Academic Weapon

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Part of a series on Internet Slang. [View Related Entries]

About

Academic Weapon is an internet slang term used to call someone a good student. The term began to spread online throughout the 2010s and was first defined on Urban Dictionary in 2016, becoming further popularized in 2022 when TikToker Brad Kraut started posting videos using the term.

Origin

It is unclear who originally coined the term "academic weapon," but tweets^[1]^[2] using the term in the context of being a good student date back to as early as September 2013. However, on September 21st, 2016, Urban Dictionary^[3] user Academic Weapon defined the term, writing:

An individual (typically a student) that acquires traits that are seen by many as scholarly.

In September 2022, TikToker Brad Kraut (@name_is_brad) started posting videos using the term "academic weapon," with it gaining significant virality for the first time and helping spread the term online. For example, on September 12th, 2022, he posted a video to TikTok^[4] asking two women if they're academic weapons, garnering over 79,000 views in a month (shown below, left). On September 13th, he posted a video to TikTok^[5] where he explains how he's being an academic weapon at Starbucks by studying with another student, garnering over 350,000 views in a month (shown below, right).

On the same day, September 13th, @name_is_brad posted his highest-viewed video about academic weapons yet to TikTok^[6] in which he shows himself sitting in the front row of a 700-person lecture, garnering over 6 million views in a month (shown below).

Spread

The original sound for @name_is_brad's front row video became popularized over the following month on TikTok^[7]^[8] in ironic skits about being an academic weapon, inspiring over 7,000 videos by October 6th, 2022 (examples shown below, left and right).

On October 2nd, 2022, TikToker^[9] @khaithesnail posted a video captioned "Academic weapon" in which she showcases how she's studying while watching Minecraft parkour videos, garnering over 480,000 views in four days (shown below). That day, Total Frat Move^[10] then published an article about the term.

On October 5th, Twitter^[11] user @tlecaque posted, "Apparently the new term for being a good student is 'academic weapon' and I simultaneously hate it and think it is the coolest fucking rebranding of showing up and doing your work ever," garnering over 100 likes in a day.