293 born · 214 peaked · 93 died
Born in 2021 293
- ●100xThe promised multiple. A hundred-times return is the standard unit of memecoin hope, quot…
- ◐Adidas Into the MetaverseAdidas's first NFT drop: thirty thousand tokens sold in December 2021 for 0.2 ETH each, r…
- ☠Adult Swim BumpsVideos in the style of a television network's between-show bumpers — a quiet scene, the […
- ●AllowlistThe list of wallet addresses permitted to mint before the public, earned by being early i…
- ●AlphaInside information, or anything presented as it. In finance alpha is the excess return a …
- ●Alpha GroupA paid Discord or Telegram promising members early information on coins and mints before …
- ☠AmogusThe Among Us crewmate, seen in everything — a fire hydrant, a sandwich, a cloud — and nam…
- ●Analog HorrorHorror made to look like a corrupted VHS tape or an emergency broadcast — distorted faces…
- ●AnthropicThe AI lab founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei and a group of colleagues who left…
- ●Ape InTo buy without thinking — like an ape, or like a person who has decided that thinking is …
- ●Apes (WSB)The retail traders who held GameStop in January 2021, self-named as apes — 'apes together…
- ●AtePerformed superbly, with no crumbs left. Sometimes extended to 'ate and left no crumbs', …
- ◐AuroryA Solana game project that sold ten thousand character pictures in September 2021 on the …
- ☠Avocado ArmchairThe first DALL-E's signature image: 'an armchair in the shape of an avocado', rendered as…
- ●Azure OpenAI ServiceMicrosoft's cloud product that sells OpenAI's models to businesses behind Microsoft's con…
- ◐Baby DogeA coin launched in June 2021 as the child of Dogecoin, with a cartoon puppy and a supply …
- ☠Bad Luck Brian NFTKyle Craven, whose 2006 school photograph became Bad Luck Brian, sold the image as a toke…
- ●Bare Minimum ManA man praised for doing the least — remembering a birthday, texting back — as the 2021 cr…
- ◐Battlefield 2042DICE's 2021 Battlefield, with 128 players, no classes, no scoreboard and a hovercraft tha…
- ☠Bean DadA musician recounting how he made his nine-year-old work out a tin opener for six hours. …
- ●BedWars (Roblox)A Roblox version of the Minecraft server mode in which teams protect a bed, bridge across…
- ☠Beethoven XA completion of Beethoven's unfinished Tenth Symphony, built from his sketches by a team …
- ◐Ben Simmons Passing Up the DunkThe moment Ben Simmons, alone under the basket in the fourth quarter of a Game 7 against …
- ☠Bernie MittensA senator in a parka and hand-knitted mittens, sitting alone at an inauguration, photosho…
- ☠Bernie's MittensA senator in a folding chair in mittens, photoshopped onto every surface on earth within …
- ☠Berries and Cream'Berries and cream, berries and cream, I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream' — a …
- ●Bestie'Bestie' — best friend — as the 2021 way of addressing a stranger online, sincerely or in…
- ☠Bing BongA Knicks fan's shout in a Sidetalk street-interview video of October 2021, which became t…
- ◐Bing ChillingJohn Cena, in Mandarin, holding an ice cream — 'bīngqílín' — in a promotional video, whic…
- ●BlorboA beloved character, described by someone who has never seen the show — 'my blorbo from m…
- ●Blue ArchiveA gacha game set in an academy city of schoolgirls with guns and halos, in which the play…
- ●Blue Chip (NFT)A collection assumed to hold its value because of its age, its holders or its name: Punks…
- ☠Bones DayA thirteen-year-old pug called Noodle who either stood up in the morning — a bones day, g…
- ◐Bored ApeTen thousand cartoon apes with bored expressions, bought as profile pictures by celebriti…
- ◐Bored Ape Kennel ClubA dog for every ape: Yuga Labs let each Bored Ape holder claim a companion Kennel Club do…
- ●BoundariesThe therapy concept — the line between what you will and will not accept — as the interne…
- ☠Buss It ChallengeA transition dance — plain clothes, a drop, a full glam reveal — to 'Buss It', in January…
- ●C2PAThe industry standard for attaching a signed history to an image or video, saying which c…
- ●CC0A licence that puts a work in the public domain, and the NFT movement — Nouns, Mfers, Gob…
- ☠Charlie Bit My Finger NFTThe 2007 clip of a baby biting his brother's finger, one of the most-watched videos in Yo…
- ↺ChecoSergio 'Checo' Pérez, as F1 Twitter's favourite subject — the Mexican fan army, the 'Mini…
- ☠CheugyOut of date in a way that is trying. Died the week a national broadsheet published a guid…
- ☠Choo-Choo CharlesA game about a spider with a train's body that hunts you across an island while you upgra…
- ◐Clone XTwenty thousand 3D avatars designed with Takashi Murakami, minted in late 2021 by the dig…
- ☠Coconut GirlY2K beachwear, hibiscus prints, puka shells, butterfly clips and a Roxy surf sticker, rev…
- ↺CodexOpenAI's code model of August 2021, the engine inside GitHub Copilot and the first thing …
- ◐Cool CatsNine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine blue cartoon cats drawn by Colin Egan, launche…
- ☠Couch GuyA boyfriend surprised on a sofa, reacting a beat too slowly. Millions of amateur body-lan…
- ☠Covid AlienCryptoPunk #7523, the alien wearing a medical mask, sold at Sotheby's for $11.75 million …
- ◐Cozomo de' MediciAn anonymous Twitter account that spent the summer of 2021 buying CryptoPunks and crypto …
- ☠Crab GameA free multiplayer game made in a few weeks by a Norwegian YouTuber as an unlicensed copy…
- ●CringefailA character who fails at everything and is loved for it — a cringefail loser — as Tumblr'…
- ●Cruelty SquadA first-person shooter about a corporate assassin, drawn in colours that hurt and a user …
- ☠CryptoZooA game promised by Logan Paul in 2021 in which buyers of 'egg' NFTs would hatch and breed…
- ◐CryptoadzSix thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine small pixel toads by the artist Gremplin, releas…
- ◐Cuban's Mavericks DogeThe Dallas Mavericks began accepting Dogecoin for tickets and merchandise on 4 March 2021…
- ◐CyberKongzA thousand pixel gorillas released in March 2021 that became the first collection to pay …
- ●DEX ScreenerA chart site that indexes every pair on every decentralised exchange, with a trending col…
- ●Daniela AmodeiAnthropic's co-founder and president, who ran operations and policy at OpenAI before leav…
- ●Dario AmodeiAnthropic's co-founder and chief executive, formerly OpenAI's head of research, whose lon…
- ◐DeGodsTen thousand gods in sunglasses, launched on Solana in October 2021 by Rohun Vora, known …
- ●Dead Internet TheoryThe claim that most of the web is now machines talking to machines. Filed here without ed…
- ☠Deep NostalgiaA genealogy site's feature that took a still photograph and made the face blink, turn and…
- ☠DeeptomcruiseA TikTok account of a deepfaked Tom Cruise doing coin tricks, golf and a Bubble Yum anecd…
- ●DegenVCA memecoin collective of thirty-odd degens that started in 2021 as a tight friendship aro…
- ◐Degenerate Ape AcademyTen thousand cartoon apes that sold out on Solana in about eight minutes on 14 August 202…
- ☠Devious LickStealing things from school — a soap dispenser, a sign, a toilet — and posting it as a 'd…
- ☠Diamond HandsRefusing to sell whatever happens, as a virtue. January 2021, a hearing in Congress, and …
- ☠Disaster Girl NFTZoë Roth, the girl smirking in front of a burning house in a 2005 photograph, sold the or…
- ●Discord Compromise MintA fake mint announced from a project's own Discord after an attacker gains control of an …
- ●Discord KittenA person, usually young, who receives Discord Nitro from an older user in exchange for at…
- ☠Discord NFT BacklashTwo days in November 2021 in which Discord's chief executive posted a screenshot suggesti…
- ◐Dislike Button RemovalYouTube's decision, announced on 10 November 2021, to hide public dislike counts on all v…
- ☠Doge DayA campaign to push Dogecoin to one dollar on 20 April 2021, chosen for the date, with has…
- ◐Doge NFTThe original photograph of Kabosu the Shiba Inu, sold as a token by her owner Atsuko Sato…
- ☠Dogecoin $0.73Dogecoin's all-time high, reported at around $0.73 in the hours before Elon Musk hosted S…
- ●Dogecoin Foundation RelaunchThe August 2021 re-establishment of a foundation first set up in 2014 and dormant since, …
- ☠Dogecoin SNL CrashThe night Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, sat on Weekend Update as a 'financial exp…
- ☠DogefatherThe title Elon Musk gave himself in a tweet announcing his Saturday Night Live date — 'Th…
- ◐Dogelon MarsA dog coin named by welding Doge to Elon and adding a planet, with lore about a Shiba Inu…
- ◐DoodlesTen thousand pastel characters drawn by Scott Martin, launched in October 2021 with a tre…
- ●DorfromantikA tile-laying game in which the player builds a landscape of villages, forests and rivers…
- ☠Dry ScoopingSwallowing a scoop of pre-workout powder without water, filmed for the grimace, which spr…
- ●Dyson Sphere ProgramA factory game across an entire star system, in which the goal is to surround a sun with …
- ●EU AI ActThe European Union's risk-tiered AI law, proposed in April 2021 before ChatGPT existed, r…
- ●Edit AudioA sped-up, bass-boosted or reverbed song fragment used as the soundtrack of a short fan e…
- ●Elder EmoA person in their thirties who still knows every word to 'Welcome to the Black Parade' an…
- ☠Ever GivenA container ship wedged sideways across the Suez Canal for six days, and a single small d…
- ☠Everydays: The First 5000 DaysA collage of the 5,000 daily images Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, had made since May …
- ☠Evolved ApesTen thousand fighting apes sold in September 2021 with the promise of a game and a tourna…
- ●Exit LiquidityThe people who buy so that earlier people can sell — you, usually, in retrospect. A term …
- ●FEWOCiOUSVictor Langlois, a teenage artist from Las Vegas painting loud, autobiographical figures …
- ☠Fairy GrungeFairycore in torn tights — fairy grunge — as the 2021 TikTok aesthetic that put wings and…
- ◐Fake BodyThe caption '#fakebody' or 'fake body!!' added to swimsuit and gym videos from 2021, in t…
- ◐Famous Fox FederationSeven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven cartoon foxes on Solana that outlasted the…
- ☠Fancy LikeCountry singer Walker Hayes and his teenage daughter dancing to his song about a date nig…
- ☠Female Manipulator MusicFiona Apple, Lana Del Rey, Mitski, Mazzy Star and anything a girl might listen to while w…
- ☠Feta PastaBake a block of feta in a dish of cherry tomatoes, stir into pasta, film it: the recipe t…
- ◐Few Understand'Few understand this' — the sign-off of a post that explained nothing, which implied a se…
- ●FidenzaNine hundred and ninety-nine generative paintings by the Austin artist Tyler Hobbs, made …
- ☠First Tweet NFTJack Dorsey's first tweet, from March 2006, sold as a signed token in March 2021 for arou…
- ◐Five Nights at Freddy's: Security BreachThe first free-roaming entry in the Five Nights at Freddy's series, set in a neon shoppin…
- ●Flip (NFT)To buy at mint and sell as soon as the price rises, which in 2021 could be minutes. The v…
- ◐FlokiA dog Elon Musk announced he would name Floki, which became a mascot before the dog was b…
- ●Floor PriceThe cheapest currently listed item in a collection, and the number that became the whole …
- ●Flop EraA period of failure, announced with acceptance — 'I'm in my flop era' — from stan Twitter…
- ●Forza Horizon 5Playground's open-world Mexico racing game, released in November 2021 to ten million play…
- ◐FoundationAn invite-only marketplace for single-edition art that launched in February 2021 and set …
- ●Foundation ModelA model trained on a vast general corpus that other things are then built on top of: a ba…
- ●Fren'Friend', spelled the way a frog would spell it, and the NFT market's word for anyone in …
- ☠Frozen HoneyHoney squeezed into a bottle, frozen overnight and eaten as a thick, glowing rope on came…
- ◐Gas WarThe NFT-era mint battle: a popular collection opens minting, thousands of wallets submit …
- ☠Gaslight Gatekeep GirlbossThree verbs of ambition arranged like a kitchen sign. The complete arc from joke to T-shi…
- ◐GirlbloggerA young woman posting Lana Del Rey lyrics, Sylvia Plath quotes, a lipstick-stained cigare…
- ●GitHub CopilotThe autocomplete for code that GitHub and OpenAI released as a preview in June 2021, a ye…
- ◐Glazed Donut SkinSkin so dewy it reflects the ring light — glazed donut skin — as Hailey Bieber's 2021 phr…
- ◐Goofy Ahh'Goofy ass', with the vowel pronounced the way the sound clips pronounced it — 'goofy ahh…
- ☠Goose Goose DuckA free social deduction game in the Among Us mould, with geese instead of crew and ducks …
- ☠Gorilla Glue GirlA woman who used construction adhesive as hairspray and could not undo it. A plastic surg…
- ●Gorilla TagA VR game in which you are a gorilla, you have no legs, and you move by flapping your arm…
- ◐GorpcoreHiking clothes as fashion — technical shells, trail runners, a fleece from a brand with a…
- ●GrailThe one you would keep no matter what: the top-ranked, the rarest, the one with the trait…
- ◐GrandmacoreKnitting, tea, a cardigan, a garden and an early night — the grandmother's life as an asp…
- ●Green FlagA sign that someone is good for you: he texts back, she has friends, they are kind to wai…
- ●Green Flag BehaviourA small act that signals a good partner — texts when he gets home, is kind to waiters, ha…
- ●Hard LaunchPosting your partner's face, name and tag — the full reveal — after the soft launch's han…
- ◐HasbullaA small man from Dagestan with a big personality, a lot of cars and a friendship with fig…
- ◐HashmasksSixteen thousand three hundred and eighty-four portraits by seventy artists, sold in Janu…
- ◐Have Fun Staying PoorThe reply to any sceptic during a boom — a dismissal that aged exactly as well as the boo…
- ●Helen TonerThe Georgetown researcher on OpenAI's board who co-wrote an October 2023 paper that prais…
- ●Hi Mum ScamA message from an unknown number that says 'Hi Mum, I've lost my phone, this is my new nu…
- ◐High Value ManA man who is, by his own account, worth dating — money, height, a plan — as a phrase from…
- ●HoneypotA thing you can buy but cannot sell — the code lets you in and not out. The scene's word …
- ●Hood IronyA community of Instagram accounts making memes with a specific absurdist, low-res, heavil…
- ☠Hot Girl WalkWalking for four miles while thinking about gratitude and goals. Renamed a walk, which wa…
- ◐Hot Tub MetaStreaming from an inflatable hot tub, in swimwear, under the 'Just Chatting' category, as…
- ☠Hot Vax SummerThe summer of 2021 as promised: vaccinated, out, making up for a lost year. Named in Apri…
- ◐Huggy WuggyThe tall blue toy with the needle-teeth grin from the 2021 horror game Poppy Playtime — '…
- ●ImmutableThe Australian company behind Gods Unchained and the Ethereum layer-two built for NFT gam…
- ☠Impact Theory SEC CaseA Los Angeles media company sold 'Founder's Keys' tokens in late 2021, raising a reported…
- ☠Indie SleazeFlash photography, American Apparel and a cigarette, named a decade late. Diagnosed as co…
- ●InscryptionA card game played against a man in a dark cabin that turns out to be several games and a…
- ●It Takes TwoA two-player game about a divorcing couple turned into dolls by their daughter's wish, re…
- ●JPEG (NFT)The NFT market's word for itself when it was being honest, and its critics' word for it w…
- ◐Kids with Down Syndrome Singing A Thousand YearsA group performance of 'A Thousand Years' by children with Down syndrome, made for World …
- ●Knowledge CutoffThe date after which a model knows nothing, because its training data stops there. ChatGP…
- ◐L + Ratio'L + ratio + you fell off + no maidens' — the stacked insult of 2021–22, in which every r…
- ◐L Bozo'L' for loss plus 'bozo' for clown — 'L bozo', often with 'ratio' — as the 2021–22 reply …
- ●LFG'Let's go', with an expletive in the middle, and the reply to every announcement in every…
- ☠LaMDAGoogle's conversational model, announced in May 2021 with a demo in which it spoke as the…
- ☠Laser EyesRed laser eyes added to a profile picture as a pledge — the eyes stay on until the price …
- ●Lil PudgysThe smaller, cheaper sibling collection to Pudgy Penguins: 22,222 little penguins minted …
- ●LoRALow-rank adaptation: a way of fine-tuning a big model by training two small matrices alon…
- ☠Loop HeroA game in which a hero walks a loop automatically and the player builds the world around …
- ◐LootEight thousand text files — a list of eight fantasy items in white monospace on a black b…
- ☠Lost Tapes of the 27 ClubA set of AI-assisted songs in the styles of Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix and the …
- ●Love BombingOverwhelming someone with affection early to secure them — a cult-recruitment term from t…
- ●Magic EdenThe marketplace that became the front door of Solana NFTs within months of launching in S…
- ●Main Character SyndromeThe condition of behaving as if the world is your film: the slow walk, the soundtrack, th…
- ●ManifoldA tool that let artists deploy their own smart contract rather than mint on a marketplace…
- ●Mascot HorrorA genre of game in which a cheerful children's mascot turns out to be a monster in an aba…
- ☠Material GworlSaucy Santana's 2019 track 'Material Girl' became, on TikTok in 2021–22, the sound for sh…
- ●Max FanThe Max Verstappen supporter as an internet type — orange, certain, active in the replies…
- ◐MeebitsTwenty thousand blocky 3D characters from the makers of CryptoPunks, launched in May 2021…
- ☠Melania Trump NFTA watercolour of Melania Trump's eyes, 'Melania's Vision', sold in December 2021 at $150 …
- ●Melting Face🫠 — a smiling face melting into a puddle, added in 2021 and immediately the most-used ne…
- ●MetadataThe information attached to an NFT — its name, its traits and, crucially, the address of …
- ☠MetaverseA place made of avatars with no legs, into which a company renamed itself. Spent $46 bill…
- ◐MfersTen thousand and twenty-one stick figures at a computer, drawn from the 'are ya winning, …
- ●MicrocapA coin with a tiny market value, in memecoin usage anything from a few thousand dollars t…
- ●MiladyA collection of ten thousand anime-styled avatars with a neochibi look and an internet su…
- ☠Milk Crate ChallengeStacking milk crates into a pyramid and walking up and over them, on camera, until the py…
- ◐Mr. Incredible Becoming UncannyA face from The Incredibles getting progressively more distorted and horrifying across pa…
- ☠MuckA free survival roguelike released in June 2021 by the YouTuber Dani after a commenter to…
- ◐Mutant Ape Yacht ClubTwenty thousand mutated apes: ten thousand created by Bored Ape holders exposing their ap…
- ●My Brother in Christ'My brother in Christ, you…' — the exasperated address to someone who has done the thing …
- ▲NFTA receipt for a JPEG, sold as ownership. Trading volume fell 97 per cent in eighteen mont…
- ◐NFT BroThe person of 2021: hexagon profile picture, 'gm' in every reply, a thread about why your…
- ◐NGMI'Not gonna make it' — the verdict on anyone who sold early, doubted, or asked a reasonabl…
- ●Nervous System RegulationThe wellness framing in which anxiety, stress and being tired are 'dysregulation', and th…
- ●NounsOne pixel character with square glasses auctioned every day, forever, with the proceeds g…
- ☠Nyan Cat NFTA remastered one-of-one of the Pop-Tart cat with a rainbow trail, sold by its creator Chr…
- ◐Old Money TwitterAccounts posting black-and-white photos of Kennedys, Riviera villas and men in loafers wi…
- ●On-ChainStored on the blockchain itself rather than pointed to from it: the NFT market's word for…
- ●One Must Imagine Sisyphus HappyCamus's line about the man pushing the boulder, attached to a wojak pushing a boulder, at…
- ●Orange Cat BehaviorThe theory that all orange cats share a single brain cell and take turns with it — and 'o…
- ☠Overly Attached Girlfriend NFTLaina Morris, whose wide-eyed face from a 2012 YouTube parody became the Overly Attached …
- ●PFPProfile picture, and by extension the whole category of NFT project — ten thousand variat…
- ☠Panoramic'Pandemic', avoided — 'the panoramic', 'the panini', 'the panorama' — as the algospeak fo…
- ●Paper HandsThe opposite of diamond hands: someone who sells the moment it hurts. Coined during the G…
- ●ParallelA science-fiction card game whose art sold as NFTs for three years before the game existe…
- ◐Pet Simulator XA Roblox game of collecting pets that collect coins that buy eggs that hatch pets, with a…
- ●PhonkA distorted, cowbell-heavy genre of music from 1990s Memphis, revived on TikTok in 2021 a…
- ●Photo DumpA carousel of unrelated, unedited photos — a coffee, a friend, a receipt, a blurry sky — …
- ●Pls DonateThe Roblox game that is not a game but a room where players stand on stalls and ask each …
- ●Pokémon UniteA five-a-side arena game in which teams of Pokémon score points in goals, made by Tencent…
- ●PonzinomicsThe economics of a scheme that pays early people with later people's money, described wit…
- ●PoolroomsEndless tiled rooms of shallow water, lit from nowhere — a Backrooms level that became it…
- ●Poppy PlaytimeAn episodic horror game set in an abandoned toy factory, released in October 2021 by a sm…
- ●PowerWash SimulatorA game in which you clean dirt off things with a pressure washer and nothing goes wrong, …
- ●Pre-Workout FaceThe wide-eyed, itching, slightly frightened expression of someone who has taken a caffein…
- ●Pregnant Man Emoji🫃 — the pregnant man, added for inclusion in 2021 and adopted by the internet for 'I ate…
- ◐Preppy (Roblox)A Roblox avatar style — pastel pink and blue, Stanley cups, bows, 'Preppy' written on eve…
- ◐Probably Nothing'Probably nothing' — said about something the speaker clearly thinks is everything, as a …
- ●Project Zomboid (Build 41)The December 2021 update that added multiplayer to an isometric zombie survival game in d…
- ●Pudgy PenguinsRound penguins in hats that began as avatars in 2021, nearly died in the crash, and came …
- ☠PurrAn exclamation of approval — 'purr!' — briefly ubiquitous in 2021–22 and gone by 2023, wh…
- ◐Rarity RankA number assigned to each NFT in a collection by how uncommon its traits are, computed by…
- ●Ready or NotA tactical shooter in which a SWAT team clears buildings, released into early access in D…
- ●Real'Real' — agreement that something is true and also felt — as the 2021–23 reply to any rel…
- ☠Red Flag EmojiA dealbreaker followed by a row of red flags. Twitter reported 1.5 million uses in a sing…
- ☠RegencycoreEmpire waists, corsets, gloves and a string quartet playing pop, from a television series…
- ●Resident Evil VillageCapcom's 2021 Resident Evil, whose January showcase introduced Lady Dimitrescu, a nine-an…
- ●Return YouTube DislikeA browser extension, released within days of YouTube hiding dislike counts in November 20…
- ●RevealThe moment, hours or days after a mint, when a collection's placeholder images are swappe…
- ☠Right-Click SaveDownloading the image someone had paid to own. The correct response for one year, and the…
- ●RingersOne thousand generative images of string wound around pegs by the Canadian artist Dmitri …
- ◐RizzCharisma, specifically the romantic kind, specifically as a skill. Currently in the termi…
- ●Roadmap (NFT)The list of things a project promised to do after the mint, usually presented as a timeli…
- ●Round TripRiding a coin all the way up and all the way back down without selling. A round trip ends…
- ●RoundsA one-on-one shooter in which the loser of each round picks a card that changes their cha…
- ●Royal MatchA match-three puzzle of a king in mild peril, made in Istanbul, that overtook Candy Crush…
- ◐STEPNMove-to-earn: an app that paid a token for walking or running, provided you first bought …
- ☠SafeMoonA token launched in March 2021 with a 10 percent fee on every sale, part of it paid back …
- ●Saluting Face🫡 — 'o7', the salute, as an emoji: for acknowledging an order you will follow, a friend'…
- ◐SamoyedcoinA white fluffy dog on Solana, launched in April 2021 and styled as the chain's ambassador…
- ●ScrunklySmall, odd, strangely loveable — scrunkly, skrunkly — as the word for a character or crea…
- ☠Sea Shanty TikTokA Scottish postman singing about a whaling ship, harmonised by strangers in stacked video…
- ◐Seggs'Sex', misspelled to evade the algorithm — the most-used word of algospeak, and the one t…
- ●Send ItTo buy without thinking about it. Borrowed from skiers and skaters, for whom it means com…
- ●Ser'Sir', misspelled on purpose and used in every reply: 'ser, the floor is rising', 'ser, d…
- ☠Shiba Inu Vitalik BurnShiba Inu's creators had sent half the supply to Vitalik Buterin's wallet as a marketing …
- ☠Side-Eyeing Chloe NFTThe 2013 clip of a small girl reacting to the news of a trip to Disneyland with an expres…
- ☠SigmaA lone wolf above the hierarchy, or a kid saying 'what the sigma'. Meant a personality ty…
- ◐Sigma Male Grindset'Sigma rule #47: never let them know your next move' — a parody of alpha-male self-help, …
- ☠Silhouette ChallengeA doorway, a red filter, a silhouette — the January 2021 challenge that was sensual, then…
- ●Skill IssueThe reply to any complaint that something is hard: 'skill issue'. From gaming into everyt…
- ◐SluggingSealing the face in petroleum jelly overnight so that moisturiser cannot escape, a Korean…
- ●SnapshotA record of who held what at a particular block, taken before an airdrop, a vote or a rew…
- ◐Sneaky LinkA secret hook-up — the person you see without telling anyone, the link being sneaky. A 20…
- ◐Snoop's Sandbox EstateA virtual mansion in The Sandbox belonging to Snoop Dogg, announced in September 2021, an…
- ◐So True Bestie'So true bestie' — agreement delivered with an intimacy the speaker does not have, as the…
- ◐Social Credit'+15 social credit' — a joke about China's monitoring system, applied to anyone doing any…
- ◐Solana Monkey BusinessFive thousand pixel-art monkeys on Solana, launched in August 2021 and treated ever after…
- ●Sped-Up SongA pop song pitched up and sped up by a quarter so it fits a fifteen-second clip and sound…
- ☠Squid GameA Korean drama about debt and death games, watched by 142 million households. Died the we…
- ☠Squid Game (Roblox)Not one game but hundreds: the wave of Roblox recreations of the Netflix series that appe…
- ☠Squid Game TokenA token trading on a Netflix show it had no connection to, which rose from under a cent t…
- ●Stochastic ParrotA system that repeats language without understanding it. Coined as a warning and adopted …
- ☠Stoner CatsAn animated series about cats that get high, voiced by Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Chris …
- ●Stumble GuysA phone battle royale of obstacle courses for thirty-two wobbling players, released as an…
- ●Subathon RecordThe subscriber count that a subathon is trying to break, and the record's entry for the f…
- ●Sunday ResetThe weekend ritual of cleaning the flat, meal-prepping, changing the sheets and planning …
- ☠Super FollowsTwitter's 2021 attempt at paid fan subscriptions — followers could pay a creator monthly …
- ☠Sussy BakaSuspicious idiot, in two borrowed slang words. Said ironically, then unironically by chil…
- ●Sweep the FloorTo buy the cheapest listed items in a collection in one go, either to raise its floor pri…
- ●Taylor's VersionThe suffix on Taylor Swift's re-recorded albums — '(Taylor's Version)' — from 'Fearless' …
- ☠That GirlA woman who wakes at five, journals, and drinks green juice in beige. A wellness aestheti…
- ●The JPEG Is Not on the BlockchainThe sceptic's sentence of 2021: the thing you bought is a token that contains a link, the…
- ☠The MergeA work by the pseudonymous artist Pak sold on Nifty Gateway over 48 hours in December 202…
- ◐The Sandbox LandPlots in a voxel world owned by Animoca Brands, sold in waves through 2021 to brands, cel…
- ◐Think, MarkA father beating his son while asking him to think — 'Think, Mark!' — from the Invincible…
- ☠This Is Not Morgan FreemanA one-minute video of a deepfaked Morgan Freeman looking into the camera and saying 'I am…
- ●Touch Grass (Gaming)The record has touch grass. This is its gaming form: said in chat to a player who has bee…
- ◐Trade OfferA man in a suit pointing at two columns — 'I receive', 'you receive' — with a deal that b…
- ●Trauma DumpingSharing heavy personal history with someone who did not ask — at a party, in a group chat…
- ☠Twitter BlueTwitter's subscription, launched quietly in June 2021 as a $2.99 undo-button and folder f…
- ☠Ubisoft QuartzUbisoft's platform for selling in-game cosmetics as NFTs, called 'Digits', launched in a …
- ●UnaliveTo die, in a form the content filter will let through. The first widely used euphemism in…
- ☠Understood the AssignmentDid the thing exactly right, said about a costume or a performance. Used by brands within…
- ●UnhingedChaotic, unfiltered, slightly worrying — 'unhinged' — as the internet's compliment of 202…
- ●UnpackingA puzzle game in which you unpack boxes in eight homes across a woman's life and learn wh…
- ◐Unreal KeanuA TikTok account starring a deepfaked Keanu Reeves in short lifestyle skits, dancing, coo…
- ☠Up ChallengeThe fast, hand-heavy routine to Cardi B's 'Up' — released 5 February 2021 with the chorus…
- ●Utility (NFT)What an NFT was supposed to do for you besides be a picture: access to a Discord, a game,…
- ☠Vaccine SelfieThe photograph of the arm, the plaster, the card, posted in early 2021 as a milestone and…
- ●ValheimA Viking survival game made by five people in Sweden, released into early access in Febru…
- ●Vampire SurvivorsA game that costs a few pounds, plays for thirty minutes and asks nothing of you except w…
- ◐VeeFriendsTen thousand two hundred and fifty-five hand-drawn animals with a personality trait each …
- ●Vitalik's Dog Coin DumpsThe recurring event in which memecoin projects send a large share of supply to Ethereum's…
- ◐WAGMI'We're all gonna make it' — a bodybuilding-forum motto from a decade earlier, borrowed by…
- ●Wallet DrainerA script, embedded in a fake mint page or a hijacked official account, that asks a visito…
- ◐WalterA bull terrier photographed from below, with a long snout and a look of alarm, named Walt…
- ☠WarNymphA drop of ten works by the musician Grimes — flying cherubs with weapons over ruined land…
- ☠Web3A decentralised web owned by its users, which meant tokens. Nobody could name the product…
- ☠WomboA phone app that took a selfie and made it sing eleven seconds of a pop song with wildly …
- ●WordleFive letters, six guesses, one a day, and a grid of squares to post. Bought by the New Yo…
- ◐World of WomenTen thousand illustrated women by the artist Yam Karkai, launched in July 2021 as a delib…
- ●Wrong Number Scam'Hi, is this Jenny from the dog groomer?' — the wrong number scam — a text from a strange…
- ☠YassifyTo run a photo through beauty filters until it is a glossy, contoured, lash-heavy version…
- ●Yuga LabsThe company behind the Bored Apes, founded by two pseudonymous writers in Florida, which …
- ☠Zoom Cat LawyerA lawyer in a court hearing on Zoom with a cat filter he could not remove — 'I'm here liv…
- ☠abcdefuA breakup song built from the alphabet, written by GAYLE after a TikTok comment (later re…
Peaked in 2021 214
- ●-Core (Suffix)The suffix that turns any noun into an aesthetic — -core — as the fragment that travelled…
- ●12-3-30Treadmill at 12 per cent incline, 3 miles an hour, 30 minutes — 12-3-30 — a routine Laure…
- ◐2 Phút HơnA Vietnamese Vinahouse track that travelled worldwide as a remix — the KAIZ version, rele…
- ●AffirmationsStatements one repeats to become true — 'I am worthy', 'money flows to me' — affirmations…
- ◐All Star Tower DefenseA Roblox tower-defence game whose towers are unlicensed anime characters with slightly ch…
- ●AlphaFoldDeepMind's protein-structure model, which won the biennial CASP competition in 2018 and e…
- ●Angel NumbersRepeating digits — 11:11, 222, 444 — read as messages from the universe, a numerology ide…
- ●AngelcoreWhite lace, wings, halos, Renaissance cherubs and soft light — angelcore — as the aesthet…
- ●Art BlocksA platform where artists deposit a generative program and buyers mint outputs they have n…
- ●Aunty (Desi Internet)The aunty — any older woman with opinions about one's weight, marriage and career — as a …
- ●AutoglyphsFive hundred and twelve pieces of ASCII-style generative art produced and stored entirely…
- ●Average RedditorA wojak with a neckbeard, glasses and a specific smile, captioned with a pun and an opini…
- ◐Axie InfinityA game of breeding and fighting cartoon creatures, each one an NFT, that became a job in …
- ●Ayo'Ayo?' — the reaction to something suspect, with a raised eyebrow: 'ayo, what did he say?…
- ●BBG'Baby girl' — the pet-name acronym, warm in DMs and unbearable in comment sections, that …
- ●Banner (Gacha)A limited-time draw in a gacha game featuring one or two characters at raised odds, named…
- ●BeepleMike Winkelmann, a graphic designer from Wisconsin who made and posted one image every da…
- ◐Bhai Kya Kar Raha Hai'Bro, what are you doing?' — the Hindi phrase of baffled concern, drawn from a viral reel…
- ●Bitcoin Pizza DayThe anniversary of a man buying two pizzas for ten thousand bitcoins in 2010, celebrated …
- ●Bot LobbyA match filled with AI players, either by design for beginners — Fortnite added bots in O…
- ●BrookhavenThe Roblox role-play town where you pick a house, a car and a job and mostly drive around…
- ◐Buff Doge vs CheemsA muscular Shiba Inu representing the past and a small, sad one representing the present,…
- ◐BussinExtremely good, of food. Appeared on a fast-food chain's billboard, which is the beginnin…
- ●Buy the DipThe instruction to buy when the price falls, said with a confidence that the fall is temp…
- ●CabincorePlaid, log walls, wood smoke, a lake and no phone signal — cabincore — as the pandemic-er…
- ●Cassette FuturismThe future as imagined with CRT monitors, beige plastic, chunky keyboards and reels of ta…
- ◐Caught in 4KCaught, on camera, in high definition, with no way to deny it — usually with a screenshot…
- ●ChadThe confident, effortless man who wins — first as a bitter archetype on forums, then as a…
- ●Channel MembershipA monthly subscription to a specific YouTube channel — a channel membership — for badges,…
- ●Charot'Just kidding' — the Filipino tag word, from swardspeak, appended to anything said sincer…
- ☠CheemsA small Shiba Inu with a sad, hopeful face and a habit of adding 'm' to words — 'bonk', '…
- ●Chromie SquiggleA wobbly line of rainbow gradient, Art Blocks project number zero, made by the platform's…
- ●Close FriendsThe green ring: a story shared with a chosen list, which became a social hierarchy — who …
- ●Clown Emoji🤡 — the reaction for someone who has embarrassed themselves and does not know it, or, ap…
- ◐ClubhouseInvite-only live audio rooms that felt urgent for exactly one locked-down spring. Every o…
- ◐CluttercoreRooms full of things — collections, colours, every surface used — as an aesthetic in reac…
- ●CocomelonA children's YouTube channel of nursery rhymes with a baby called JJ, watched by so many …
- ●Comfort CharacterA fictional character who makes you feel safe — a comfort character — as the 2019–21 voca…
- ●CopiumA gas inhaled to cope with losing. The first emotion-management vocabulary invented by pe…
- ☠Corvette CorvetteThe bouncing, steering-wheel dance to Popp Hunna's 'Adderall (Corvette Corvette)' that ra…
- ●Course SellerAnyone whose actual business is the course about the business — the course seller — from …
- ●CrackedExtremely good, alarmingly so — 'he's cracked' — as the gamer's compliment for a player w…
- ☠Creator FundTikTok's $200 million pot, announced in July 2020, that paid creators a few cents per tho…
- ●CryptoPunksTen thousand 24-by-24 pixel characters — humans, zombies, apes and nine aliens — given aw…
- ●DYOR'Do your own research' — the disclaimer at the end of a post recommending something, whic…
- ●Dead by DaylightThe asymmetric horror game of June 2016 in which four survivors repair generators while o…
- ●Dead by Daylight RevivalThe second boom of a 2016 asymmetric horror game in which four survivors repair generator…
- ◐Decentraland LandParcels of a browser-based virtual world, sold as NFTs from 2017 and treated in 2021 as r…
- ●Dhar MannA YouTube channel of short moral dramas — a bully learns a lesson, a rich man is humbled,…
- ●Disco ElysiumA role-playing game with no combat in which an amnesiac detective argues with the twenty-…
- ●Discourse'The discourse' — the argument everyone is having today, named with an ironic definite ar…
- ◐Dopamine DetoxAbstaining from phones, sugar, music and other 'stimulation' for a day to reset one's rew…
- ●Down BadDesperately attracted, to the point of embarrassment — down bad — as the 2019–21 way of c…
- ☠Dream SMPA private Minecraft server started by the YouTuber Dream in April 2020 whose members impr…
- ◐DreamcoreImages that look like a dream half-remembered — an empty playground, a blurry hallway, te…
- ◐Drive to SurviveNetflix's Formula 1 documentary series, from March 2019, that turned a European engineeri…
- ●Essay (Too Long)'Not reading your essay' — a reply of more than two lines, dismissed as an essay, as the …
- ●EvonyA strategy game known for two eras of advertising: the 2009 browser banners of women in l…
- ●FPLFantasy Premier League — the Premier League's official fantasy game, launched in 2002 and…
- ●FUD'Fear, uncertainty and doubt' — a 1970s term for a competitor's scare tactics, adopted by…
- ●FYP'For You Page' — TikTok's algorithmic front page, and the acronym users hashtag in the ho…
- ◐FairycoreWings, moss, glitter, a dress made of what looks like leaves, and a forest you photograph…
- ●Fell OffTo have declined from a peak — 'he fell off' — as the internet's verdict on anyone who is…
- ●Felt'Felt' — 'I felt that', compressed — as the reply to a sentence that landed emotionally, …
- ☠FleetsTwitter's disappearing stories, launched to lower the pressure of tweeting. Removed after…
- ●For You PageA feed of things you did not ask for, from people you do not follow, correctly guessing w…
- ◐Friday Night Funkin'A browser rhythm game from a 2020 Newgrounds jam in which a boyfriend rap-battles a girlf…
- ●GM'Good morning' — the two-letter greeting, older than the smartphone, which in 2021 a part…
- ☠GPT-3The 175 billion parameter model whose paper arrived in May 2020 and whose API arrived in …
- ●Gen X Soft ClubBlurred neon, slow-motion, blue-lit faces, a Massive Attack sleeve and a Wong Kar-wai bar…
- ●Genshin ImpactAn open-world action game with a gacha for characters, released free on phones and consol…
- ●Gift Card ScamAny scam whose final step is 'go to the shop, buy gift cards and read me the numbers' — t…
- ●GigachadA black-and-white photograph of a man with an impossible jaw, from a Russian art project,…
- ●Global Village CoffeehouseWoodcut suns, swirling coffee steam, terracotta, ochre and a vaguely Aztec border on a ch…
- ●GlowieA federal agent, or anyone suspected of being one, on a board — 'glowie', from a late pro…
- ●GoblincoreMud, moss, mushrooms, and collecting shiny things. Cottagecore for people who did not wan…
- ●Gods UnchainedA digital card game in the Hearthstone mould whose cards are NFTs, built by the Australia…
- ●Good for Her'Good for her' — approval of a woman doing something drastic, usually in a film — from a …
- ☠Google PodcastsA podcast app that did the job, retired so that podcasts could be shown inside a music ap…
- ●Green Screen (TikTok)Standing in front of a screenshot, a news article or a tweet and talking about it — the g…
- ●HODLHolding a cryptocurrency through a crash, from a typo in a drunken forum post. The typo h…
- ●Habibi'My darling', 'my dear' — the Arabic endearment, used to friends and strangers, that meme…
- ◐Halo Infinite343 Industries' Halo, shown in July 2020 in a gameplay demo whose flat-faced Brute was na…
- ●Happy Black History MonthThe greeting that opens February on the American internet, and the annual meme cycle that…
- ●HimboA man who is handsome, kind and not clever — the himbo — as the internet's favourite male…
- ◐Hits DifferentFeels different — better, sadder, more — in a way you cannot explain: 'this song hits dif…
- ●Hope This Email Finds You WellThe opening line of every professional email, and the 2021 joke about it — 'this email fi…
- ●IYKYK'If you know, you know' — the caption for an in-joke that will not be explained, used sin…
- ●Iceberg ChartA diagram of an iceberg with a topic's known facts at the top and its obscure horrors at …
- ●JapandiJapanese minimalism plus Scandinavian hygge — Japandi — as the interior style that domina…
- ●Just ChattingTwitch's category for streams with no game — a person talking — which became the platform…
- ◐KEKWLaughter, expressed by a Spanish comedian who died in 2021. Still in use on Twitch in the…
- ●KenopsiaThe eeriness of a place that is usually full and is now empty — a school at night, a mall…
- ◐KidcorePrimary colours, cartoon prints, plastic jewellery, and the wardrobe of a six-year-old in…
- ●King'King' — the address for a man doing something good, with 'you dropped this 👑' as the fu…
- ◐Light AcademiaDark academia in cream — the same libraries and cardigans with the lights on and the trag…
- ●Liminal SpaceAn empty place designed for passing through, photographed with nobody in it. The feeling …
- ●LinktreeThe one-page list of links that Instagram's single-link bio made necessary, built by a Me…
- ●Loss PornScreenshots of catastrophic trading losses, posted for the community's admiration — loss …
- ●Loudly Crying Emoji😭 — the sobbing face, which Gen Z repurposed as a laugh, a cringe, and a general reactio…
- ●Love That for You'Love that for you' — happiness for someone else, delivered in a way that also makes clea…
- ●LovecoreAn aesthetic built entirely of hearts, roses, Valentine's cards and 1950s romance — lovec…
- ●MLM DiscourseThe internet's turn against multi-level marketing — the subreddit, the screenshots of 'hu…
- ●Main CharacterThe protagonist of the day, either aspirationally or as a warning. On Twitter, being one …
- ◐MaldingGetting so angry you go bald. Coined about one streamer and said mostly by his chat; will…
- ◐ManifestingWanting something out loud until it happens. Cambridge's Word of the Year for 2024, and f…
- ◐Manike Mage HitheA Sri Lankan cover, sung by Yohani with Satheeshan Rathnayaka, that spread from Sri Lanka…
- ●MetalheartChrome, wireframes, pierced-metal textures and liquid type — Metalheart — as the 2019 nam…
- ●MintTo create an NFT by writing it to the blockchain for the first time, and by extension to …
- ●Mobile Legends: Bang BangA five-a-side arena game in the League of Legends mould, built for phones and for South-E…
- ●MootsMutuals — people who follow you and whom you follow back — shortened to 'moots' on stan T…
- ●Murder Mystery 2A Roblox round game with one murderer, one sheriff and a room of innocents, and a trading…
- ◐NBA Top ShotVideo highlights of NBA plays sold as 'Moments' in sealed packs by Dapper Labs, the Crypt…
- ◐NicheTokThe self-aware corner of TikTok that makes jokes about being a corner of TikTok — NicheTo…
- ●NitroDiscord's paid subscription — bigger uploads, animated avatars, custom emoji everywhere —…
- ●No Wahala'No problem', 'no worries' — the Nigerian Pidgin reassurance, everywhere in Afrobeats and…
- ●No Worries If NotThe phrase appended to any request by anyone afraid of being a burden — 'no worries if no…
- ◐Not Me'Not me [doing the thing I am doing]' — the confession framed as a denial, which was the …
- ●Notes App ApologyA screenshot of a phone's notes app containing an apology, posted by a celebrity as if th…
- ●NotionThe everything-document app, released in 2016 and rebuilt in 2018, in which pages contain…
- ●Number Go UpThe entire thesis, stated in three words by people who had stopped pretending there was a…
- ●NuzlockeA self-imposed Pokémon rule set — catch only the first Pokémon in each area, and any that…
- ●OMORIA role-playing game about a boy who has not left his room in years, told across a pastel …
- ●Omo'Wow', 'oh boy', 'mate' — the Yoruba word for 'child' repurposed as the Nigerian internet…
- ●OnlyFansThe subscription site, launched in London in November 2016, that became during the 2020 l…
- ●POV Format'POV: you're the dog and I've come home' — a video from a point of view, which by 2021 ha…
- ☠PS5 LaunchThe November 2020 release of the PlayStation 5, during a pandemic, a chip shortage and th…
- ●Pandemic PetThe dog or cat acquired in lockdown, when everyone was home, and the 2021 discourse about…
- ●Passive IncomeMoney earned while asleep — passive income — as the promise of every finance influencer, …
- ●Pick Me GirlA woman who performs not being like other girls for the benefit of men in the room — the …
- ●Pinched Fingers🤌 — the Italian hand gesture, added in 2020 and adopted immediately for 'what do you wan…
- ●Poor Little Meow MeowA character who is terrible and whom the fandom insists is a small wet cat that must be p…
- ↺PopcatTwo frames of a cat — mouth closed, mouth open — that became a reaction, then a clicking …
- ●Post and GhostPosting something and logging off before the replies — 'post and ghost' — as the only hea…
- ●PrimogemsGenshin Impact's premium currency, earned slowly by playing and quickly by paying, and sp…
- ●Pummel PartyA board game with minigames in the manner of Mario Party, but on PC, online, and with ite…
- ●Pump and DumpThe classic: buy a thinly traded asset, promote it until the price rises, sell into the b…
- ◐RaribleAn early open marketplace, launched in 2020, where anyone could mint and list without inv…
- ☠Ratatouille MusicalA musical about the Pixar rat, written collectively on TikTok in the autumn of 2020 — a s…
- ●Rec RoomA social platform of user-built games and rooms with stick-limbed avatars, started in VR …
- ●Reddit MomentA moment of behaviour so characteristic of Reddit — a pun chain, a 'this', an atheist in …
- ●Rent FreeOccupying someone's thoughts without their consent. A housing metaphor for obsession, coi…
- ◐Return to Monke'Reject modernity, return to monke' — the 2020 joke that the answer to everything was to …
- ●RobinhoodThe commission-free trading app that taught a generation to buy stocks from a phone, then…
- ●RobloxThe platform where children make games for other children and get paid in Robux, public s…
- ●RobuxRoblox's virtual currency, bought with real money and spent on avatar items, game passes …
- ●Romance ScamFraud conducted through a fake romantic relationship, usually online, in which the belove…
- ●Romanticize Your LifeThe instruction to treat your own ordinary day as the film — the coffee, the walk, the li…
- ●RustYou wake naked on a beach with a rock, and the other players are the danger. Released int…
- ☠Rust (Streamer Server Boom)The month around New Year 2021 when a private Rust server run by the group OfflineTV put …
- ●SadgeA sad Pepe emote, and the word for being sad in Twitch chat and everywhere it leaked: 'sa…
- ●Say Less'You don't need to say more — I'm in.' Agreement that saves everyone time, from AAVE into…
- ◐ScenecoreNeon, coon-tail hair, Invader Zim, checkerboard, a MySpace layout and a 'rawr' — scenecor…
- ●Sea of Thieves ResurgenceThe second life of a pirate game that launched thin in 2018, was mocked as an empty ocean…
- ☠SheeshAn exclamation of approval, held for four seconds. A small sound that everyone made at on…
- ●Shiba InuThe second dog: a Doge imitation launched in 2020 as a joke about the first joke, which r…
- ◐Shindo LifeA Roblox Naruto game of bloodlines, spins and rolling for rare abilities, released as Shi…
- ●ShitcoinAny coin with no purpose beyond being traded, which in practice means most of them. Coine…
- ●Shy Fingers👉👈 — two index fingers touching, as the emoji of a shy request: 'can I have a bite 👉👈…
- ●SiuuuCristiano Ronaldo's jump-spin-and-shout celebration — 'siiiiuuu', Spanish for 'yes' stret…
- ◐SlapsTo be very good, of a song — 'this slaps' — from Bay Area slang into everyone's mouth by …
- ●Slowed + ReverbThe opposite edit: a song pitched down, slowed, and drowned in echo until it sounds like …
- ●Smiling Through Tears🥲 — the face smiling with one tear, arrived in 2020 and needed immediately: for pride, r…
- ●Smooth BrainA brain with no wrinkles, and therefore no thoughts — 'smooth brain' — as the 2019–21 ins…
- ●Soft LaunchPosting a partner's elbow, or their hand, without their face. Borrowed from product marke…
- ●SolarpunkGreen roofs, art nouveau curves, windmills, a solar sail and a society that fixed things …
- ●SorareA French fantasy football game in which players collect licensed player cards as tokens a…
- ●Source: Trust Me BroThe citation for anything unsourced — 'source: trust me bro' — as the 2020 reply to 'sour…
- ●SoyjakA wojak with an open mouth, glasses and a beard, pointing at something with excessive ent…
- ●Spam AccountA second Instagram account, private and low-effort, where a young person posts fourteen t…
- ●Stan TwitterThe fan side of Twitter — the pop girls, the K-pop groups, the charts, the wars — with it…
- ●StitchClipping a few seconds of someone else's video and continuing it with your own — the stit…
- ◐StonksA smooth grey figure in a suit in front of a rising chart with the word 'stonks' — the jo…
- ●Streaming PartyAn organised session in which a fandom streams a song at the same time — the streaming pa…
- ●StudyTokThe productivity side of TikTok — StudyTok — as the 2020 lineage of the Tumblr 'studyblr'…
- ●SubstackThe paid-newsletter platform, founded in 2017, on which journalists who had been fired, o…
- ●Super ChatA paid message in a YouTube live chat — a Super Chat — highlighted in colour and pinned f…
- ●Super Max!A chant recorded as a song by a Dutch fan group in 2016 and carried by the orange grandst…
- ◐SuperRareThe curated single-edition art marketplace from 2018 that positioned itself as the galler…
- ●Tactical TimeoutThe thirty-second pause a team can call in Counter-Strike (added to the game in 2015) and…
- ☠Tell Me Without Telling Me'Tell me you're British without telling me you're British' — a prompt for indirect eviden…
- ●TendiesChicken tenders, as the reward a mother gives a grown son in a 2015 greentext, and, from …
- ●The AlgorithmWhatever decides what you see, referred to in the singular and with resentment. The first…
- ●The Moment'A moment', 'the moment', 'having a moment' — the stan internet's word for anything brief…
- ◐The Way That'The way that I would…' — a sentence that begins with an emphasis on manner and ends with…
- ●They Don't KnowA wojak standing alone at a party, thinking 'they don't know I…' — that I have a Reddit a…
- ●TikTok Text-to-Speech VoiceThe flat, faintly amused synthetic voice added to TikTok in December 2020, which read cap…
- ●Timnit GebruThe researcher who co-led Google's Ethical AI team and left in December 2020 after a disp…
- ●To the MoonThe destination of any price that is going up — 'to the moon!' — with the rocket emoji, f…
- ●Toca Life WorldA digital dolls' house of shops, homes and characters with no goals, no scores and a grea…
- ●Tone IndicatorsA family of tags — /j (joking), /gen (genuine), /srs (serious), /lh (light-hearted), /nm …
- ●Toxic PositivityInsisting on the bright side so hard that it becomes a way of not listening — 'good vibes…
- ●Trad GothBackcombed black hair, white face, Siouxsie eyeliner, fishnets, a Bauhaus record and the …
- ●Transition (TikTok)The hard cut disguised as a gesture — a hand over the lens, a jump, a hair flip — that le…
- ●Truck-kunThe truck that hits the protagonist of an isekai and sends him to another world, personif…
- ●Two More WeeksThe eternal deadline — everything will happen in two more weeks — from the lockdown promi…
- ●Unicorn (Startup)A private company valued at a billion dollars, named for its rarity in 2013, when there w…
- ●Use This SoundThe creator's plea appended to an original audio — 'use this sound', 'pls use my sound' —…
- ●Utopian ScholasticCollaged globes, dinosaurs, Renaissance heads, planets and children's drawings on a white…
- ●VTuberA streamer represented by an animated avatar — the body is a rig, the voice is real — fro…
- ●ValidAcceptable, understandable, fine — 'that's valid' — the internet's way of agreeing withou…
- ●Vibe (Noun)The atmosphere of a thing, as the decade's most-used noun — 'it's a vibe', 'the vibes are…
- ●Video ReplyThe TikTok feature that turns a comment into a sticker on a new video, introducing the 'R…
- ●WSBWallStreetBets — the subreddit where retail traders gamble and post the result, which in …
- ●We Move'We move' — acceptance and continuation, after a setback: 'lost the job. We move.' The re…
- ●WebcoreTiled backgrounds, blinking GIFs, visitor counters, 'under construction' signs, a guestbo…
- ●WeirdcoreLow-resolution images with unsettling captions in a default font. The nightmare version o…
- ◐Wen Lambo'When Lamborghini?' — the question that follows any price rise, spelled wrong on purpose,…
- ●What I Eat in a DayThe diary-of-meals video: a creator films every plate from oat bowl to bedtime snack, nar…
- ●Who's Here AfterThe comment that explains a sudden spike in views — 'who's here after the trailer', 'who'…
- ●Wife's BoyfriendWSB's running joke about the member's domestic situation — 'my wife's boyfriend let me us…
- ●XCOPYA London artist working in glitching, flickering GIFs of skulls, screens and slogans, sel…
- ◐Zoom FatigueExhaustion from watching your own face while other people talk. Named within weeks of eve…
- ●xG'Expected goals' — a number for how likely a shot was to score, published by Opta's Sam G…
Died in 2021 93
- ☠Adult Swim BumpsVideos in the style of a television network's between-show bumpers — a quiet scene, the […
- ☠Alt TikTokThe self-declared weird side of the app in 2020 — frogs, cottagecore, absurdist skits, 'e…
- ☠Alternative FactsA falsehood re-described as an alternative fact — the phrase Kellyanne Conway used on liv…
- ☠Bad Luck Brian NFTKyle Craven, whose 2006 school photograph became Bad Luck Brian, sold the image as a toke…
- ☠Bean DadA musician recounting how he made his nine-year-old work out a tin opener for six hours. …
- ☠Beethoven XA completion of Beethoven's unfinished Tenth Symphony, built from his sketches by a team …
- ☠Bernie MittensA senator in a parka and hand-knitted mittens, sitting alone at an inauguration, photosho…
- ☠Bernie's MittensA senator in a folding chair in mittens, photoshopped onto every surface on earth within …
- ☠Berries and Cream'Berries and cream, berries and cream, I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream' — a …
- ☠Bin WeevilsA British browser world in which players were weevils living in a rubbish bin, with a nes…
- ☠BinodA YouTube commenter named Binod who wrote only his own name under videos, and whom a 2020…
- ☠BugsnaxA game about an island where the animals are made of food, revealed in June 2020 with a K…
- ☠Buss It ChallengeA transition dance — plain clothes, a drop, a full glam reveal — to 'Buss It', in January…
- ▲Bwoah'Bwoah' — the sound Kimi Räikkönen made instead of an answer, transcribed by F1 fans arou…
- ☠CEO ofThe 2020 comment honorific — 'CEO of pointing at the camera', 'CEO of that one dance' — a…
- ☠Charlie Bit My FingerTwo English brothers and a bitten finger, viewed nearly nine hundred million times. Delet…
- ☠Charlie Bit My Finger NFTThe 2007 clip of a baby biting his brother's finger, one of the most-watched videos in Yo…
- ☠CheugyOut of date in a way that is trying. Died the week a national broadsheet published a guid…
- ☠Chile Anyways'Chile, anyways, so…' — Nicki Minaj's exasperated pivot, clipped from a broadcast and use…
- ☠Corvette CorvetteThe bouncing, steering-wheel dance to Popp Hunna's 'Adderall (Corvette Corvette)' that ra…
- ☠Couch GuyA boyfriend surprised on a sofa, reacting a beat too slowly. Millions of amateur body-lan…
- ☠Covid AlienCryptoPunk #7523, the alien wearing a medical mask, sold at Sotheby's for $11.75 million …
- ↺Cyberpunk 2077CD Projekt's Night City role-playing game, announced in 2012, starring Keanu Reeves from …
- ☠DadcoreChunky white trainers, a fleece, cargo shorts, a bucket hat, tube socks and the general s…
- ☠Deep NostalgiaA genealogy site's feature that took a still photograph and made the face blink, turn and…
- ☠Deepfake Queen's SpeechChannel 4's Christmas Day 2020 broadcast: a deepfaked Queen delivering an alternative mes…
- ☠Devious LickStealing things from school — a soap dispenser, a sign, a toilet — and posting it as a 'd…
- ☠Diamond HandsRefusing to sell whatever happens, as a virtue. January 2021, a hearing in Congress, and …
- ☠Disaster Girl NFTZoë Roth, the girl smirking in front of a burning house in a 2005 photograph, sold the or…
- ☠Discord NFT BacklashTwo days in November 2021 in which Discord's chief executive posted a screenshot suggesti…
- ☠Doge DayA campaign to push Dogecoin to one dollar on 20 April 2021, chosen for the date, with has…
- ☠Dogecoin $0.73Dogecoin's all-time high, reported at around $0.73 in the hours before Elon Musk hosted S…
- ☠Dogecoin SNL CrashThe night Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, sat on Weekend Update as a 'financial exp…
- ☠DogefatherThe title Elon Musk gave himself in a tweet announcing his Saturday Night Live date — 'Th…
- ☠DramageddonThe name given to the 2018–2020 series of feuds among beauty YouTubers — Dramageddon 1 (2…
- ☠Dream Speedrun ScandalThe affair in which Minecraft's speedrun moderators rejected a run by the YouTuber Dream …
- ☠Dry ScoopingSwallowing a scoop of pre-workout powder without water, filmed for the grimace, which spr…
- ☠Ever GivenA container ship wedged sideways across the Suez Canal for six days, and a single small d…
- ☠Everydays: The First 5000 DaysA collage of the 5,000 daily images Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, had made since May …
- ☠Evolved ApesTen thousand fighting apes sold in September 2021 with the promise of a game and a tourna…
- ☠Fancy LikeCountry singer Walker Hayes and his teenage daughter dancing to his song about a date nig…
- ☠Feta PastaBake a block of feta in a dish of cherry tomatoes, stir into pasta, film it: the recipe t…
- ☠FleetsTwitter's disappearing stories, launched to lower the pressure of tweeting. Removed after…
- ☠Floor GangThe name given by PewDiePie in 2020 to viewers who sit on the floor, against a 'ceiling g…
- ☠Frog TikTokThe corner of 2020 TikTok that was frogs — Frog TikTok — as videos of frogs in hats, frog…
- ☠Frozen HoneyHoney squeezed into a bottle, frozen overnight and eaten as a thick, glowing rope on came…
- ☠Gaslight Gatekeep GirlbossThree verbs of ambition arranged like a kitchen sign. The complete arc from joke to T-shi…
- ☠Gorilla Glue GirlA woman who used construction adhesive as hairspray and could not undo it. A plastic surg…
- ☠Hot Vax SummerThe summer of 2021 as promised: vaccinated, out, making up for a lost year. Named in Apri…
- ☠HousepartyGroup video calls for teenagers that briefly became group video calls for everyone. Laste…
- ☠In Event of Moon DisasterA seven-minute film of a deepfaked Richard Nixon delivering the speech that had been writ…
- ☠It's the ___ for MeThe August 2020 roast format in which friends took turns naming each other's most specifi…
- ☠Jump KingA platformer in which the only move is a jump charged by holding a button, and a single m…
- ☠Loop HeroA game in which a hero walks a loop automatically and the player builds the world around …
- ☠Lost Tapes of the 27 ClubA set of AI-assisted songs in the styles of Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix and the …
- ☠Milk Crate ChallengeStacking milk crates into a pyramid and walking up and over them, on camera, until the py…
- ☠Minecraft EarthAn augmented-reality version of Minecraft in which builds appeared on tables and pavement…
- ☠Moving OutA co-operative game about carrying furniture out of houses with the physics turned up and…
- ☠MuckA free survival roguelike released in June 2021 by the YouTuber Dani after a commenter to…
- ☠NeumorphismSoft shadows making buttons look extruded from the page. Beautiful on Dribbble, unusable …
- ☠Nyan Cat NFTA remastered one-of-one of the Pop-Tart cat with a rainbow trail, sold by its creator Chr…
- ☠Oh No Oh No'Oh no, oh no, oh no no no no no' — a sound laid over any video in which something is abo…
- ☠Ole's at the WheelThe Manchester United chant — 'Ole's at the wheel, tell me how good does it feel' — from …
- ☠Overly Attached Girlfriend NFTLaina Morris, whose wide-eyed face from a 2012 YouTube parody became the Overly Attached …
- ☠PeriscopeLive video from a phone, with hearts floating up the screen. Bought by Twitter before it …
- ☠PogChampA face of surprise, typed millions of times a day, deleted by its landlord in an afternoo…
- ↺PopcatTwo frames of a cat — mouth closed, mouth open — that became a reaction, then a clicking …
- ☠Put a Finger Down'Put a finger down if…' — a ten-finger quiz read to camera, in which the viewer lowers fi…
- ☠Quarantine 15The weight gained in lockdown, named after the college version and joked about in April 2…
- ☠QuizUpA real-time quiz against a stranger in one of hundreds of topics, from Icelandic startup …
- ☠Ratatouille MusicalA musical about the Pixar rat, written collectively on TikTok in the autumn of 2020 — a s…
- ☠Rawring 20sThe joke, made as 2020 began, that the decade should bring back scene: raccoon-tail exten…
- ☠Red Flag EmojiA dealbreaker followed by a row of red flags. Twitter reported 1.5 million uses in a sing…
- ☠Red SusThe Among Us reflex of accusing the red crewmate because red is the colour on the box art…
- ☠Rust (Streamer Server Boom)The month around New Year 2021 when a private Rust server run by the group OfflineTV put …
- ☠Sea Shanty TikTokA Scottish postman singing about a whaling ship, harmonised by strangers in stacked video…
- ☠Shiba Inu Vitalik BurnShiba Inu's creators had sent half the supply to Vitalik Buterin's wallet as a marketing …
- ☠Side-Eyeing Chloe NFTThe 2013 clip of a small girl reacting to the news of a trip to Disneyland with an expres…
- ☠Silhouette ChallengeA doorway, a red filter, a silhouette — the January 2021 challenge that was sensual, then…
- ☠Squid Game TokenA token trading on a Netflix show it had no connection to, which rose from under a cent t…
- ☠Stay Home Stay SafeThe slogan on every sign, sticker, email and Instagram story of 2020, and the internet's …
- ☠Sway HouseThe Hype House's rowdier rival, opened in January 2020 by talent firm TalentX with Bryce …
- ☠Talk to TransformerThe website where most people first typed a sentence and watched a model continue it: a p…
- ☠The MergeA work by the pseudonymous artist Pak sold on Nifty Gateway over 48 hours in December 202…
- ☠This X Does Not ExistThe format that followed the face site within weeks: This Cat Does Not Exist, This Rental…
- ☠Two Pretty Best Friends'I have never seen two pretty best friends. It's always one of them gotta be ugly.' Jorda…
- ☠Up ChallengeThe fast, hand-heavy routine to Cardi B's 'Up' — released 5 February 2021 with the chorus…
- ☠Vaccine SelfieThe photograph of the arm, the plaster, the card, posted in early 2021 as a milestone and…
- ☠WAPA song and a dance and a discourse, in August 2020, which produced a month of politicians…
- ☠WarNymphA drop of ten works by the musician Grimes — flying cherubs with weapons over ruined land…
- ☠WomboA phone app that took a selfie and made it sing eleven seconds of a pop song with wildly …
- ☠Yahoo AnswersWhere the public asked how babby was formed and other people guessed. Sixteen years of qu…
- ☠Zoom Cat LawyerA lawyer in a court hearing on Zoom with a cat filter he could not remove — 'I'm here liv…