About

Unalive is a slang term used online as an alternative to death-related words like "kill," "dead" and "murder." It is perhaps most often used to describe acts of suicide, such as, "He unalived himself." The term is used in many cases to avoid censorship on sites like TikTok, Facebook and YouTube or in video game chats, which tend to remove content featuring death-related words and the word "suicide." The term first appeared in its relevant context in a 2013 episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, spoken by Deadpool, growing in prevalence throughout 2021 as it saw increasing use in video content on TikTok.

Origin

The term "unalive" in its relevant context appears to originate from season two episode 13 of the animated Ultimate Spider-Man series, titled "Ultimate Deadpool."^[1][2] The episode aired in 2013. In the episode, Deadpool says he wants to "unalive" Taskmaster. Spider-Man questions the use of the word, saying, "Wait, 'unalive' them?" to which Deadpool responds, "Yeah here's the thing. I can't really say the K-word out loud. It's a weird mental tic," (shown below). "Unalive" was first defined in this context on Urban Dictionary^[8] on January 24th, 2015.

Spread

The term appeared occasionally in memes over the following years, often in reference to the Ultimate Spider-Man episode. Multiple GIFs of the scene from "Ultimate Deadpool" were uploaded to Imgur^[3] on July 18th, 2013. On August 24th, 2018, Redditor EnderChurro101 posted a screenshot from Roblox to /r/GoCommitDie^[4] showing a character saying, "initiate unalive," gaining over 180 upvotes in four years (shown below, left). On March 2nd, 2021, Facebook^[5] page Beautiful, Talented & Deadly posted a meme using the term as an alternative to "suicide" and an image from Bob's Burgers, gaining over 840 shares and 760 reactions in a year (shown below, right).

The term became popularized on TikTok in early 2021, used most often in videos about suicide. In March of that year, Swedenhk^[9] included the word on their list of "Gen Z/Tiktok slang & expressions you need to know in 2021." On April 2nd and 3rd, TikTokers^[6][7] @katxhd and @ritalinprc posted videos using the term to tell stories about their own suicide attempts, gaining over 80,000 and 299,000 views respectively in just under a year (shown below, left and right). CyberDefinitions^[10] describes how the term became popular on TikTok as a way to avoid censorship, as the site removes videos that use the word "suicide."

On July 25th, Instagram^[11] user baddieb.barbietings reposted a now-deleted TikTok video using the term, gaining over 176,000 views in eight months (shown below).

On February 15th, 2022, Instagram^[12] user rvmvntics posted a meme using the term, gaining over 15,300 likes in a month (shown below, left). On February 23rd, Facebook^[13] user Borderline Barbie shared a Best I Can Do Is meme using the term, gaining over 1,400 shares and 1,900 reactions in around two weeks (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References