — as the reaction for trying to work something out and failing. The record's entry for the calculation as a face, and the meme's most-used Brazilian export before phonk.

▸ 2016peak 2018still up

☠ Deadphr.✎ 6

Damn Daniel

A boy in white Vans praised by his friend in a rising voice. Ellen gave him a lifetime supply of the shoes eight days later, and that was the end of it.

▸ 2016peak 2016†2016

☠ Deadn.✎ 3

Dat Boi

A frog on a unicycle, here he come. Meant nothing, spread for about three months on the strength of that, and ended when everyone had said o shit waddup exactly once.

▸ 2016peak 2016†2016

☠ Deadn.✎ 1

Doggo

A dog, spoken of fondly in a dialect of puppers, boops and heckin. Appeared in a Purina campaign in 2017 and the dialect was retired by its speakers in embarrassment.

▸ 2016peak 2017†2018

● Aliven.✎ 3

Dongle

Any small adapter you did not want to need — the word, an older bit of computing slang for a copy-protection plug, became a public joke in September 2016 when the iPhone 7 lost its headphone jack and the MacBook Pro lost every port, so that the 'dongle' was suddenly the thing between your laptop and everything you owned. The record notes 'dongle life' was the cost of courage.

▸ 2016peak 2016still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Duet

A split-screen video beside someone else's — singing along, reacting, adding a harmony — which became TikTok's engine of participation in 2020 and the reason a stranger's sea shanty had a thousand backing singers. The record's entry for the feature that made collaboration a default.

▸ 2016peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Facebook Mom

A mother who posts Minion memes, tags her children in things, comments 'so proud' on strangers' posts and shares a scam about a lost dog — the type, named by her children in 2016. The record's entry for the parent as a poster, filed with love and exasperation.

▸ 2016peak 2019still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Finsta

A fake Instagram — the private second account for the real self, with the bad photos and the honest captions — which was every teenager's secret in 2016–18 and was, in 2021, said aloud in a Senate hearing by a senator who did not understand it. The record's entry for the secret account.

▸ 2016peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Grifter

Someone whose online persona is a con — a grifter — applied since 2016 to pundits, coaches, crypto founders and anyone selling a course. The record's entry for the century-old word that the internet revived because it needed it.

▸ 2016peak 2020still up

◐ Dyingphr.✎ 2

It's Wednesday My Dudes

A man in a frog mask screaming 'it's Wednesday, my dudes' — and the frog itself, the Budgett's frog with the wide mouth — as the internet's weekly reminder that it is Wednesday. The record's entry for the day of the week as a meme.

▸ 2016peak 2017still up

● Alivephr.✎ 3

Link in Bio

The instruction that ended every post for a decade because the platform would not allow a link in the caption, which produced an industry of link-page services and a phrase that means 'buy this'. The record's entry for a workaround as a sentence.

▸ 2016peak 2020still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Linktree

The one-page list of links that Instagram's single-link bio made necessary, built by a Melbourne music agency in 2016 and now the standard address of every creator, band, small business and person with a podcast. The record notes it turned a platform limitation into a company worth more than a billion dollars, and that 'link in bio' now means 'link to a Linktree'.

▸ 2016peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

Locals

People who are not in the fandom, encountered when a post escapes — 'the locals found it' — as stan Twitter's word for the general public, and the record's entry for the tourist named by the native. A post found by the locals is over.

▸ 2016peak 2019still up

☠ Deadn.

Mannequin Challenge

Everyone freezing in place while a camera moves through the room. Performed by a presidential campaign, a football club and a bank within the same week, and never again after.

▸ 2016peak 2016†2017

● Aliven.✎ 2

Microinfluencer

An influencer with a small following — a few thousand — sold to brands as more authentic, and 'nanoinfluencer' for even smaller. The record's entry for the taxonomy of attention, in which everyone with a phone is a tier.

▸ 2016peak 2019still up

● Aliven.✎ 5

Milkshake Duck

A thing the internet adores for five minutes before discovering it is unforgivable. Coined in a single tweet; now a standard unit of the news cycle.

▸ 2016peak 2018still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Notion

The everything-document app, released in 2016 and rebuilt in 2018, in which pages contain databases that contain pages, and in which a certain kind of person keeps a life dashboard with a reading tracker, a habit grid and a template for the template. Peaked as a word in 2021, when 'my Notion' was said with the tone of 'my garden'. The record's entry for the tool that made organising the work indistinguishable from the work.

▸ 2016peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 3

OnlyFans

The subscription site, launched in London in November 2016, that became during the 2020 lockdowns the main marketplace for adult content made by the people in it, and in August 2021 announced a ban on that content, reversed it six days later and never spoke of it again. The record's entry for the platform that is a punchline, a livelihood and an economics lesson at once.

▸ 2016peak 2021still up

● Aliven.✎ 2

Pinned Comment

The comment a creator fixes to the top — usually their own, sometimes a fan's, occasionally a correction — and the honour of being pinned, which is the internet's small medal. The record's entry for the pin as a prize, and for 'pin me' as the request.

▸ 2016peak 2020still up

◐ Dyingn.

Pokémon Go

Walking around outside to catch cartoons. One summer in which every park was full and every news bulletin was about a Pidgey; still played, mostly by the same people, older.

▸ 2016peak 2016still up

◐ Dyingn.✎ 2

Rinsta

A 'real' Instagram — the polished, public account a teenager keeps for grandparents, college admissions and the general audience, as opposed to the finsta, where the actual person lives. Coined around 2016 as the back-formation from finsta, it named the oddity that the fake account was honest and the real one was staged. The record notes the word is dying because the rinsta itself became the account nobody posts on.

▸ 2016peak 2018still up

☠ Deadphr.✎ 5

Rise and Grind

Waking early to work, announced. Died in the spring of 2020 when the grind stopped and it turned out the rising had been the whole performance.

▸ 2016peak 2018†2020

● Aliven.✎ 2

Storytime

A video of a person telling a story to camera — 'STORYTIME: my roommate…' — as a YouTube genre in 2016 that produced a lot of thumbnails with open mouths and, by 2020, a TikTok format in which the story is told while doing something else. The record's entry for the anecdote as content.

▸ 2016peak 2019still up

☠ Deadv.

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.

▸ 2015peak 2016†2017

● Aliveadj.✎ 2

Cancelled

Publicly withdrawn from, as a person. Coined as a joke about a celebrity and has since been the subject of more essays than any word here.

▸ 2015peak 2019still up

● Aliven.✎ 4

Dark Academia

Tweed, candlelight, Latin and a murder. The only aesthetic that requires reading, which has kept it small and alive.

▸ 2015peak 2020still up