If you’ve found yourself on the internet in the past few months, chances are you’ve seen this phrase somewhere: “delulu.” Maybe you’ve seen someone complaining about their unrequited crush, proclaiming that “delulu is the solulu” as a justification for their stalker tendencies, or calling themselves “delulu” for mistakenly believing that they would pass a test without studying.

I can’t emphasize the depth of my hatred for this word enough. It’s so ridiculous that it makes me understand why the rest of the world thinks that Gen Z is fundamentally stupider than any other age group. 

Why can’t people just say “delusional?” Or “dumb” or “crazy” or “ridiculous” … the list goes on forever. There are so many normal ways to convey your idiocy without saying “delulu” and causing everyone in a 10-mile radius to cringe. 

This word, with its origins in Stan Twitter, a community of Twitter users that post opinions related to celebrities and other entertainment platforms, has been used since 2014 to denote extremely odd behavior. Even in 2014, when most of us were in elementary school, this phrase would have elicited eye rolls and full-body cringes. The fact that we’re still using this word is extremely odd. I beg of you, turn off your phone, delete TikTok and expand your vocabulary before I have an aneurysm.