A Continuation of The Simp Chronicles

As a twenty year old man who uses the internet, it is becoming increasingly harder by the day to ignore or deny this new term that has taken the internet by storm seemingly overnight. With the power of comments, everyone has the power to cast judgement and with free reigns most of those turn out to be negative and spiteful. There is without a doubt an unspoken bitterness on social media platforms, especially considering how overly sexualized posts or accounts can become. Not to mention annoying bots that claim to be so horny to their two followers. Cue the new term sweeping the nation, leaving everyone to question the legitimacy of the phrase itself, ‘simp’.
According to Urban Dictionary, a simp is defined as “A man that puts himself in a subservient/submissive position under women in hopes of winning them over, without the female bringing anything to the table”. With a lack of a concrete definition -and people abused internet slang to seem edgy- the usage of the word is beginning to spiral out of control. Is a simp a man in a toxic relationship? Is a simp any man that compliments and helps his girlfriend? Should the term be reserved for men on twitch who share endless amounts of money to women who pay them absolutely no recognition? The plainest answer I can give at the moment is I don’t know. I’ve seen the term slung around so much in the past few weeks, it’s already starting to lose its meaning on me. Which is why I wanted to investigate the term itself and where it came from and better yet, how did it spread so fast? It is almost cult-like how dedicated some men on the internet are in avoiding simp-like tendencies and there are already hundreds of videos discussing the use of the word and who necessarily falls under the category.
With such online outrage of the term, it is worth exploring who exactly uses the term and why they might be spamming the four letters on their keyboards across the web. The term has been traced back to the 1990’s in a Three 6 Mafia song, “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” as a word meaning that opposite of a pimp, which is not a far stretch from what it means now. The word has dwindled in usage in the African American since then and has only reemerged with the online meme community. This term is heavily abused by incels and misogynists alike along with a slew of other terms like cuck, beta, or manwhore. Could simp just be another addition to the angry male vernacular or does it hold more significance than the terms that came before it. The word simp can also be used as a verb. Not only can men be simps by giving their all to women who may not feel any romantic relations to them, the term is also used to explain the act. As a noun it can be explained by the acronym, “sucker idolizing mediocre pussy” and as a verb by elaborating on what these men may do. It works similarly to the verb ‘stanning’ which is also abused online, as a way to say that one is obsessed with something or someone.
Although I am not harassed and accused on Twitter daily about being a simp, internet personalities and celebrities alike are beginning to see this trend as it spams their social media. One instance that took Youtube by storm was when the popular Youtuber iDubbbzTV was accused of being a simp because his girlfriend began selling lewd cosplay photos of herself online. It may seem as harmless as a harsh internet comment, but with the swarm of accusations in such a short amount of time, one can only imagine where the term may lead. Perhaps it could cause an online revolt against celebrities who are very public with their relationships, or further the incel movement as a whole. Could this be an attempt to reclaim some sort of lost masculinity or just another buzzword for toxic trolls on the internet to sling around at their leisure? It may be too soon to spell the fate of the internet’s new colorful trigger of 2020 but it may be possible to project its direction by investigating the cases of those seriously being accused of being simps as well as tracing what groups in particular are using the word in a spiteful manner and why they might feel the need to follow a new line of verbiage instead of sticking to their usual spiel.