My screen time report glares back at me: 10 hours and 26 minutes. Mostly Twitter (now ‘X’). I should be concerned, but instead, I find myself scrolling through another thread about someone “reheating nachos.” This is my natural state now. Chronically online, my brain is thoroughly cooked.
In a world where conventional meaning feels increasingly untrustworthy, our generation has created its own semiotic system. When official channels of communication feel compromised by corporate interests, political agendas, and algorithmic manipulation, stan Twitter offers an alternative form of expression that paradoxically reflects our collective attentional paralysis while providing an escape from it.
Consider “Onika Burger,” a term born when someone misinterpreted the phrase “North West ate,” used in reference to a piece of art created by West and posted on Twitter. Another account responded with “she=onika ate=burgers,” an insult aimed at Nicki Minaj (whose real name is Onika Maraj), suggesting she was overweight at a time when her profile photos featured close-up glamour shots. The phrase makes no logical sense but communicates perfectly to those fluent in stan semiotics.
This evolution of language represents what Barthes might call the ‘death of the author’ and the birth of pure signification. Stan Twitter operates in a post-structuralist playground where words float freely from their intended meanings, creating what Derrida would recognize as infinite chains of signifiers with no stable signified. Like memes that transform through remixing and recontextualisation, stan Twitter vernacular depends not on fixed meanings but on cultural fluidity and participatory meaning-making. The meaning isn’t in the text itself but in the community’s collective understanding of the reference, with each phrase existing as part of an endless network of cultural associations that relies on shared knowledge rather than linguistic precision.
“TS PMO ICL” exemplifies this perfectly. What began as simple abbreviations (This Shit Pisses Me Off I Can’t Lie) morphed into a deliberate word salad used to signify membership in a linguistic group. The efficiency of abbreviation becomes irrelevant. The point is participation in shared incomprehensibility. In fact, the deliberate inefficiency of these communications—typing more letters than necessary to create an abbreviation—serves as its own meta-commentary on our paradoxical relationship with digital communication.
These phrases create a paradoxical form of communicative paralysis where we understand each other perfectly while speaking what appears to be complete nonsense.
“When the chile is tea but the finna is gag” is another prime example of this phenomenon. The viral tweet combines AAVE and queer slang in a way that defies traditional interpretation yet resonates with people across the internet. This convergence highlights the complex power dynamics of internet linguistics, where marginalized language patterns are first adopted by queer communities—with much of what we consider “queer slang” being directly appropriated from Black communities and AAVE without attribution or understanding of its origins. Terms like “tea,” “shade,” “slay,” and “gag” all originated in Black communities before being absorbed into queer lexicons and eventually mainstream usage, often stripped of their original context and complexity. The phrase functions through connotation, not through meaning but through feeling. Its popularity proves that language has transcended the need for coherence while revealing the uneven power dynamics in how language moves across cultural boundaries.
Perhaps most fascinating is how these linguistic innovations eventually breach containment, moving from niche communities into broader discourse. “Reheating Nachos” provides a perfect case study of this transition. The term criticizes celebrities who unsuccessfully attempt to recapture past glory or appropriate someone else’s aesthetic. The metaphor works brilliantly: everyone understands the disappointment of soggy, microwave reheated nachos compared to their original crispy form.
When Lady Gaga was accused of “reheating her nachos” in early 2025 with the release of “Abracadabra,” the phrase leapt from stan circles to mainstream discourse. What began as insular stan Twitter language suddenly appeared in music reviews and cultural commentary, demonstrating how even seemingly nonsensical internet language can provide precise cultural critique that conventional vocabulary cannot.
I realize there’s a certain irony in analysing stan Twitter through academic frameworks like semiotics. The whole point of “TS PMO ICL” is its resistance to traditional analysis. Yet, this tension between meaning and meaninglessness defines our digital existence. We simultaneously participate in and critique the very spaces that paralyse our attention.
Perhaps being “cooked” is simply our adaptive response to information overload. When conventional coherence becomes impossible, we create new forms of connection through shared incomprehensibility. Stan Twitter’s linguistic evolution isn’t a sign of cultural degradation but of resilience, creating meaning in a world where traditional signifiers have lost their power.
As I close Twitter (for approximately seven minutes before reopening it), I wonder if future linguists will study the evolution of “Reheating Nachos” with the same seriousness afforded to Shakespeare’s neologisms. Our generation’s apparently nonsensical contributions to language might actually represent something profound: communication adapting to survive in an age of attentional paralysis.
The next time someone asks why I spend so many hours on this hellsite, I’ll simply respond: “TS tea but the finna nachos PMO ICL.” They won’t understand, which is precisely the point.
