Are You Sus, Based, or Terminally Online?
Sus, Based, Simp, Touch Grass, and Terminally Online — five verdicts the internet has been issuing for over a decade
Some internet judgments are recent inventions, but Sus, Based, Simp, Touch Grass, and Terminally Online are older, more established staples — words that have survived multiple meme cycles because they describe behaviors that never go away: suspicious alibis, blunt honesty, one-sided devotion, excessive arguing, and total immersion in online culture.
SUS — THE CREDIBILITY CHECK
Sus is the internet's polygraph. Whenever someone's story doesn't quite line up with what was observed, Sus is the word that flags it — quietly, instantly, and usually before anyone has actually proven anything. See Sus, and compare to Side Eye, the silent gesture that often accompanies it.
BASED — THE APPROVAL FOR NOT CARING
While Sus flags suspicion, Based rewards the opposite: someone saying exactly what they think with zero concern for the reaction. It's one of the few terms in this vocabulary that's almost always a compliment — closely tied to Chad and Sigma, the genre's other confidence archetypes.
SIMP — THE DEVOTION PENALTY
Simp is what happens when Rizz goes wrong in the other direction — not smooth confidence, but one-sided, dignity-free devotion. It's the term most often paired with Glaze, since excessive simping and excessive glazing frequently describe the exact same behavior from two angles.
TOUCH GRASS — THE REALITY CHECK
When an online argument has clearly outgrown its real-world stakes, Touch Grass is the internet's way of ending the conversation. It's the natural predecessor to Terminally Online — the diagnosis for people who never quite take the advice.
TERMINALLY ONLINE — THE END STATE
If Touch Grass is the warning, Terminally Online is what happens when nobody listens. It describes a person whose entire frame of reference — humor, vocabulary, instincts — has been built inside the internet, with no offline equivalent. The natural endpoint of Brainrot itself.