Patrick Bateman is a character created by novelist Bret Easton Ellis. He is the villain protagonist and unreliable narrator of Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho and is played by Christian Bale in the 2000 film adaptation of the same name. Bateman is a wealthy and materialistic yuppie and Wall Street investment banker who, supposedly, leads a secret life as a serial killer. He has also briefly appeared in other Ellis novels and their film and theatrical adaptations.
Harem is a genre of light novels, manga, anime, and video games focusing on a main character surrounded by multiple potential romantic or sexual partners. Originating in Japan in the 1970s, its popularity increased during the late 1980s and 1990s with the advent of dating simulator games. The genre often features a protagonist who's surrounded by three or more suitors, love interests and/or sexual partners. Harem works are frequently comedies that rely on self-insert protagonists of whom allow projection for the viewer, often accompanied with an ensemble cast of supporting characters. A story featuring a heterosexual male paired with an all female harem series is informally referred to as a female harem or seraglios, while a heterosexual female paired with an all-male harem series is informally referred to as a male harem, reverse harem, or gyaku hāremu. Although originating in Japan, the genre later inspired variants in Western media.
Professional fraternities, in the North American fraternity system, are organizations whose primary purpose is to promote the interests of a particular profession and whose membership is restricted to students in that particular field of professional education or study. This may be contrasted with service fraternities and sororities, whose primary purpose is community service, and social fraternities and sororities, whose primary purposes are generally aimed towards some other aspect, such as the development of character, friendship, leadership, or literary ability.
Sigma Phi Beta (ΣΦΒ) was a college fraternity for gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender men. It was founded at Arizona State University (ASU) on September 28, 2003. It originated as the Beta chapter of a now-defunct fraternity with similar values, Alpha Lambda Tau. It disaffiliated from Alpha Lambda Tau on May 11, 2003.
A Mary Sue is a character archetype in fiction, usually a young woman, who is often portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, gifted with unique talents or powers, liked or respected by most other characters, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately virtuous, and generally lacking meaningful character flaws. Usually female and almost always the main character, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish fulfillment. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.
A Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character type in fiction, usually depicted as a young woman with eccentric personality quirks who serves as the romantic interest for a male protagonist. The term was coined by film critic Nathan Rabin after observing Kirsten Dunst's character in Elizabethtown (2005). Rabin criticized the type as one-dimensional, existing only to provide emotional support to the protagonist, or to teach him important life lessons, while receiving nothing in return. The term has since entered the general vernacular.
In Jungian psychology, the Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man are archetypes of the collective unconscious.
The manosphere is a diverse collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists, incels, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry, or hatred of men. Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill", a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.
The slang term Chad originated in Chicago as a pejorative term for young, upper-class, urban males. In modern internet slang, the term can be similar to "bro" and generally refers to an "alpha male" or otherwise a genetically superior male.
Gamma Pi Epsilon (ΓΠΕ) was the women's honor society of Jesuit colleges and universities. It was established in 1924 at Marquette University. In 1973, it merged with its male counterpart, Alpha Sigma Nu.
Alpha male and beta male are pseudoscientific terms for men derived from the designations of alpha and beta animals in ethology. They may also be used with other genders, such as women, or additionally use other letters of the Greek alphabet. The popularization of these terms to describe humans has been widely criticized by scientists.
Incel is a term closely associated with an online subculture of people who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. Originally coined as "invcel" around 1997 by a queer Canadian female student known as Alana, the spelling had shifted to "incel" by 1999, and the term later rose to prominence in the 2010s, following the influence of Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian.
The DeGoogle movement is a grassroots campaign that has spawned as privacy advocates urge users to stop using Google products entirely due to growing privacy concerns regarding the company. The term refers to the act of removing Google from one's life. As the growing market share of the internet giant creates monopolistic power for the company in digital spaces, increasing numbers of journalists have noted the difficulty to find alternatives to the company's products. Some projects, such as ungoogled-chromium, primarily distinguish themselves from Google-maintained products by their lessened dependence on the company's infrastructure. It can be seen as part of a broader opposition to big tech companies, sometimes referred to as "techlash."
E-kids, split by binary gender as e-girls and e-boys, are a youth subculture of Gen Z that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing application TikTok. It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese and Korean street fashion.
Men Going Their Own Way is an anti-feminist, misogynistic, mostly online community advocating for men to separate themselves from women and society, which they believe has been corrupted by feminism. The community is a part of the manosphere, a collection of anti-feminist websites and online communities that also includes the men's rights movement, incels, and pickup artists.
Kevin Roshon Samuels was an American internet personality and image consultant. He rose to popularity in 2020 through his YouTube and Instagram live streams discussing modern society, gender issues, and relationships.
An Internet aesthetic, also simply referred to as an aesthetic or microaesthetic, is a visual art style, sometimes accompanied by a fashion style, subculture, or music genre, that usually originates from the Internet or is popularized on it. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, online aesthetics gained increasing popularity, specifically on social media platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok, and often were used by people to express their individuality and creativity. They can also be used to create a sense of community and belonging among people who share the same interests. The term aesthetic has been described as being "totally divorced from its academic origins", and is commonly used as an adjective.
Fanum tax is an Internet slang term describing the theft of food between friends. Originally coined by American streamer Fanum, the term has become an internet meme, particularly employed and popularized by Generation Alpha.
