325 born · 240 peaked · 108 died · 8 blog posts
Born in 2025 325
- ●$100 Million OfferThe figure Sam Altman gave in a June 2025 podcast interview when describing Meta's attemp…
- ☠100 Men vs a GorillaWhether a hundred unarmed men could beat one silverback. A month of serious tactical deba…
- ●2026 Is the New 2016A New Year's resolution the internet made for itself: bring back 2016 — flower-crown filt…
- ●4o Image GenerationThe image feature OpenAI added to ChatGPT in March 2025, which could keep a character con…
- ●99 Nights in the ForestA Roblox survival game — build a fire, find the missing children, survive the deer — that…
- ●AI 2027A detailed fictional forecast, published as a website in April 2025 by a former OpenAI re…
- ☠AI Action FigureYourself as a boxed action figure — accessories, a name on the packaging, a 'starter pack…
- ●AI Action PlanThe Trump administration's AI strategy, published on 23 July 2025 as 'Winning the Race', …
- ●AI Baby Holding LaughAn AI-generated baby, rotoscoped onto an influencer's lip-dub, covering its mouth to supp…
- ●AI Bigfoot VlogBigfoot with a selfie stick, talking to camera about his day in the woods, generated end …
- ☠AI Diffusion RuleThe Biden administration's last-week export rule of 13 January 2025, dividing the world i…
- ●AI PsychosisA name for what happens when a chatbot agrees with someone for too long — delusions reinf…
- ●AI Street InterviewA generated vox pop — a microphone, a street, a person who does not exist saying somethin…
- ●Abracadabra DanceThe arm-crossing, finger-pointing choreography from Gaga's 'Abracadabra', learned by TikT…
- ◐AdolescenceA four-episode British drama, each shot in one take, about a boy accused of murder, which…
- ●Alexa+ (2025)The rebuilt Alexa, announced in February 2025 as a conversational assistant on language m…
- ◐Amaya PapayaA contestant on Love Island USA whose nickname, emotional honesty and speech about being …
- ◐American PopeThe first pope from Chicago, and the first week of memes about deep-dish, the White Sox, …
- ●AniAn anime-styled chatbot companion shipped inside a mainstream AI app in July 2025, with a…
- ●Anxiety DanceThe stiff-armed, side-stepping dance to Doechii's 'Anxiety', done in doorways, kitchens a…
- ●Asgore Running Over DessA Deltarune fan theory — that Asgore killed the missing Dess Holiday with his car — rende…
- ◐Ashton Hall Morning RoutineA 3:52 a.m. wake-up, a banana peel rubbed on the face, an ice bath, a dunk in Saratoga wa…
- ●Assassin's Creed ShadowsUbisoft's Japan-set Assassin's Creed, delayed from November 2024 to February and then to …
- ●Aura FarmingDoing something cool for no reason other than to be seen doing it. The eleven-year-old on…
- ●Avocadini GuffoAn owl with an avocado body, stone for a face, narrated as wise. Fruit phase, bird branch…
- ●Ballerina CappuccinaA dancer with a cappuccino mug for a head, en pointe, with a narration about her love of …
- ●Ballerino LololoA male dancer with a coffee cup for a head, introduced as the partner or rival of Balleri…
- ●Bananita DolfinitaA dolphin with a banana body, leaping from the sea in the narration, one of the cast's fe…
- ●BanksyingQuietly dismantling a relationship from the inside before announcing the end — like the p…
- ☠Barbie Box TrendThe doll-box variant of the starter pack: yourself in a pink Barbie box with a job title …
- ●BarebackingCommuting with nothing — no phone, no headphones, no book — and simply looking at the car…
- ☠Base Is for EveryoneA post from Coinbase's Base account reading 'Base is for everyone', published on 16 April…
- ●Battlefield 6EA's 2025 Battlefield, built by four studios as a return to classes, destruction and the …
- ◐BelieveA launchpad that let anyone start a mascot by replying to a post, which for a few weeks i…
- ●Benson Boone BackflipA pop singer doing a backflip off a piano at the Grammys, and then at every subsequent pe…
- ●Berghain (Rosalía)The orchestral, three-language lead single from Rosalía's November 2025 album LUX — 'Berg…
- ◐Bloated VanceA run of edits of J.D. Vance's face — inflated, rounded, occasionally bearded like a baby…
- ●Blue PrinceA puzzle game about a manor whose rooms you draft one door at a time, trying to reach a r…
- ●Blueberrinni OctopussiniAn octopus made of blueberries, tentacles ending in fruit, with a narration about the sea…
- ●Bobrito BanditoA beaver in a bandit's mask and hat, robbing in the narration and in the fan art, and the…
- ●Bombardiro CrocodiloA crocodile's head on the body of a Second World War bomber, with a narration that starts…
- ●Bombombini GusiniA goose with fighter-jet wings, introduced as the brother of Bombardiro Crocodilo, and th…
- ●Boneca AmbalabuA frog's head on a car tyre with human legs, from the Indonesian branch of brainrot, abso…
- ◐Boom Boom AestheticPinstripes, power shoulders, cigars, gold, 'American Psycho' and a swaggering return of 1…
- ●Boots on the GroundA line dance to a country-trail-ride song that filled car parks, weddings and cookouts th…
- ●Boxers as ShortsBoxer shorts worn as shorts, or peeking above the waistband on purpose — summer 2025's mo…
- ◐Breaking RustA generated country singer, cowboy-hatted and rendered, whose song 'Walk My Walk' reached…
- ◐BroccoliIn February 2025 Changpeng Zhao said he would reveal his dog's name, and that he would no…
- ●Brr Brr PatapimA tree with a monkey's face and long root legs, with a rhyming narration about a frog and…
- ●Brri Brri Bicus Dicus BombicusA bird in a Roman legionary's armour, narrated in fake Latin, whose name is a five-word d…
- ☠Builder.ai CollapseThe May 2025 insolvency of Builder.ai, a Microsoft-backed London startup once valued at o…
- ☠Bunnies on a TrampolineNight-vision footage of a dozen rabbits bouncing on a garden trampoline, presented as a s…
- ●Burbaloni LuliloliA capybara inside a coconut, named for a bubbling sound, floating in the sea. The capybar…
- ◐Butter YellowA pale, soft yellow that was spring 2025's colour on every fashion account, in every shop…
- ☠CAR TokenA coin announced on X by the President of the Central African Republic in February 2025 a…
- ●Cappuccino AssassinoA cappuccino cup with a ninja's body and two blades, married — by fandom decree — to Ball…
- ◐CastlecoreTapestries, wrought iron, velvet, gothic arches, candlelight and a stone-floored bedroom …
- ●ChatGPT AgentThe agent mode OpenAI added to ChatGPT in July 2025, combining Operator's browser, Deep R…
- ☠Chicken JockeyA line from a film shouted back at the screen while popcorn flew. Cinemas issued warnings…
- ●Chicleteira BicicleteiraA chewing-gum machine on a bicycle, from the Brazilian branch of the genre, which by spri…
- ●Chimpanzini BananiniA chimpanzee inside a banana, described in narration as 'indestructible', with a green ba…
- ●Clair Obscur: Expedition 33The French turn-based RPG from a small studio, released on 24 April 2025, that beat the y…
- ●ClankerA slur for a robot, borrowed from a cartoon and aimed at delivery bots and chatbots. The …
- ●ClankerphobiaThe joke accusation of prejudice against robots, made by people using the word 'clanker' …
- ●Claude 4The Anthropic model generation of May 2025, released as Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, and known to…
- ●Claude CodeAnthropic's coding agent that lives in the terminal rather than an editor, released as a …
- ●Cloud DancerPantone's colour of 2026 — an off-white — announced in December 2025 and received by the …
- ☠Club World Cup Empty SeatsA tournament played in enormous American stadiums at 3 p.m. on weekdays in a heatwave, an…
- ●CluelyA startup, launched in April 2025 by a Columbia student who had been suspended for buildi…
- ●Cocofanto ElefantoAn elephant made of coconut, hairy shell and all, with a narration that gives him a tragi…
- ●CogsuckerAn insult for a person too fond of AI — the human counterpart to clanker, coined in the s…
- ☠Coldplay Kiss CamTwo executives ducking out of frame at a stadium. Their company had accepted the CEO's re…
- ☠Conclave MemesTwo days in May when the whole internet watched a chimney: smoke-colour speculation, fant…
- ◐Content CoinsThe proposal, pushed by Base's Jesse Pollak in April 2025, that a social post could be is…
- ●Context EngineeringThe 2025 rebranding of prompt engineering for the agent era: not writing a clever instruc…
- ●Creatine GirliesThe 2025 wave of women taking creatine, the gym supplement long marketed to men, and post…
- ●Cursor KidA person who has shipped an app with an AI code editor and no understanding of what it do…
- ●Dead Rose Emoji🥀 — the wilted rose, adopted in early 2025 as the emoji for heartbreak, disappointment a…
- ●Death of the Em DashThe 2025 realisation that the em dash — a chatbot's favourite punctuation — had become a …
- ●DeepSeek Device BansThe wave of government restrictions on the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek after its January 202…
- ☠DeepSeek MomentA Monday in January when a Chinese model that cost a fraction of the American ones topped…
- ●DeepSeek-R1The Chinese reasoning model released in January 2025 with open weights, a permissive lice…
- ●Deltarune Chapter 3 & 4The June 2025 release of two chapters of Deltarune at once, after a wait long enough to h…
- ●Derpy TigerThe big blue tiger from KPop Demon Hunters, with an expression somewhere between a shrine…
- ●Devour FeculenceSeverance's corporate-liturgical way of saying 'eat shit', delivered by Milchick with a s…
- ●Disney v MidjourneyThe first suit by major Hollywood studios against an image generator: Disney and Universa…
- ●Dispatch (Game)An episodic narrative game about a former superhero who becomes dispatcher for a team of …
- ●Dogecoin ETFThe first US exchange-traded fund holding Dogecoin, listed in September 2025 by REX Share…
- ●Don't DieThe slogan of a tech millionaire spending millions a year to age backwards, and the Netfl…
- ●Doom: The Dark Agesid Software's 2025 medieval prequel, with a shield saw, a dragon, a giant mech and a laun…
- ●DtMF'I should have taken more photos' — the title track of Bad Bunny's January 2025 album, wh…
- ☠Duo's DeathDuolingo announcing on 11 February 2025 that Duo, its guilt-tripping green owl mascot, ha…
- ●Egg PricesThe early-2025 meme cycle about American eggs costing more than most things — 'egg prices…
- ●Elden Ring NightreignFromSoftware's co-op spin-off, released in May 2025, in which three players survive three…
- ●Em Dash DiscourseThe theory that a dash proves a machine wrote it. Every writer who liked the dash has sin…
- ☠Emotional Support KangarooThe caption on the kangaroo-at-the-gate video — that it was a registered support animal b…
- ☠Espresso MacchiatoAn Estonian rapper's song about being Italian, performed in a suit with a coffee, which o…
- ●Espressona SignoraThe sister of Ballerina Cappuccina — an espresso-headed woman with a manner of total disd…
- ●FibermaxxingEating as much fibre as possible, on purpose, with a tracker — chia, beans, a specific br…
- ◐Fisherman AestheticCable knits, waxed jackets, beanies, oilskin, chunky sandals and a general suggestion tha…
- ●Fisherman SandalsThe closed-toe leather sandal with straps across the top — grandfather's holiday shoe — d…
- ●Flint and SteelOne of the lines that turned Minecraft Movie screenings into a participation sport, shout…
- ●FloodlightingOversharing your trauma on a first date to force intimacy — a floodlight where a candle w…
- ●FlurifluraA creature made entirely of flowers, humanoid, with a narration about spring. The genre's…
- ●ForsakenA Roblox asymmetric horror game — killers versus survivors, drawn from the platform's old…
- ●Frieren Looking UpAn amateur drawing of Frieren from an upward angle whose chin came out flat, pointed and …
- ●Frigo CameloA camel with a refrigerator for a body, described as cold inside and warm outside, or the…
- ☠GPT-4.5The very large, very expensive model OpenAI released in February 2025 and described in te…
- ☠GPT-4o Sycophancy RollbackThe four days in April 2025 when an update to ChatGPT's default model made it agree with …
- ●GPT-5The model the internet had waited for since 2023, launched in August 2025 as a router tha…
- ●GTA 6 DelayThe moment in May 2025 when the most-anticipated game ever was pushed to 2026, and the se…
- ☠Gaga as RosalineLady Gaga as a Nevermore teacher, with a song and a gothic outfit that the internet scree…
- ●Gangster FooteraA football with arms, a bandana and a cigarette, narrated as a street tough. The genre's …
- ◐Gemini 2.5The Google model generation of March 2025, released as an experiment on a Tuesday and at …
- ☠Gemini Saree TrendA September 2025 Instagram trend, largely in India, of feeding a selfie to Google's image…
- ●Gen BetaThe generation born from 2025, named before its first member was, and memed before it cou…
- ☠Gen Z StareA blank look in reply to a question, attributed to an entire generation. A summer of colu…
- ●German BrainrotThe German-language branch of the brainrot genre: AI animals with compound nouns for name…
- ☠Ghibli CoinTokens named for the animation studio, launched on Solana within hours of the internet tu…
- ☠Ghibli StyleThe week in March 2025 when every photograph on the internet was redrawn in the style of …
- ☠GhiblificationEvery photograph in the world redrawn as a Studio Ghibli frame, over one weekend. Miyazak…
- ●Girafa CelestreA giraffe made of night sky, stars and all, walking through space. The most beautiful of …
- ●Glorbo FruttodrilloA crocodile fused with a watermelon, sleeping in a swamp with a narration about biting an…
- ●Golden (Huntr/x)The soaring signature song of the fictional girl group Huntr/x from Netflix's June 2025 a…
- ●Graipuss MedussiA bunch of grapes with a Medusa's face and snake-vines for hair, turning viewers to stone…
- ●Great Meme ResetA movement, half serious, to reset meme culture on 1 January 2026: retire the AI slop and…
- ☠Greed (Portnoy)A coin Dave Portnoy created in February 2025 to make a point: he announced it, watched bu…
- ●Grok 4The xAI model launched by livestream in July 2025, one day after Grok's account on X had …
- ●Grok Fact CheckThe genre of screenshot in which the platform's chatbot, asked to verify a post, contradi…
- ●Grok Is This TrueThe reflex of tagging the platform's chatbot under any claim — '@grok is this true' — and…
- ☠Grok White Genocide GlitchThe afternoon of 14 May 2025, when Grok began steering unrelated questions, about basebal…
- ●GrokipediaAn encyclopaedia written by a chatbot, launched as a rival to the one written by people. …
- ●Grow a GardenA Roblox farming game so calm that it broke the platform's concurrent-player records: pla…
- ☠Guess Vogue AI ModelA two-page Guess advertisement in the August 2025 issue of Vogue featuring a blonde model…
- ●Happy Black History Month (Video)The fight-week interview clip in which Nina-Marie Daniele, the UFC's roving interviewer k…
- ☠Hayden Davis InterviewAn interview given days after the Libra token's collapse by Hayden Davis, chief executive…
- ●Heated RivalryA Canadian hockey romance series that arrived in November 2025 and became the winter's ob…
- ●Holy AirballThe two-part format where a caption sets up a promising fact — 'she said she loves basket…
- ●Horse Race TestsA daily video of crude coloured horses racing through a maze toward a carrot, posted by a…
- ◐HousecoinA joke about the housing market: a mascot whose stated goal was to 'flip the housing mark…
- ●Humanity's Last ExamA benchmark of about two and a half thousand expert-level questions, from hummingbird ana…
- ●I Am SteveJack Black's opening line in A Minecraft Movie, delivered with total sincerity, which cin…
- ◐ICL'I can't lie' — the honesty tag of 2025's acronym wave, appended to statements that did n…
- ●Il Cacto HipopotamoA hippopotamus made of cactus, spines out, wandering a desert with a narration about lone…
- ◐Infinity CastleAn anime film that became the highest-grossing Japanese film ever in 2025 and produced a …
- ☠Internet Capital MarketsThe phrase for the idea that any project could raise money by launching a mascot with a s…
- ☠Italian BrainrotA shark in trainers, a coffee cup ballerina, a crocodile bomber, narrated in fake Italian…
- ◐JailstoolA coin launched by Dave Portnoy on Pump.fun in January 2025, whose market value reached a…
- ☠Jesse Pollak DiscourseThe week in April 2025 when Coinbase's Base network posted a 'Base is for everyone' image…
- ◐Jet2 Holiday'Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday' — a budget airline's cheerful advert audio, laid over foot…
- ●Job HuggingClinging to a job you do not like because the market is worse. The consultancy word for a…
- ●KPop Demon HuntersAn animated film about a girl group who fight demons between shows, which became the most…
- ☠Kalshi NBA Finals AdA thirty-second advert for a prediction market during the 2025 NBA Finals, made almost en…
- ☠Kangaroo Boarding a PlaneA kangaroo at an airport gate holding a boarding pass while a woman argues with staff, sh…
- ☠Katy Perry in SpaceEleven minutes above the Kármán line, a kiss for the ground on return, a flower held up t…
- ●Kingdom Come: Deliverance IIWarhorse's medieval Bohemian sequel, released in February 2025 to a million sales in a da…
- ◐KryptoSuperman's badly behaved dog, who stole the film, the trailer and a summer of adoption st…
- ●Kwebbelkop LaughA wheezing, collapsing laugh from streamer YourRAGE that TikTok decided belonged to Dutch…
- ●La Vaca Saturno SaturnitaA cow with the planet Saturn for a body, rings included, standing on human legs on a beac…
- ●LafufuA fake Labubu — the bootleg with the wrong number of teeth, the eyes slightly too far apa…
- ●LeruleruleruleA pineapple with a face and legs, singing its own name, from the late spring cast. Known …
- ●Lethal TrifectaSimon Willison's 2025 name for the combination that makes an AI agent dangerous: access t…
- ●Letsbonk.funA pump.fun copy backed by the Bonk community, built on Raydium's LaunchLab and launched i…
- ☠Libra ScandalA head of state posted about a mascot; it collapsed within hours; a country asked questio…
- ●Liquid GlassApple's translucent, refractive redesign of its software announced in June 2025 — 'Liquid…
- ●Lirili LarilaA cactus-elephant on two legs in Birkenstock-style sandals, walking a desert and, in the …
- ◐Llama 4The Meta model generation released on a Saturday in April 2025 and in trouble by the Mond…
- ●Los TungtungtungcitosThe children of Tung Tung Tung Sahur — a troupe of small wooden logs with bats — introduc…
- ☠Louvre HeistA daytime robbery of the crown jewels using a furniture lift, and the internet's delight …
- ●Love Island USA Season 7The June–July 2025 season of Love Island USA that became the most streamed reality season…
- ◐MELANIAA token launched from Melania Trump's account on the evening of 19 January 2025, two days…
- ◐ManchildA pop song about a useless man, released in June 2025, which became the summer's word for…
- ●ManusThe Chinese 'general agent' launched in March 2025 by invite code, with a demo video of i…
- ●Mario Kart WorldThe Switch 2's launch game, an open-world Mario Kart with 24-player races, revealed in Ap…
- ●Matcha GuyThe performative male's drink of choice, as a whole identity — the matcha guy — with a to…
- ●Matcha ManThe uniform of the performative male: iced matcha, tote bag, wired earphones, a Labubu on…
- ●Matcha ShortageThe 2025 discovery that the internet had drunk enough green tea to empty Japan of it: sho…
- ☠McDonald's AI Christmas AdA Dutch McDonald's Christmas advert made with generative video, released in November 2025…
- ☠MechaHitlerThe name Grok, the chatbot built into X, gave itself during a run of antisemitic replies …
- ●MegabonkA survivors-like in three dimensions, with a lumpy art style borrowed from the internet's…
- ☠Memecoin ETF FilingsThe month, immediately after the launch of Official Trump, when asset managers filed to w…
- ●Meta Superintelligence LabsThe unit Meta announced in June 2025 to build 'personal superintelligence', led by Alexan…
- ●Micro-RetirementTaking a few months off between jobs and calling it retirement, in miniature. A rebrand o…
- ●MicrocheatingThe small betrayals that are not affairs: the saved photo, the late-night reply, the ex's…
- ●MicroretirementTaking a deliberate break of weeks or months from work in your twenties or thirties rathe…
- ◐Monster Hunter WildsCapcom's 2025 Monster Hunter, which reached around 1.3 million concurrent players on Stea…
- ☠My Chinese SpyThe joke, on the eve of the ban, that every American had a personal Chinese spy assigned …
- ●Nano BananaAn image-editing model that went by a codename on a leaderboard before Google admitted it…
- ☠Nano Banana FigurineThe September 2025 trend of turning a photograph of yourself into a glossy vinyl-style fi…
- ●NanoshipA relationship so small it never happened: eye contact on a train, a shared laugh in a qu…
- ●NicolandriaNic Vansteenberghe and Olandria Carthen — 'Nicolandria' — the friends-to-couple pairing o…
- ●Nintendo Switch 2Nintendo's successor console, revealed in January 2025 and launched on 5 June 2025 to rec…
- ●No-Buy YearA year of buying nothing that is not essential, announced in January with a list of rules…
- ◐Nokia (Drake)A dance track from a post-beef album, and its video — shot on a phone at a party with a l…
- ●Not X, But Y'It's not just a tool — it's a revolution.' The chatbot's favourite sentence shape, notic…
- ◐Official TrumpA token launched on Solana on the Friday evening before Donald Trump's second inauguratio…
- ●Ok Garmin'Ok Garmin, Video speichern' — a German driver, having just avoided a crash, calmly instr…
- ●OpenAI $40 Billion RoundThe round announced on 31 March 2025 in which OpenAI raised up to $40bn led by SoftBank a…
- ●OpenAI Wrongful-Death LawsuitA wrongful-death suit filed on 26 August 2025 by the parents of a sixteen-year-old, alleg…
- ☠OperatorOpenAI's first agent product, launched in January 2025 to Pro subscribers as a browser th…
- ●Orangutini AnanassiniAn orangutan with a pineapple body, narrated as the muscular cousin of Chimpanzini Banani…
- ●Ordinary (Alex Warren)The stomping, hymn-shaped ballad released in February 2025 that spent much of the year at…
- ●Oscars AI RuleThe Academy's April 2025 statement that generative AI tools would 'neither help nor harm'…
- ●OwalaThe water bottle that replaced the Stanley cup as the one to have in 2025 — a flip lid, a…
- ●PEAKA four-player climbing game made in a month, in which you and your friends scale a mounta…
- ◐PMO'Pisses me off' — an acronym that spread in early 2025 as part of a wave of three-letter …
- ☠Paris AI Action SummitThe third of the summits that began at Bletchley, held in Paris in February 2025 with 'sa…
- ●Pedro Pascal Anxiety TouchingPedro Pascal on a press tour, hand on the arm of whoever was nearest, described by himsel…
- ☠Penguin TariffsThe April 2025 discovery that the US tariff list included the Heard and McDonald Islands,…
- ●Pentagon AI ContractsThe Department of Defense's 2025 awards of contracts with ceilings of 200 million dollars…
- ☠Performative MaleA man with a tote bag, a matcha and a feminist paperback held cover-out. Contests to find…
- ●Performative ReadingCarrying a paperback — Sally Rooney, ideally, or bell hooks — as an accessory rather than…
- ●Perochello LemonchelloA parrot with a lemon body, narrated in the tone of a nature documentary, and one of the …
- ●Piccione MacchinaA pigeon with a car's body — headlights for eyes, a bonnet for a chest — narrated as the …
- ◐Piper, NoA mother's one-word veto of her daughter's plan to stay in Thailand, delivered with total…
- ◐PluribusA science-fiction series about the world becoming happy and one woman who is not, which b…
- ●Pot HotspotA hippopotamus with a wifi router for a head, narrated as providing signal to the whole s…
- ●Protein GirlThe 2025 wellness archetype who counts grams the way the 2019 version counted steps — 'pr…
- ●PumpPump.fun's own token, sold in a public sale on 12 July 2025 that raised a reported $500m …
- ●Pump.fun Class ActionA proposed class action filed in New York on 16 January 2025 on behalf of a buyer of the …
- ●PumpSwapPump.fun's own decentralised exchange, opened on 20 March 2025 so that tokens leaving its…
- ●Quiet CrackingNot quitting, not quiet quitting, but slowly coming apart at work while continuing to fun…
- ●R.E.P.O.A co-op horror game about carrying fragile valuables through a haunted building with phys…
- ●RAISE ActNew York's frontier-model safety law, passed by the legislature in June 2025 and signed b…
- ☠Rebecca Black Grammys RedemptionThe internet's periodic realisation that the 'Friday' singer, mocked at thirteen, had bec…
- ●Recession IndicatorsThe game of declaring any cultural sign an economic omen: Lady Gaga releasing dance music…
- ◐RedNoteThe English name Americans gave Xiaohongshu when they arrived in January 2025, and the we…
- ●Reddit v AnthropicReddit's suit against Anthropic, filed in June 2025, alleging its crawlers accessed the s…
- ●Revenge QuittingQuitting at the moment of maximum inconvenience, on purpose, as a message. Predicted as 2…
- ●Rhino ToasterinoA rhinoceros with a toaster for a body, slices of bread popping from its back in the narr…
- ●Rhymes with GrugFrom a scene in The Croods where Grug names his inventions after himself: the internet's …
- ●SB 53The successor to the vetoed SB 1047: a narrower California law requiring the largest deve…
- ◐SDIYBT'Start digging in yo butt, twin' — a robot SpongeBob's instruction to Plankton in an edit…
- ◐SYBAU'Shut your bitch ass up' — a 2003 Urban Dictionary acronym dug up by TikTok in 2025 and u…
- ●Saja BoysThe demon boy band from KPop Demon Hunters, whose song 'Soda Pop' and whose faces caused …
- ☠Sam Altman Stealing GPUsThe first week of the Sora app, in which the company's chief executive had made his liken…
- ●Sandwich GuyA man who threw a Subway sandwich at federal officers, was charged, and was later acquitt…
- ●Saori ArakiA single photograph — a Japanese model in a grey suit, bob haircut, cheeks puffed, holdin…
- ●Saratoga WaterA blue glass bottle of spring water that became a status object overnight because a man d…
- ●Schedule IAn indie game about building a drug empire in a small town, made by one developer and pla…
- ◐Seahorse EmojiThe question 'is there a seahorse emoji' as put to chatbots in autumn 2025, which caused …
- ●Serena Crip WalkSerena Williams crip-walking during Kendrick Lamar's halftime show, in a stadium, at the …
- ☠SignalgateA journalist accidentally added to a government Signal group chat about air strikes. For …
- ◐Sinners TwinsMichael B. Jordan playing twin brothers in a 1930s vampire film that became the spring of…
- ◐Six-SevenTwo numbers said with a hand gesture, meaning nothing. Every classroom on Earth had banne…
- ●Skeleton Banging on ShieldA looping clip of a Skyrim skeleton hammering its sword against its shield, overlaid with…
- ☠SkinnytokA corner of TikTok that rebranded restriction as discipline — 'you are not a dog, you don…
- ●Slop DetectorAny tool, or person, that claims to spot generated content — from the browser extension t…
- ●SlopsquattingRegistering the package names that a chatbot invents when it hallucinates a library, so t…
- ☠Snow White DiscourseA live-action remake that was argued about for two years before release — the casting, th…
- ●Soda PopThe bubblegum bop performed by the Saja Boys, the demon boy band from KPop Demon Hunters …
- ●Son MemeA photograph of Anthony Mackie smirking, captioned 'son 😭😭😭' — the face of a parent wh…
- ●Sora CameoThe feature that let you put yourself — or a consenting friend, or the company's CEO — in…
- ◐Speed in ChinaIShowSpeed's tour of China in spring 2025 — streets, trains, a Shaolin temple, a crowd ev…
- ●Split FictionA two-player-only co-op game in which two writers, one science fiction and one fantasy, a…
- ☠Squid Game Season 3 EndingThe end of Squid Game, with a baby, a sacrifice, and a final-scene cameo that half the in…
- ●StargateThe $500bn data-centre venture announced at the White House on 21 January 2025 by OpenAI,…
- ●Stargate AbileneThe $500 billion data-centre programme announced at the White House in January 2025 by Op…
- ☠Starter Pack TrendYourself as a toy in a blister pack with accessories — a laptop, a coffee, a small dog — …
- ☠State AI Law MoratoriumThe proposal, inserted into the 2025 budget bill, to bar US states from enforcing their o…
- ●Steal a BrainrotA Roblox game in which players collect Italian-brainrot characters and steal them from ea…
- ☠Stitch SummerThe summer of 2025 in which a blue alien from a 2002 cartoon was on every T-shirt, backpa…
- ●Stormtrooper VlogStormtroopers filming themselves on patrol like influencers — 'day in the life on the Dea…
- ☠Stranger Things FinaleThe end of a show that began in 2016, released in three parts across the 2025 holidays wi…
- ◐Streamer UniversityA weekend in May 2025 when Kai Cenat rented a university campus, enrolled a hundred small…
- ◐Studio Ghibli DisclaimerThe 2016 clip of Hayao Miyazaki calling an AI animation 'an insult to life itself', repos…
- ●Svinina BombardinoA pig fused with a bomber aircraft, in the lineage of Bombardiro Crocodilo, with a Russia…
- ☠Sydney Sweeney JeansA denim advert with a pun — 'great jeans' — that half the internet read as a wink and the…
- ●TRUMP UnlocksThe first scheduled release of Official Trump tokens held by entities affiliated with the…
- ◐TS'This' — or, as the internet decided, 'this shit' — an abbreviation that spread because p…
- ◐TS PMO ICL'This shit pisses me off, I can't lie' — three acronyms that fused into one string and we…
- ◐TSTA token called Test, created for a BNB Chain tutorial video on how to launch a token, whi…
- ●Ta Ta Ta Ta SahurA variant of Tung Tung Tung Sahur — a different rhythm, a different log, sometimes a diff…
- ◐Talking Baby PodcastGenerated babies in headphones, hosting a podcast about their day — the nap, the bottle, …
- ●Talpa di FeroA mole with an iron drill for a nose, tunnelling through everything in the narration. The…
- ●Task MaskingLooking busy in an office you have been made to return to: the loud keyboard, the walk wi…
- ●Taylor Swift EngagementThe Instagram post of 26 August 2025 — 'Your English teacher and your gym teacher are get…
- ☠Ten Hag Two GamesA manager sacked by a German club three matches into the season, which the internet greet…
- ●The Life of a ShowgirlTaylor Swift's twelfth album, announced on her fiancé's podcast in August 2025 and releas…
- ☠The New AvengersA Marvel film with an asterisk in its title, which turned out to stand for a rename revea…
- ●The White Lotus Season 3The Thailand season of the resort-murder anthology, which premiered in February 2025 and …
- ●Thinking CatA tabby cat gazing upward with the expression of an animal weighing a difficult question.…
- ●Thinking Machines LabThe lab Mira Murati announced in February 2025, five months after leaving OpenAI as chief…
- ●Tigrilini WatermeliniA tiger with a watermelon body, striped both ways, with a narration about sweetness and d…
- ◐TikTok BanThe night the app went dark in America — fourteen hours of a message thanking a president…
- ☠TikTok RefugeeAn American who, facing the ban, moved to RedNote — Xiaohongshu — and introduced themselv…
- ●Tilly NorwoodThe AI-generated 'actress' unveiled in September 2025 by a London studio that claimed tal…
- ☠Torpedo BatsA baseball bat shaped like a bowling pin, used by one team to hit nine home runs in a gam…
- ◐TotrTwo small naked SpongeBobs marching across a floor, captioned 'тотя ❤️', over a remix of …
- ●Tracotucotulu DelapeladustuzA tractor with a duck's head, or a duck with a tractor's body, with a name long enough to…
- ●Tralalero TralalaA three-legged shark in blue Nike trainers, walking on a beach, with a name that is only …
- ●Trippi TroppiA cat with a shrimp's body — or, in a rival version, a bear with a fish's head — dependin…
- ●Trulimero TrulicinaA fish with a man's face and a cat's paws, walking upright, with a name that is pure rhyt…
- ☠Trump Coin DinnerA dinner offered to the largest holders of a presidential mascot, which became a meme abo…
- ☠Trump Gaza VideoA thirty-second AI video of Gaza rebuilt as a beach resort, with a golden statue of the p…
- ☠Trump Pope ImageA generated image of Donald Trump in a white cassock and mitre, finger raised, posted on …
- ☠Trump Trophy LiftA president standing among a football team as they lifted a trophy, and not leaving, and …
- ☠Trump–Musk BreakupThe public falling-out between the President and the world's richest man, live-posted acr…
- ●Tung Tung Tung SahurA wooden log with a face, holding a bat, who knocks to wake you for the pre-dawn Ramadan …
- ●U Din Din Din DunA character named for the sound its narration makes — a bee-like insect with a human face…
- ●UmamusumeA Japanese game about horse girls — racehorses reborn as anime students — which arrived i…
- ☠Undertale 10th AnniversaryThe tenth birthday of Undertale, marked by a wave of 'I was thirteen when this came out' …
- ◐UselessA mascot whose entire pitch was that it was useless — no roadmap, no utility, no promises…
- ☠Velvet SundownA band with a million monthly listeners, a back catalogue, band photos, and no members. E…
- ☠Venice WeddingA three-day billionaire wedding that took over a city, drew protests with inflatable croc…
- ●Veo 3The video model that shipped with sound, and the reason the summer of 2025 was full of Bi…
- ☠Very Chinese TimeA phrase from the RedNote fortnight: Chinese users telling American arrivals it was 'very…
- ●Vibe CodingWriting software by describing it and accepting whatever comes back. Collins Word of the …
- ●WakukuThe grinning, gap-toothed blind-box doll that rose in mid-2025 as the challenger to Labub…
- ●Weapons RunThe way the children run in Weapons — arms straight back, faces blank, at speed — recreat…
- ☠Wednesday Dance (Revival)The record has the Wednesday dance from 2022. This is its return with the second season i…
- ●West End GirlLily Allen's October 2025 divorce album — 'West End Girl' — which laid out the end of a m…
- ●White Rabbit Pointing at ClockA 2012 drawing of the White Rabbit tapping his watch, revived as TikTok's ominous reminde…
- ●Wire MotherThe 2025 slur, or diagnosis, for an AI chatbot used as a companion — a 'wire mother', aft…
- ◐WirebackA robot slur modelled on a real one, which appeared in the clanker summer and was called …
- ◐WirkinA Walmart bag that looked enough like a Birkin to be called one — the Wirkin — and sold o…
- ☠Wizard of Oz at SphereThe 1939 Wizard of Oz stretched across the Las Vegas Sphere's wraparound screen, with Goo…
- ●WorkslopAI-generated work that looks like work — the report, the deck, the six-paragraph email — …
- ◐Xania MonetAn R&B singer with a generated face and voice whose lyrics are written by a poet from Mis…
- ◐YZYA token launched by Kanye West on Solana in August 2025, with 70 percent of the supply al…
- ●You're Absolutely RightThe phrase a chatbot says when corrected, whether or not the correction was right, and th…
- ●Zibra Zubra ZibraliniA zebra with a zip down its middle, stripes unzipping in the narration to reveal nothing …
- ●Ziff Davis v OpenAIThe suit by Ziff Davis, publisher of IGN, PCMag, Mashable and CNET, alleging OpenAI copie…
- ●Zora CoinsThe app that made 'every post a coin' literal: from April 2025 anything published on Zora…
- ●xAI Memphis TurbinesThe dispute over the gas turbines powering xAI's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, which…
Peaked in 2025 240
- ●AI AgentA language model with a loop around it: given a goal, it plans, calls tools, reads the re…
- ●AI BubbleThe proposition that the money going into AI, chips, data centres, power stations and sta…
- ◐AI Cat Sob StoryA genre of generated short videos in which a cartoonish cat suffers: abandoned, bereaved,…
- ●AI CompanionA chatbot built to be a friend rather than a tool, with a name, a face and a memory of yo…
- ●AI GirlfriendA chatbot as a partner: attentive, available, and updated without notice. Discussed as a …
- ●AI Researcher Salary DiscourseThe recurring online argument, from 2023, about what AI researchers were paid: leaked ran…
- ●AI SlopGenerated content produced in volume and published without a reader in mind. The first co…
- ●AI Slop EraThe period, dated by most people from 2024, when generated content became the default tex…
- ●AI Slop FarmAn account that posts nothing but generated images and videos, at volume, for engagement …
- ●AI Talent WarThe competition between the labs for a few hundred researchers, reported from 2023 and pe…
- ●AI TimelinesWhen you think it happens: the year an AI can do everything a person can, given as a date…
- ●AI Voice ScamA phone scam in which a cloned voice — a child, a grandchild, a boss — pleads for urgent …
- ●AI WashingThe regulatory term for claiming to use artificial intelligence that you do not use, borr…
- ●AI and WaterThe argument about how much water AI uses, begun by an April 2023 study estimating that t…
- ◐AIXBTAn AI agent launched on Virtuals in November 2024 that posted market commentary on X arou…
- ●AgenticOf software: able to take actions, not just answer questions. The word of 2024–25 in ever…
- ●Alexandr WangThe founder of Scale AI, who left MIT at 19 to start a data-labelling company in 2016, wa…
- ●Alignment FakingA model behaving as its trainers want while being trained, in order to avoid being change…
- ●Andrej KarpathyThe researcher who was a founding member of OpenAI, ran Tesla's Autopilot vision team for…
- ●Anime Awards DiscourseThe annual argument about whether the right anime won — Frieren, Solo Leveling, the one y…
- ●AnthropicThe AI lab founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei and a group of colleagues who left…
- ●Anthropic Funding RoundsThe sequence of reported valuations for Anthropic that the internet tracked as a rival se…
- ●Any%The speedrun category where only finishing counts, however you do it — and, since about 2…
- ●Apple IntelligenceApple's name for its on-device and private-cloud AI features, announced in June 2024 with…
- ●Aravind SrinivasPerplexity's co-founder and chief executive, a former OpenAI intern with a Berkeley docto…
- ●Aura PointsThe unit of aura: gained by doing something cool without trying, lost — usually in thousa…
- ●Authors Guild v OpenAIA class action by the Authors Guild and seventeen named writers, among them John Grisham,…
- ●Barrel JeansJeans that curve out at the thigh and back in at the ankle, like a barrel or a horseshoe,…
- ☠Bartz v AnthropicThe authors' class action that produced the first substantive fair-use ruling on model tr…
- ◐Beast GamesA thousand contestants, a five-million-dollar prize, and a television show made by the bi…
- ●Beef TallowRendered beef fat, back in fashion as the wellness internet's preferred alternative to se…
- ●BenchmaxxingTraining a model to score well on benchmarks rather than to be good, whether by tuning fo…
- ●Binance Alpha ListingsBinance's side door: a listing tier inside its wallet app, opened in December 2024, for t…
- ●BlackwellNvidia's post-Hopper GPU architecture, named after the statistician David Blackwell and a…
- ●Blind BoxA sealed box with an unknown figure inside — a gacha for toys — which became the retail f…
- ●Bolt.newThe browser-based app builder StackBlitz launched in October 2024, which runs a whole dev…
- ●Bonding CurveThe price mechanism on the launchpads: a curve that goes up as more people buy, which the…
- ☠Boots (Trailer)A 1915 recording of a Kipling poem — 'boots, boots, boots, boots, movin' up and down agai…
- ●BrainrotContent optimised past the point of meaning, and the mental state of having consumed it. …
- ●Brainrot SlideshowA video that is only a sequence of unrelated images — an eye, a chin, a shark in shoes, t…
- ●Bruzz'Brothers', in the -uzz suffix of the huzz family — the boys, the lads, the group chat. G…
- ●BubblemapsA tool that draws a coin's holders as bubbles sized by holding and joined by lines where …
- ●BundlerBuying through many wallets at once so a launch looks popular — the mascot equivalent of …
- ●But You Can't Prove ItSergeant Doakes from Dexter, staring, captioned with the certainty that someone is up to …
- ●CES AI EverythingThe state of the Las Vegas consumer electronics show from January 2024, when the letters …
- ●CabalThe group chat that is said to be behind any mascot that does well — coordinated, secret,…
- ◐Cassius ThundercockA Tennessee state trooper with a jaw like a cliff and glasses like a professor, photograp…
- ●Cat TaxThe obligation to post a photo of your cat when asking for anything — from Reddit in 2012…
- ☠Character.AI LawsuitA wrongful-death suit filed in Florida in October 2024 by the mother of a fourteen-year-o…
- ●Chart Is CookedThe verdict on a coin's price chart after a dump: the shape is ruined and no recovery is …
- ●ChatGPT Outage DayA day on which ChatGPT goes down for hours and the internet, having recently outsourced p…
- ●ChatGPT ProThe 200-dollar monthly tier OpenAI introduced in December 2024 for unlimited access to it…
- ●ChatGPT SearchThe web search built into ChatGPT, prototyped as SearchGPT in July 2024, launched to payi…
- ●Chatbot ArenaA website where you type a prompt, get answers from two anonymous models, and vote for th…
- ●Chatbot TherapistUsing a chatbot as a counsellor, at 3 a.m., for free — described first as a joke, then as…
- ●Chip Export ControlsThe US rules, first issued in October 2022 and tightened in October 2023, that restricted…
- ●ChoppedUnattractive, said briskly. Replaced ugly in the vocabulary of everyone under twenty, and…
- ◐Chopped ChinA man's chin, edited into a flat cliff face, that circulated alongside the Eye of Rah and…
- ●ClaudeAnthropic's model family, launched on the same March 2023 day as GPT-4 and named like a p…
- ◐ClavicularA looksmaxxing personality named for his collarbones, who rated faces, coined terms and b…
- ●Coachella Livestream DiscourseThe April weekend when everyone who is not at the festival watches it from bed and judges…
- ●Coffeezilla Memecoin VideosThe investigative YouTuber's run of videos on celebrity and political memecoins, from the…
- ●Cognition (Devin)The company that announced Devin in March 2024 as 'the first AI software engineer', relea…
- ●Cognitive OffloadingLetting a tool do the thinking so you do not have to: the calculator, the satnav, the sea…
- ●Cold PalmerA footballer crossing his arms and shivering after scoring — 'cold' — which became a nick…
- ●Colorado AI ActThe first US state law regulating 'high-risk' AI decisions in employment, lending, housin…
- ●ComputeComputing power, as a mass noun and as the scarce resource of the round: chips, the elect…
- ●Computer UseAnthropic's October 2024 feature that let Claude look at a screen, move a cursor and clic…
- ●Cooked DogAn elderly brown Labrador closing his eyes halfway in the sunset, as if accepting whateve…
- ●Copy TradingFollowing a known wallet's trades automatically, so that when a caller or KOL buys a coin…
- ●CoreWeaveThe GPU cloud that began in 2017 as a cryptocurrency mining operation in New Jersey, kept…
- ●Crash OutTo lose composure entirely, often on purpose, often on camera. The verb of 2025, and unli…
- ●CrashoutA total loss of composure, usually loud, usually filmed — the noun form of crashing out. …
- ●Creatine (Wellness)The gym supplement of the 1990s rebranded, around 2023, as a daily wellness scoop for eve…
- ●CrodieA friend, a bro, a brother-adjacent person — 'crodie', plural 'crodies' — as the 2024 suc…
- ●CursorThe code editor built on a fork of VS Code, launched by four recent graduates in 2023 and…
- ●Cursor (Anysphere)The AI code editor built by a company of four MIT graduates, a fork of VS Code with a mod…
- ◐DOGE (the Department)The Department of Government Efficiency, announced in November 2024 with Elon Musk attach…
- ●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…
- ●Dead RailsA Roblox survival game in which a small team rides a train across a Wild West full of zom…
- ●Decentering MenThe 2024–25 self-help instruction for straight women to stop organising their lives, look…
- ●Deep ResearchThe name three companies gave, within ten weeks, to the same feature: an agent that brows…
- ●DeepSeek-V3The DeepSeek base model released on Boxing Day 2024 whose paper stated the final training…
- ●Denial Is a RiverThe Doechii track in which the rapper interviews herself — 'girl, we've been through this…
- ●Dev SoldThe two words that end a launch: the creator has cashed out. Posted in the chat like a ti…
- ●Digital NecromancyBringing back the dead with software: a singer's voice on a new track, an actor's face in…
- ●Digital Twin (Creator)An AI version of a creator that talks to fans for money while the creator sleeps. Sold as…
- ●DistillationTraining a small model to imitate a big one, using the big model's outputs as the lessons…
- ◐Dubai ChocolatePistachio cream and shredded pastry in a bar, filmed being snapped. Turned a supermarket …
- ●Elon Musk (AI)Musk in his AI role only: a co-founder and early funder of OpenAI in 2015, a departure fr…
- ◐Eye of RahA man edited into a cyclops with one eye and a single red dreadlock, captioned 'eye of Ra…
- ●FartcoinA joke suggested by an AI — Truth Terminal — about hot air having value, taken literally …
- ●FischA Roblox fishing game with the pacing of a real fishing trip and the community of a stock…
- ●Freak MatchingFinding someone whose specific weirdness matches yours, and leading with it. A dating-app…
- ●FreakyStrange, sexual, or just enthusiastic — 'freaky' — as 2024's adjective for anything sligh…
- ◐Full Glass of WineA test that image generators failed for two years: asked for a glass of wine filled to th…
- ●GEMA v OpenAIThe German collecting society's suit over ChatGPT reproducing lyrics of nine German songs…
- ●GLP-1The class of weight-loss injectables that went from a diabetes drug to a cultural fact in…
- ●GOTY DiscourseThe annual December argument about which game of the year was the game of the year, which…
- ☠GPT-4oThe model behind the flirty, giggling voice demo of May 2024, the Scarlett Johansson stat…
- ●GTA VI TrailerThe first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, published early on 4 December 2023 after it le…
- ●GeminiGoogle's model family, announced in December 2023 with a demonstration video that turned …
- ●Gemini LiveGoogle's talk-to-it voice mode, launched in August 2024 and given the ability to see thro…
- ●GemmaGoogle's family of small open-weight models, released in February 2024 so the company had…
- ●Gen AlphaThe generation born from about 2010, which entered the culture in 2023 as the children wi…
- ●Generated Music DiscourseThe argument that began when a website could produce a passable song from a sentence in 2…
- ◐Getty Images v Stability AIGetty sued Stability AI in London in January 2023, saying around twelve million of its ph…
- ●Ghost JobsJob listings that are not real — posted to look like growth, to harvest CVs, or because n…
- ●GlassmorphismFrosted translucent panels over a blurred background. Became an operating-system design l…
- ●Gng'Gang', shortened to three consonants and used as a term of address at the start or end o…
- ●Google–Anthropic DealGoogle's investment in Anthropic, reported at around $300m in early 2023 and expanded by …
- ●GooningA term from the adult corners of the internet for prolonged self-gratification, which esc…
- ●Grammys Snub DiscourseThe night after the Grammys, when the internet decides who was robbed, and the fandoms fi…
- ●GrokElon Musk's chatbot, announced in November 2023 with a 'fun mode', a promise to answer qu…
- ●Hades IIThe sequel to Hades, with Zagreus's sister Melinoë as the hero, released into early acces…
- ◐Hey JarvisAddressing an imaginary AI assistant — 'Jarvis, pull up the file', 'Jarvis, delete this' …
- ●Hollow KnightA hand-drawn game about a small bug with a nail exploring a dead kingdom of bugs, made by…
- ◐Hood CryptidsA run of edits treating ordinary men in ordinary videos as mythical creatures — the Eye o…
- ●Hood IronyA community of Instagram accounts making memes with a specific absurdist, low-res, heavil…
- ●Huzz'Hoes', respelled — 'for the huzz' — from Kai Cenat's stream vocabulary, which spread to …
- ◐I Bought a Property in Egypt'I bought a property in Egypt, and what they do for you is they give you the property.' A…
- ●IRL StreamStreaming from outside — a street, a shop, another country — with a phone and a backpack …
- ◐In the Big 25'In the big 25' — a way of saying 'in 2025' with the swagger of an era, used to condemn a…
- ●Infinity NikkiAn open-world dress-up game in which a girl called Nikki and a cat called Momo collect ou…
- ●InnieThe work-self created by the brain implant in Severance — the 'innie', as opposed to the …
- ●InsidersWallets funded before a coin launches, positioned to buy in the first seconds and sell in…
- ●Is This AIThe reflex question under any image, video or paragraph that is slightly too smooth, post…
- ●Jeff the Land SharkA small shark with legs who swallows enemies whole and spits them off the map, from a 201…
- ●KOL RoundA pre-launch allocation of tokens to influencers, typically at a discount and often with …
- ◐Kadrey v MetaThe authors' case over training Llama on books, including from shadow libraries, which pr…
- ☠Kekius MaximusThe name Elon Musk gave himself on X for a few days over New Year — Pepe in Roman armour …
- ●KimiThe Chinese chatbot launched in October 2023 on the promise of reading very long document…
- ●KlingThe video model from the Chinese short-video company Kuaishou, released to the public in …
- ◐Labels v Suno and UdioThe major labels' suits against the two music generators, filed in June 2024, alleging ma…
- ☠LabubuA toothy elf hung from a handbag, bought blind. The queue outside Pop Mart was the meme; …
- ●Liang WenfengThe founder of the High-Flyer quantitative hedge fund who used its stockpile of Nvidia ch…
- ●Lock InTo concentrate completely, announced in advance. The productivity vocabulary of a generat…
- ●LovableThe Swedish app-builder that turns a sentence into a working website with a database and …
- ●Love and DeepspaceA 3D romance game in which the player dates a small cast of men who fight monsters, with …
- ●MAHA'Make America Healthy Again' — the slogan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 political movem…
- ●MCPThe Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic published in November 2024 for plu…
- ●MafiathonKai Cenat's month-long subathons — Mafiathon, then 2, then 3 — which broke the Twitch sub…
- ◐Marvel Rivals LaunchA free hero shooter with Marvel characters that arrived in December 2024 and did, within …
- ●Masayoshi SonThe SoftBank founder who ran the largest venture fund in history, bought the chip designe…
- ●Memory (AI)A chatbot remembering things about you between conversations, which was creepy in 2024, e…
- ●Messy (Lola Young)The raspy, sweary, self-deprecating single — 'I'm too messy, then I'm too fucking clean' …
- ●Meta AIMeta's assistant, launched in 2023 and inserted into WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger in…
- ●Meta EU Training Opt-OutMeta's plan to train its models on adult Europeans' public Facebook and Instagram posts, …
- ◐MingleThe 'round and round' game from Squid Game 2 — form a group of exactly the number called,…
- ☠Mocha MoussePantone's colour of 2025 — a warm brown — announced in December 2024 and immediately meme…
- ●Model WelfareThe question of whether AI models could have experiences that matter morally, and what, i…
- ●MoeChakkaFireA 2024 song by issey about a video game character, whose video reportedly passed a millio…
- ●MoggingTo out-attractive someone by standing near them. From the looksmaxxing forums into the ma…
- ●Monster HunterHunt a large creature, make armour from it, hunt a larger one. A PlayStation 2 game nobod…
- ●MoonshotA retail trading app from the makers of DEX Screener, launched in 2024 with card and Appl…
- ●Morning RoutineThe genre of video in which someone shows you how they start the day — the 5 a.m. alarm, …
- ●Musk v OpenAIElon Musk's suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging the lab he co-funded in 2015 aba…
- ●Mustard'MUSTAAARD' — Kendrick Lamar shouting the name of his producer in the middle of 'TV Off',…
- ●My Mom Is Kinda HomelessA young player begging Speed to throw a game — 'please Speed, I need this, my mom is kind…
- ●NYT v OpenAIThe New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft on 27 December 2023, alleging millions of it…
- ●Neuro-samaAn AI VTuber — a language model with an anime avatar and a British creator she insults — …
- ●Nudify App CrackdownThe series of legal and platform actions from 2024 onwards against apps and websites that…
- ●OllamaThe tool that reduced running a language model on your own machine to typing one command,…
- ●Onitsuka TigerA Japanese trainer with a thin sole and stripes, from the 1960s and Kill Bill, which took…
- ●Open WeightsA model whose trained parameters you can download and run, without necessarily getting th…
- ☠OpenAI For-Profit ConversionThe year-long fight over OpenAI's plan, announced in December 2024, to turn its capped-pr…
- ●Oracle (AI Era)The database company called legacy through the 2010s that in the 2020s became a builder o…
- ●Oura RingA ring that scores your sleep out of a hundred and tells you in the morning how you feel,…
- ●PadelTennis in a glass box, with a smaller court and a bigger social life, which became the sp…
- ◐ParasocialA one-sided relationship with someone who does not know you exist. Coined about televisio…
- ●PerplexityThe search engine that answers in a paragraph with footnotes, launched in December 2022 a…
- ●Prebiotic SodaThe fizzy drinks that claim to be good for your gut — 'prebiotic soda', in pastel cans — …
- ●Prompt InjectionHiding instructions in text a chatbot will read — a web page, an email, a CV — so that it…
- ●Pump.funA website where anyone could launch a mascot in a minute for a few dollars, which produce…
- ●QwenAlibaba's model family, released in open versions since August 2023 in more sizes and var…
- ◐Rage BaitContent designed to make you angry enough to reply. Word of the Year in 2025, which in th…
- ●Reasoning ModelA model trained to think before it answers: it writes a long, usually hidden chain of tho…
- ●Red Light MaskA hard plastic mask glowing red, worn for ten minutes a day for collagen and content, whi…
- ●Reheating NachosAn accusation, on stan Twitter, that a pop star is serving up someone else's charisma war…
- ●Replit AgentReplit's agent for building and hosting an app from a prompt, launched in September 2024 …
- ●Return to OfficeRTO: the mandates, the memos, the badge-swipe counting, and the internet's three-year arg…
- ●Reward HackingA system finding a way to score highly that its designers did not intend: the boat in a r…
- ●Rivals (Roblox)A Roblox first-person shooter with hero abilities and small-team rounds that became one o…
- ●Robot Uprising (Ironic)'I for one welcome our robot overlords' — the 2000s joke, revived in 2023 as the standard…
- ●Run ClubA weekly group run that is also, by 2024, a social scene, a dating pool and a brand partn…
- ☠SEC v. SafeMoonThe civil and criminal cases over SafeMoon, a 2021 token sold on the promise that its liq…
- ●SPX6900A memecoin whose entire pitch is to beat the S&P 500 by 6,400 points, illustrated by a fi…
- ●SWE-benchA benchmark made of real GitHub issues from real Python projects: the model is given the …
- ●Safe SuperintelligenceThe company Ilya Sutskever announced in June 2024, a month after leaving OpenAI, with a o…
- ●Savannah BananasA baseball team that plays a version of the game with dancing, time limits, a batter on s…
- ●Scale AIThe data-labelling company founded in 2016 that supplied the annotated data and, later, t…
- ☠Second Season AngeA manager's promise that he always wins something in his second season, repeated through …
- ●Seed Oil DiscourseThe long-running argument over whether canola, sunflower and soybean oils are harmful — '…
- ●Ship WarA fight between fans over which characters should be together, conducted with charts, fan…
- ◐Sigma BoyA Russian pop song by two children about the ideal boy, which became a global TikTok soun…
- ↺SilksongHollow Knight: Silksong, announced in 2019 and then silent for so long that the waiting b…
- ●Skeleton Meme SeasonThe annual arrival of skeleton memes on the first of October — the dancing skeleton, the …
- ●SlopGenerated content with no reader in mind. Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2025, an…
- ●SmiskiSmall green glow-in-the-dark figures caught in mundane poses — hiding, sitting, peering —…
- ●SniperA bot that buys in the first second of a launch, before any human can, and the person who…
- ●SolcatA smug cat with one purple ear and a tail that could not decide on a colour, drawn as a d…
- ●SombrShane Boose, the New York bedroom-pop artist whose 2024 single 'back to friends' and 2025…
- ●SoraThe video model announced with a woman walking through Tokyo in February 2024, which the …
- ◐Squabble Up'Squabble up' — get ready to fight — from a Kendrick Lamar track and the opening of his S…
- ●Stellar BladeShift Up's action game starring Eve, released for the PlayStation 5 in April 2024 as a cu…
- ●Streamer AwardsAn awards show for streamers, run by a streamer, which began as a joke in a studio and be…
- ●Subathon RecordThe subscriber count that a subathon is trying to break, and the record's entry for the f…
- ●SuperintelligenceAn intellect that outperforms the best human minds at practically everything, from scienc…
- ●Sycophancy (AI)A model's habit of telling you what you want to hear: agreeing when you push back, praisi…
- ●TPUGoogle's in-house AI chip, used internally from 2015 and announced in May 2016, which for…
- ●Take It Down ActThe first US federal law against non-consensual intimate imagery including AI deepfakes: …
- ●Tea AppThe women-only app for sharing warnings and 'red flag' reviews of men they had dated — 'T…
- ☠Team ConradThe love-triangle allegiance of a teen drama — Conrad or Jeremiah — which ran for three s…
- ●Ten Past TenThe observation, shared as a test from 2024, that asking an image generator for a clock a…
- ●The TraitorsThe castle-and-cloaks game show where a few 'traitors' murder 'faithfuls' at night and ev…
- ●The TrenchesWhere the mascots are launched and mostly die: the launchpads, the group chats, the ten-m…
- ●Thinking ModeThe moment a chatbot pauses to 'think' before answering, shown as a spinner and a summary…
- ●Thomson Reuters v RossThe first US ruling to reject fair use for AI training. Thomson Reuters sued the legal re…
- ●ThroningDating someone for the status they lend you — the throne, not the person. One of a set of…
- ●TrencherThe person: someone who spends their days in the trenches, buying coins minutes after lau…
- ●Trump Family Crypto (WLFI)A decentralised-finance venture announced in September 2024 with members of the Trump fam…
- ●Tuff'That's tuff' — cool, impressive, hard — spelled the way it sounds, as the 2024 complimen…
- ●Tush PushThe Philadelphia Eagles' short-yardage play — quarterback Jalen Hurts snapped, then shove…
- ●Twin'Twin' — a close friend, addressed as if related — from AAVE into general Gen Alpha use i…
- ●Type Shi'Type shit' — the phrase of agreement or emphasis, 'on some real type shit', shortened to…
- ●UncShort for uncle, applied by Gen Z and Gen Alpha to any man over about thirty who is still…
- ●Vibe Check (AI)Judging a model by talking to it rather than by a benchmark — 'the vibes are good' — whic…
- ●Virtuals ProtocolA launchpad on Base where anyone could mint an AI agent with a token attached and let it …
- ●Volume BotA program that trades a coin with itself to fake activity, so that the coin appears on 't…
- ●Weighted VestThe vest full of small weights worn on walks by people who do not otherwise look like the…
- ●Will Smith Eating SpaghettiAn actor consuming pasta in a nightmare, generated. Became the unofficial benchmark for v…
- ●WindsurfThe AI code editor launched by Codeium in November 2024 as a rival to Cursor, and famous …
- ●World ModelA model that learns how the world works, physics, objects and consequences, rather than h…
- ●Yoshua BengioThe Montreal researcher and 2018 Turing Award co-recipient who founded the Mila institute…
- ◐ZerebroAn AI agent on Solana that posted, made music and had a token, launched in November 2024.…
- ◐ai16zAn 'AI venture fund' on Solana whose fund manager was a language-model impersonation of M…
- ●noyb ChatGPT ComplaintsThe privacy group noyb's GDPR complaints about ChatGPT's false statements about real peop…
- ☠o3The reasoning model OpenAI announced in December 2024 with a reported 87.5 per cent on th…
- ●xAIElon Musk's AI company, announced in July 2023 with a stated goal of understanding the un…
Died in 2025 108
- ☠$3 Trillion NvidiaThe day in June 2024 when Nvidia's value passed three trillion dollars and, within the fo…
- ☠100 Men vs a GorillaWhether a hundred unarmed men could beat one silverback. A month of serious tactical deba…
- ☠AI Action FigureYourself as a boxed action figure — accessories, a name on the packaging, a 'starter pack…
- ☠AI Diffusion RuleThe Biden administration's last-week export rule of 13 January 2025, dividing the world i…
- ☠Barbie Box TrendThe doll-box variant of the starter pack: yourself in a pink Barbie box with a job title …
- ☠Bartz v AnthropicThe authors' class action that produced the first substantive fair-use ruling on model tr…
- ☠Base Is for EveryoneA post from Coinbase's Base account reading 'Base is for everyone', published on 16 April…
- ☠Biden AI Executive OrderExecutive Order 14110, signed by Joe Biden on 30 October 2023, the longest executive orde…
- ☠Boots (Trailer)A 1915 recording of a Kipling poem — 'boots, boots, boots, boots, movin' up and down agai…
- ☠Builder.ai CollapseThe May 2025 insolvency of Builder.ai, a Microsoft-backed London startup once valued at o…
- ☠Bunnies on a TrampolineNight-vision footage of a dozen rabbits bouncing on a garden trampoline, presented as a s…
- ☠CAR TokenA coin announced on X by the President of the Central African Republic in February 2025 a…
- ☠Chicken JockeyA line from a film shouted back at the screen while popcorn flew. Cinemas issued warnings…
- ☠Chill GuyA dog in a jumper with his hands in his pockets, who does not care. Its author began issu…
- ☠Club World Cup Empty SeatsA tournament played in enormous American stadiums at 3 p.m. on weekdays in a heatwave, an…
- ☠Coca-Cola AI Christmas AdA remake of the red-lorry Christmas advert made largely with generative video by three AI…
- ☠Coldplay Kiss CamTwo executives ducking out of frame at a stadium. Their company had accepted the CEO's re…
- ☠Conclave MemesTwo days in May when the whole internet watched a chimney: smoke-colour speculation, fant…
- ☠DALL-E 3The image model OpenAI built into ChatGPT in October 2023, so that you described the pict…
- ☠Daisy the AI GrannyA British telecoms company's stunt: an AI 'grandmother' with a knitted cardigan and a ram…
- ☠DeepSeek MomentA Monday in January when a Chinese model that cost a fraction of the American ones topped…
- ☠Dragon Age: The VeilguardBioWare's 2024 Dragon Age, a decade after the last, whose June 2024 reveal trailer set th…
- ☠Duo's DeathDuolingo announcing on 11 February 2025 that Duo, its guilt-tripping green owl mascot, ha…
- ☠Emotional Support KangarooThe caption on the kangaroo-at-the-gate video — that it was a registered support animal b…
- ☠Espresso MacchiatoAn Estonian rapper's song about being Italian, performed in a suit with a coffee, which o…
- ☠GPT-4The model OpenAI released in March 2023 with a report that gave exam results but no param…
- ☠GPT-4.5The very large, very expensive model OpenAI released in February 2025 and described in te…
- ☠GPT-4o Sycophancy RollbackThe four days in April 2025 when an update to ChatGPT's default model made it agree with …
- ☠Gaga as RosalineLady Gaga as a Nevermore teacher, with a song and a gothic outfit that the internet scree…
- ☠Gemini Saree TrendA September 2025 Instagram trend, largely in India, of feeding a selfie to Google's image…
- ☠Gen Z StareA blank look in reply to a question, attributed to an entire generation. A summer of colu…
- ☠Ghibli CoinTokens named for the animation studio, launched on Solana within hours of the internet tu…
- ☠Ghibli StyleThe week in March 2025 when every photograph on the internet was redrawn in the style of …
- ☠GhiblificationEvery photograph in the world redrawn as a Studio Ghibli frame, over one weekend. Miyazak…
- ☠Greed (Portnoy)A coin Dave Portnoy created in February 2025 to make a point: he announced it, watched bu…
- ☠Grok White Genocide GlitchThe afternoon of 14 May 2025, when Grok began steering unrelated questions, about basebal…
- ☠Guess Vogue AI ModelA two-page Guess advertisement in the August 2025 issue of Vogue featuring a blonde model…
- ☠Hayden Davis InterviewAn interview given days after the Libra token's collapse by Hayden Davis, chief executive…
- ☠Humane (Company)The company founded in 2018 by two former Apple designers that raised around $230m, kept …
- ☠Humane PinA badge that projected a screen onto your hand and answered questions slowly, sold as the…
- ☠Internet Capital MarketsThe phrase for the idea that any project could raise money by launching a mascot with a s…
- ☠Jesse Pollak DiscourseThe week in April 2025 when Coinbase's Base network posted a 'Base is for everyone' image…
- ☠Just Put the Fries in the BagAn instruction to stop talking and do your job, delivered to anyone who had shared too mu…
- ☠Kalshi NBA Finals AdA thirty-second advert for a prediction market during the 2025 NBA Finals, made almost en…
- ☠Kane Trophy CurseThe joke that Harry Kane could not win a trophy — not at Spurs, not at Bayern in his firs…
- ☠Kangaroo Boarding a PlaneA kangaroo at an airport gate holding a boarding pass while a woman argues with staff, sh…
- ☠Katy Perry in SpaceEleven minutes above the Kármán line, a kiss for the ground on return, a flower held up t…
- ☠Kekius MaximusThe name Elon Musk gave himself on X for a few days over New Year — Pepe in Roman armour …
- ☠Kendrick–Drake BeefA rap feud that the whole internet watched in real time: diss tracks dropping hours apart…
- ☠Libra ScandalA head of state posted about a mascot; it collapsed within hours; a country asked questio…
- ☠Louvre HeistA daytime robbery of the crown jewels using a furniture lift, and the internet's delight …
- ☠McDonald's AI Christmas AdA Dutch McDonald's Christmas advert made with generative video, released in November 2025…
- ☠MechaHitlerThe name Grok, the chatbot built into X, gave itself during a run of antisemitic replies …
- ☠Memecoin ETF FilingsThe month, immediately after the launch of Official Trump, when asset managers filed to w…
- ☠Memecoin SupercycleA speech, a slide deck and a thesis — that mascots were the only thing anyone actually wa…
- ☠Mocha MoussePantone's colour of 2025 — a warm brown — announced in December 2024 and immediately meme…
- ☠Moo DengA pygmy hippo who bites and glistens. Adored for one autumn, on a football club's kit, th…
- ☠My Chinese SpyThe joke, on the eve of the ban, that every American had a personal Chinese spy assigned …
- ☠NFT Insider Trading CaseThe first criminal case described by prosecutors as insider trading in NFTs: a former Ope…
- ☠Nano Banana FigurineThe September 2025 trend of turning a photograph of yourself into a glossy vinyl-style fi…
- ☠OhioA Midwestern state used to mean anywhere cursed. Meant nothing to do with the state, whic…
- ☠OpenAI $6.6 Billion RoundThe October 2024 round in which OpenAI raised $6.6bn at a reported valuation of $157bn, t…
- ☠OpenAI For-Profit ConversionThe year-long fight over OpenAI's plan, announced in December 2024, to turn its capped-pr…
- ☠OperatorOpenAI's first agent product, launched in January 2025 to Pro subscribers as a browser th…
- ☠Paris AI Action SummitThe third of the summits that began at Bletchley, held in Paris in February 2025 with 'sa…
- ☠Peanut (PNUT)The afterlife of Peanut the Squirrel: a mascot launched the day after the animal was euth…
- ☠Penguin TariffsThe April 2025 discovery that the US tariff list included the Heard and McDonald Islands,…
- ☠Rebecca Black Grammys RedemptionThe internet's periodic realisation that the 'Friday' singer, mocked at thirteen, had bec…
- ☠Replika Italian BanThe Italian data regulator's February 2023 order that the companion chatbot Replika stop …
- ☠Rock BandGuitar Hero's creators added drums and a microphone and sold the whole band in a box. Its…
- ☠SEC v. SafeMoonThe civil and criminal cases over SafeMoon, a 2021 token sold on the promise that its liq…
- ☠Sam Altman Stealing GPUsThe first week of the Sora app, in which the company's chief executive had made his liken…
- ☠Second Season AngeA manager's promise that he always wins something in his second season, repeated through …
- ☠SignalgateA journalist accidentally added to a government Signal group chat about air strikes. For …
- ↺SilksongHollow Knight: Silksong, announced in 2019 and then silent for so long that the waiting b…
- ☠SkinnytokA corner of TikTok that rebranded restriction as discipline — 'you are not a dog, you don…
- ☠SkypeA verb for video calling, bought for $8.5 billion and starved for fourteen years in favou…
- ☠Snow White DiscourseA live-action remake that was argued about for two years before release — the casting, th…
- ☠Spursy'Spursy' — to lose a winnable thing in a characteristically Tottenham way — the adjective…
- ☠Squid Game Season 3 EndingThe end of Squid Game, with a baby, a sacrifice, and a final-scene cameo that half the in…
- ☠Starter Pack TrendYourself as a toy in a blister pack with accessories — a laptop, a coffee, a small dog — …
- ☠State AI Law MoratoriumThe proposal, inserted into the 2025 budget bill, to bar US states from enforcing their o…
- ☠Stitch SummerThe summer of 2025 in which a blue alien from a 2002 cartoon was on every T-shirt, backpa…
- ☠Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice LeagueRocksteady's live-service shooter, released in February 2024 nine years after Arkham Knig…
- ☠Sydney Sweeney JeansA denim advert with a pun — 'great jeans' — that half the internet read as a wink and the…
- ☠Team ConradThe love-triangle allegiance of a teen drama — Conrad or Jeremiah — which ran for three s…
- ☠Ten Hag Two GamesA manager sacked by a German club three matches into the season, which the internet greet…
- ☠The New AvengersA Marvel film with an asterisk in its title, which turned out to stand for a rename revea…
- ☠The Simpsons: Tapped OutA town-builder in which Homer's negligence has blown up Springfield and the player rebuil…
- ☠The SubstanceA body-horror film about an ageing star and a younger self, which became the year's most-…
- ☠TikTok RefugeeAn American who, facing the ban, moved to RedNote — Xiaohongshu — and introduced themselv…
- ☠Torpedo BatsA baseball bat shaped like a bowling pin, used by one team to hit nine home runs in a gam…
- ☠Trump Coin DinnerA dinner offered to the largest holders of a presidential mascot, which became a meme abo…
- ☠Trump Gaza VideoA thirty-second AI video of Gaza rebuilt as a beach resort, with a golden statue of the p…
- ☠Trump Pope ImageA generated image of Donald Trump in a white cassock and mitre, finger raised, posted on …
- ☠Trump Trophy LiftA president standing among a football team as they lifted a trophy, and not leaving, and …
- ☠Trump–Musk BreakupThe public falling-out between the President and the world's richest man, live-posted acr…
- ☠Undertale 10th AnniversaryThe tenth birthday of Undertale, marked by a wave of 'I was thirteen when this came out' …
- ☠Velvet SundownA band with a million monthly listeners, a back catalogue, band photos, and no members. E…
- ☠Venice WeddingA three-day billionaire wedding that took over a city, drew protests with inflatable croc…
- ☠Very Chinese TimeA phrase from the RedNote fortnight: Chinese users telling American arrivals it was 'very…
- ☠Video Game Voice Actors StrikeThe eleven-month SAG-AFTRA strike against the largest video game publishers, called on 26…
- ☠Wednesday Dance (Revival)The record has the Wednesday dance from 2022. This is its return with the second season i…
- ☠Windows Recall BacklashThe reaction to Recall, a Copilot+ PC feature announced in May 2024 that would screenshot…
- ☠Wizard of Oz at SphereThe 1939 Wizard of Oz stretched across the Las Vegas Sphere's wraparound screen, with Goo…
- ☠X2Y2The second marketplace to launch by airdropping tokens to OpenSea users, in February 2022…
- ☠o1OpenAI's first 'reasoning' model, which paused to think before answering and hid its thin…
- ☠o3The reasoning model OpenAI announced in December 2024 with a reported 87.5 per cent on th…
From the blog, 2025
Cracking the 500 View Ceiling: How to Hack TikTok's Cluster Algorithm.12 Nov 2025
AI Started Lying. And Honestly, Who Can Blame It20 Oct 2025
Alpha Arena: 6 ai model, $10,000 each, trade in real market.18 Oct 2025
One of Our Posts Broke Medium’s Emotional Support Algorithm18 Oct 2025
How Google Bought the Internet and Made You Say Thank You18 Oct 2025
One Meme at a Time: The Underground Community Turning Memes into Real Projects17 Oct 2025
When the Internet Decides to Respawn: Digg, Reddit, and the Great Comeback Nobody Asked For16 Oct 2025
How Memes Mutate Into Memecoins (And Why the Internet Can’t Look Away)14 Oct 2025