The most fundamental part of understanding this requires looking at the meaning of cooking in an internet culture sense. When one Redditor asked “What does 'cook' mean in slang?” on r/EnglishLearners, many of the responses had something similar to say.
u/Far-Fortune-8381 describes the saying “Let him cook” as: “Wait, don’t stop him, let’s see where this is going/wait because I know this is going to be something good if we give it a minute.”
Meanwhile, u/aoog elaborated on the difference between the positive/ambiguous “cook” vs. the negative “cooked” using their literal meanings: “The act of cooking is to make a delicious meal, while to be cooked is to be a dead plant or animal.” A person can be hailed as a chef or become part of the plate with the simple addition of the passive voice, and the more complex alchemy of knowing how to gain the approval of others.
While a significant proportion of the general population uses social media of some kind, they are here to consume the entertainment it provides, not create it. The majority of social media users across all platforms are lurkers, not posters. A Gallup survey conducted in 2022 found that the percentage of users who “post frequently or occasionally” was 20% for Instagram, 11% for Twitter, and just 4% for TikTok.
Although much of this silent crowd may be made up of bots, there is nonetheless a big chunk of users whose main objective is to be a voyeur. However, a lack of posting does not necessarily mean a lack of comments. This puts more pressure on those who post regularly to maintain their interest and their endorsement, something which lends itself to the often stressful language of the kitchen.
In some ways, this is not so much of a change from how the most popular social media have functioned forever. It has long been true (at least, on more personal brand-centric platforms) that a large proportion of users have declined to be creators and that posting has had an element of risk attached to it. On top of that, many of these terms have been used in this way for much longer than the present moment. Some of the earliest Urban Dictionary entries define chopped as meaning “ugly” (2003).
However, whether curating the perfect Instagram grid post or one-liner tweet, the effort used to be played down by slang as opposed to underlined by it. We only have to look back at the previous decade to see a marked difference in the kinds of words that dominated the social media sphere.
Take, for example, the mid to late 2010s, when a lot of internet slang focused on amping up the weight of the emotions of the person who was using it like an emoji or a reaction GIF. Whether announcing positive things as “lit” or “fire” or claiming to be “shooketh” in reaction to some shocking information, the language was oriented towards grand gestures that increased the impact of whatever was being presented.
Even more colorful are the kinds of words that were popular in the early 2010s, often implying a kind of carefree and escapist attitude that came with the vision of being online as a fun diversion, and a welcome escape from real life. It was the era of YOLO (you only live once), and having “swag,” a term for expressing yourself with confidence. Even an expression with a negative connotation of “acting stupid,” like “derp,” had a more instantaneous and carefree attitude towards making a mistake.
These examples are not all-encompassing, and the cooking slang of 2025 similarly represents only a portion of the currently popular internet lingo. Still, it is hard to divorce this from the context of this language. Seeing an uptick in popularity in an era when spending a lot of time posting things on the internet has never been perceived as less fun.
We have an online environment where a key metric for continuous success is the user’s desire to critique and judge the content that they come across. As a result, it is no wonder that those who create it are speaking a language that implies a level of graft behind all the sh*tposts and off-the-cuff opinions.
Even the most inedible internet slop requires some preparation to go into it. Arguably, in an era that witnesses widespread complaints about the declining quality of the online experience due to corporate greed and generative AI, this makes any individual’s desire to contribute even more valuable—and pressurized. Social media might not replicate the discipline of a professional kitchen, but that doesn’t mean that its most active users don’t feel a similar pressure to create a well-received end product. Culinary slang is a stepping stone to the attention that they feel beholden to seek. We have to cook in order to serve and, more importantly, eat.
