The Simp Situation

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.