The Judgment Vocabulary: How the Internet Rates Everything
Glaze, NPC, Side Eye, Sturdy, and Mid — the five-word review system nobody agreed on but everyone uses
Long before star ratings and review scores, the internet built its own informal grading language — a small set of words that can summarize an entire reaction without a sentence. These five terms form a complete evaluation toolkit: one for over-praise, one for predictability, one for silent suspicion, one for genuine approval, and one for flat disappointment.
GLAZE — THE OVERCORRECTION
When praise becomes the story instead of whatever's being praised, that's Glaze. It's the accusation leveled at fanbases, hype-men, and yes-men — anyone whose reaction has stopped tracking the actual quality of the thing in front of them. See Glaze, and compare to Rizz and Mog, two terms Glaze is most often accused of inflating.
NPC — THE PREDICTABILITY VERDICT
If Glaze is about reacting too much, NPC is about reacting too predictably. Born from livestream genres where streamers cycled through the same scripted bits for donations, it's now the standard insult for anyone whose responses feel pre-written. Closely related to Sigma and Cooked, which describe adjacent failure modes of social behavior.
SIDE EYE — THE SILENT VERDICT
Some judgments don't need words. Side Eye is the internet's shorthand for the look — suspicion, disbelief, or disapproval delivered without a single syllable. It pairs naturally with Bruh and Op, two other reaction-first terms that let a caption do all the talking.
STURDY — THE GENUINE APPROVAL
Not every judgment is negative. Sturdy emerged from a movement celebrating strength and durability as the new standard of approval, standing in direct contrast to fragility-coded compliments. It sits alongside Mog and Chad as one of the few unambiguously positive entries in this vocabulary.
MID — THE DEFAULT VERDICT
And when nothing about a thing is good enough to glaze, predictable enough to call NPC, suspicious enough for a side eye, or sturdy enough to respect — there's Mid. It's the internet's flatline, the verdict reached for by default, and the term most often paired with Cooked and Yap when describing forgettable content.