Brainlet

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About

Brainlet is an internet slang term primarily used as a pejorative on 4chan when referring to those with limited intelligence, implying they have a small brain. Illustrations of brainlets are often depicted as the character Wojack with an incredibly small head, as opposed to "tfw too intelligent" drawings.

Origin

The earliest archived use of the term "brainlet" on 4chan was submitted to the /sci/ (Science & Math) imageboard on December 1st, 2015 in a post asking "When will science finally find a cure for low IQ? I don't want to be a brainlet anymore" (shown below).^[6]

Spread

On September 18th, 2016, a thread asking "what's with the 'brainlet' meme these days?" was submitted to the /sci/ board.^[2] On October 29th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a post asking "What is /sci/ official definition of brainlet?" to /sci/.^[3] On May 11th, 2017, Urban Dictionary^[1] user TinFoilHatGuy submitted an entry for "brainlet," defining it an "immature, underdeveloped cerebral cortex."

On June 4th, a "Brainlet Safe Thread" was posted to /sci/ along with a picture of Wojak with a microscopic brain (shown below, left).^[5] On July 2nd, a picture of Wojak with an atrophied head was submitted to the /biz/ (Business & Finance) board in a thread titled "/brainlet/" (shown below).

On October 18th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a post to /r9k/ with the green text "think for your whole life that you are intelligent / you are actually a brainlet" (shown below). That day, a screenshot of the post was submitted to the subreddit /r/4chan,^[4] where it gathered more than 800 points (96% upvoted) within one week.

Grayons

On December 8th, 2017, a 4chan user replied to the thread on /v/^[7] with an illustration of a drooling brainlet with a long neck (shown below, left). On January 12th, 2018, an edited version of the image in which the character is shown eating crayons along with the caption "Mmmm grayons" was submitted to a post on /tv/^[8] (shown below, right).

On May 5th, an entry for "grayons" was submitted to Urban Dictionary.^[10] On August 7th, a collection of edited variations of the character was published on Ebaumsworld^[9] (shown below).