• corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    At this point I’m only hoping to emerge from the other side of the “based” fad although I’ve never understood what it meant. WTaF is “brain pilled”?

    Groovy. Tubular. Fetch.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Here’s the real answer for based:

      “Based” (corruption of base head - from someone who smokes base - street name for crack cocaine) was popular as an insult in rap / African American circles in the early 00s

      Rapper Lil B got called it and decided on a whim to pretend the meaning was changed to mean something positive, started using it in this way, it caught on - mostly through the new York scene and its attendant twitter following

      As all slang does in the last ~100-150 years, passed from black people to everyone.

      
      Brain pilled is a reference to The Matrix f/t Keanu Reeves in which Morpheus - whose namesake is the God of dreams - offers to wake up Neo from his fake reality by taking the red pill - leading to the phrase "red pilled" meaning (a right wing variant of) "woke." 
      
      Over time [x]-pilled became slang like how Watergate/ [x]-gate became a suffix to imply an imbrolglio.