2015·The platform era·funny
Netflix and chill
An ordinary invitation that acquired a second meaning, and then could no longer be used with the first.
You might remember it as Netflix and chill invitation
A saying
- SourceNo single original
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
The phrase was recorded on Twitter as early as 2009 meaning exactly what it says: watch something, relax. Over the following years it acquired a euphemistic second meaning, and by 2015 the innocent reading was no longer available to anybody under thirty. The joke is the impossibility of using it sincerely.
It first appeared in 2015, during the platform era.
It is the best-documented example of the internet capturing a phrase and changing what it can mean. It was also a genuine problem for the company named in it, which had to decide whether to acknowledge a euphemism built out of its own brand — and eventually did, which is its own small landmark in how corporations learned to speak online.
The phrase reached the point of parody within a year — a Netflix and Chill festival, a papal invitation joke, a Guardian explainer, a Vice how-to — which is the reliable sign that a piece of slang has finished. It survives now as a period marker for the mid-2010s.
More from 2015
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- Finsta 2015The platform era
- Distracted boyfriend 2015The platform era
- The Dress 2015The platform era
The platform era
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- Storm Area 51 2019The platform era
- Renegade dance 2019The platform era
- The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet 2019The platform era
- The Backrooms 2019The platform era
- Kiki Challenge 2018The platform era
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Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- The phrase was recorded on Twitter as early as 2009 meaning exactly what it says: watch something, relax. Over the following years it acquired a euphemistic second meaning, and by 2015 the innocent reading was no longer available to anybody under thirty. The joke is the impossibility of using it sincerely.