this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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while we’re here, I wanna air my personal grievance with the use of “based” in internet culture. That term is reserved for our lord and savior, Lil B and I’m fairly certain it originated as a term for crackhead (i.e “basehead”). Possibly coming from the term “free basing” meaning to take drugs orally with no casing.
I have no sources so prove me wrong lol
Wiktionary says, "A reference to freebase cocaine, via basehead. Coined by American rapper from California Lil B to describe his lifestyle."
Lil B himself said about the word, "Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive. When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, "You're based." They'd use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive. I started embracing it like, "Yeah, I'm based." I made it mine. I embedded it in my head. Based is positive."
I personally still occasionally use the word based in the same manner as it is otherwise commonly used in Internet culture, which does deviate a bit from the sense in which Lil B originally coined the term. It doesn't strike me as particularly problematic to say based, but maybe my State Policy on Usage of Terms Originating in Marginalized Englishes isn't doing as good a job at keeping out cultural appropriation as it's supposed to.
God said that?? oh, fair enough then