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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Based is a slang term that originally emerged in California during the 1970s, stemming from the phrase "freebase cocaine," a method which makes the drug smokable. "Based" was derived from "basehead," a term used to refer to a freebase addict.[1] The term grew in prominence as a pejorative during the crack epidemic to refer to someone who was "cracked out". By the late 2000s and early 2010s, it became an Internet slang term as popularized by American rapper Lil B, also known as Lil B the BasedGod. He appropriated the phrase as a reclaimed word, which he defined as being yourself and positive.[2][3]
During the early-to mid 2010s, the term was adopted by online misogynists as part of the Gamergate campaign to refer to conservative critic Christina Hoff Sommers as "Based Mom". The phrase was later reappropriated by Trump supporters and evolved to describe an agreement with unpopular opinions or stances and actions that negate political correctness. By 2023, the FBI deemed the phrase "based and redpilled" as connected to alt-right extremism online. The term "based" later entered the mainstream and regained a neutral connotation.[2][3][4]
According to The Spectator, the term emerged as a phrase in California during the 1970s, stemming from the term "freebase cocaine," a method which makes the drug smokable. "Based" was derived from "basehead," a term used to refer to a freebase addict. The term grew in prominence as a pejorative during the crack epidemic to refer to someone who was "cracked out".[5] During the mid-to late 2000s, Lil B, reappropriated the pejorative as a term of endearment, using it to describe a positive and bold lifestyle. The phrase had been used by him as early as 2007 on several song and album titles.[4] He adopted the nickname "The Based God" with music critics referring to his rapping style as "based". According to Lil B, "Based" is a reclaimed word:[6][7]
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.
According to Slate magazine, the phrase was co-opted by misogynists in 2014 during the Gamergate campaign to refer to conservative critic Christina Hoff Sommers as "Based Mom".[5] By the late 2010s, the phrase had been used to describe stances or actions that negate political correctness.[8][9][10] The term continued to be co-opted by edgelord culture,[11] white nationalists, and the alt-right.[12][5]
In 2016, Slate magazine stated that the term "based" had been reappropriated by "racist Trump supporters".[5] By 2023, Dazed magazine stated that the FBI had deemed the term "based and redpilled" as connected to violent alt-right extremism online.[13] The article stated that, according to the FBI, using the term "based" might lead to an individual being labeled an "incel extremist".[13] It also criticized the FBI's stance, arguing that the Internet was "steeped in irony and political satire."[13]
"Based" as a slang term was later reclaimed again by Gen Z artists inspired by Lil B such as Xaviersobased and his collective 1c34,[11] and had also entered the mainstream, regaining a neutral connotation.[8]
The term has been used by the White House's X account under the Second Trump Administration.[4]
In 2026, The New York Times were criticized for not crediting Lil B for the origins of "based" as a slang term.[4]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Based is a slang term that originally emerged in California during the 1970s, stemming from the phrase "freebase cocaine," a method which makes the drug smokable. "Based" was derived from "basehead," a term used to refer to a freebase addict. The term grew in prominence as a pejorative during the crack epidemic to refer to someone who was "cracked out". By the late 2000s and early 2010s, it became an Internet slang term as popularized by American rapper Lil B, also known as Lil B the BasedGod. He appropriated the phrase as a reclaimed word, which he defined as being yourself and positive. During the early-to mid 2010s, the term was adopted by online misogynists as part of the Gamergate campaign to refer to conservative critic Christina Hoff Sommers as "Based Mom". The phrase was later reappropriated by Trump supporters and evolved to describe an agreement with unpopular opinions or stances and actions that negate political correctness. By 2023, the FBI deemed the phrase "based and redpilled" as connected to alt-right extremism online. The term "based" later entered the mainstream and regained a neutral connotation.
An incel ( IN-sel; an abbreviation of "involuntary celibate" or "involuntarily celibate"), is a member of an online subculture of mostly heterosexual men who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. The incel subculture came to wider public attention in the 2010s with the banning of controversial subreddit r/incels and a series of mass murders committed by men who either identified as incels or held similar ideologies, including Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. The incel subculture's online discourse is characterized by social rejection, social isolation, resentment, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, homophobia, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active. Incels tend to blame both women and the feminist movement for their inability to find a partner. They often attribute their romantic failures to biological determinism and women's perceived hypergamy, where women are said to have an innate and unchangeable preference for mating with only the most physically attractive males (nicknamed "Chads"). Classified as part of the manosphere, an online association of anti-feminist and male supremacist groups that includes incels along with men's rights activists (MRAs), men going their own way (MGTOW) and pick-up artists (PUAs), most incels identify with the "black pill", a more nihilistic version of the manosphere's belief in the "red pill" that argues men are an oppressed group in a society dominated by feminism. The "black pill" refers to the fatalistic belief that society is dominated by women and physically attractive men or "alpha males". Incels believe it is impossible for unattractive men to escape this social hierarchy. Incel communities have been criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, endorsement and encouragement of violence and extremism. Over time the subculture has become associated with extremism and misogynist terrorism, and since 2014 there have been multiple mass killings, mostly in North America, perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes incels as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) states that "the incel community shares a misogynistic ideology of women as being genetically inferior to men, driven by their sexual desire to reproduce with genetically superior males, thereby excluding unattractive men such as themselves" which "exhibits all of the hallmarks of an extremist ideology". GIFCT states that incel beliefs combine a wish for a mythical past where all men were entitled to sex from subordinated women, a sense of predestined personal failure, and nihilism, making it a dangerous ideology. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Looksmaxxing (; LUUKS-MAK-sing) is an online self-improvement practice in the manosphere that focuses on maximizing male physical attractiveness. The term is a neologism which was coined on incel message boards in the 2010s. Previously, the phrase had limited usage on obscure internet forums of the incelosphere, but was popularized on TikTok by primarily male content creators in the 2020s. While also based on white supremacy, the term has commonly been associated with the black pill ideology, which espouses that female sexual selection is primarily based on external physical qualities such as height and facial attractiveness, while qualities such as kindness and personality are ignored or even cause rejection. Looksmaxxing methods range from benign practices such as skincare routines and gym use, to more extreme interventions such as invasive cosmetic surgery and injection of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and other peptides. Commentators generally criticize the concept as being judgemental and harmful to its practitioners ("looksmaxxers"). Communities and influencers associated with the practice are described as rating individual's appearance without concern for their overall well-being which can lead to negative mental health outcomes such as body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation. The increasing popularity of the concept has also led to concerns over its potential to promote hegemonic masculinity. Although looksmaxxers use scientific and medical terminology, the practice is based heavily on anecdotal evidence unsupported by mainstream medicine, and certain aspects—particularly the PSL scale used by practitioners to rate their appearance—are considered pseudoscientific.
Red pill and blue pill are metaphorical terms representing a choice between learning an unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in the unquestioned and persistent illusion appearing as ordinary reality with the blue pill. The pills were used as props in the 1999 film The Matrix.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
