Rent Free

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

About

Rent Free, or Living in Your Head Rent Free, is a slang expression and catchphrase used to describe how someone holds a grudge or allows an individual to occupy their thoughts, often meant to mock those who are overtly upset at others, especially for trivial things. Outside of the phrase itself, there is also an exploitable format depicting an MS Paint character with someone living in their mind that is photoshopped with various images to represent someone in their thoughts.

Origin

Pre-internet usage, the original phrase is often attributed to advice columnist Eppie Lederer (writing under the pen name Ann Landers), who coined the term in her writing sometime during the latter half of the 1900s (seen below).^[6]

“Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.” – Ann Landers

Due to the phrase being coined before the internet, the exact first use of the phrase online is unknown, but the earliest instances of it used as an insult alongside the exploitable format go as far back as May 19th, 2010, with the following cartoon posted on the Pithless Thoughts Blogspot^[1] (shown below).

Spread

On April 28th, 2017, another instance of the expression appearing together with the exploitable format occurs on a post to the Nairaland^[2] forum (seen below).

Over the following years, the phrase saw a rise in usage on Twitter, causing notice among various news outlets and websites. On July 18th, 2018, the term was added to Urban Dictionary^[7] by user PajamaBoy91, where it received 241 upvotes in over two years (shown below). On October 1st, 2018, BuzzFeed^[3] published an article calling the phrase, "The Perfect Insult Of Our Times," and on November 2nd, Deadspin^[4] then put out an opinion piece reacting to the phrase becoming a trend, as well as an additional article about various Twitter moments and whether they apply to the gist of "rent-free" the following year.^[5]

To live in the head of someone that can’t stop thinking about you or anything to do with you.

On September 15th, 2019, an anonymous 4chan^[8] user edited the exploitable image to depict elements from Pokemon on the /vp/ board under the name "Rent Free" (seen below, left). The phrase also appears in numerous other memes or posts outside the previous format. One such example was posted by the Facebook^[9] page Banter King on November 10th, 2020, receiving over 7,700 likes, 8,600 shares and 4,800 comments in roughly two months (seen below, right).

On December 19th, 2020, the phrase was used in a meme by the Instagram^[10] account hoodclips, accumulating over 1.5 million views and 217,000 likes in 11 days (shown below).