Everyone online “crashes” at once.

Well, not literally – a lot of people, though actually they collapse. But for one reason or another, the term “crash out” or “crashing out” is everywhere this week.

For the uninitiated, the crash is all about losing it. That Urban dictionary says, to break down is to ‘become very angry or upset; lose all self-control”. It can also mean that you are almost willingly entering a situation – or acting in a certain way – that will prove harmful in the long run.

If you’ve been online lately, you’ve probably seen people talking about crashing. Continue Xthe app formerly known as Twitter and you’ll see recent, super-viral posts that use the term crash out.

The Tweet may have been deleted

The Tweet may have been deleted

The Tweet may have been deleted

Continue TikTok and is even more prominent. Every fifth post, it seems like people are talking about crashing in one form or another.

There are viral posts about heartbreak.

Or to teach a lesson to the negative people in your life.

Or teachers who don’t know why their kids say it.

To be clear: this is not a new expression. Younger people in particular have been using the term for some time. But, at least to my eye, it has grown in recent weeks.

Why could this be? Well, for one, there’s quite a lot to talk about these days. As young voters turned to President-elect Donald Trump in 2024, the majority of voters under-30s still voted for Vice President Kamala Harris. Those young Harris voters, especially women, may feel it’s time to crash.

This is also the time of year when seasonal depression might hit – the days just got shorter – and for whatever reason, it’s also a common time of year for separations. Nothing seems to inspire a “crash out” more than a bad breakup.

But in general, the internet these days seems to really latch on to words and phrases. And it might just be time to “move on”. In August, when it was the whole internet very modestI wrote about TikTok’s tendency to shape language.

I wrote then:

“Think of it this way: In your group of friends—especially during high school or college—you probably had buzzwords and shorthand that only your group understood. You’ve spent so much time together that you’ve developed an internal language. TikTok’s influence on our word usage is similar, only now the friend group is essentially everyone with an internet connection.”

At this point, that collective group is about to collapse. The expression, while not new, is something of a trend. That Mashable’s Elena Cavender covered itthe internet moves through this slang relatively quickly. So now we’re all crashing, but it probably won’t last.