Sometimes the online slang in a tweet or the caption of a viral TikTok is so incomprehensible you have to wonder, is this in a different language?
That’s exactly what happened with “ijbol,” the acronym for “I just burst out laughing.” Much like bestie and slay once were, ijbol is quickly becoming the summer’s ironic term.
We’re living through the age of delusion
According to Urban Dictionary(opens in a new tab), the term dates back to 2009 and its counterpart, jbol (just burst out laughing) to 2011, but unlike other acronyms to convey laughter – notably lol and lmao – ijbol lacked staying power. That is, until the word began cropping up again in 2021 and gained traction in the K-Pop fan community last year, much to many’s bewilderment.
Some of the earliest recent conversations online about ijbol are out-of-the-loop K-Pop fans wondering what it means. In March 2022 someone tweeted(opens in a new tab), “idk what ijbol means and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.” Then in October someone on a Kpop forum asked(opens in a new tab), “Do you know what ijbol means?” to which another fan replied, “I literally just learned that it means, ‘I just burst out laughing.’ I thought this entire time it was a foreign word.” Thinking ijbol is a Korean word is not an uncommon sentiment among some fans. Some of the confusion stems from English-speaking K-pop fans’ proclivity to phonetically spell out Korean words. For example, fans write the exclamation 제발 as jebal.
However in recent weeks, ijbol has escaped the confines of fandom (and niche ironic circles) and gone mainstream thanks to a trend of posting videos or images of someone bursting out laughing with an ijbol related caption. A tweet of a video of a woman spontaneously laughing while eating soup reads, “Me eating alphabet soup and I eat the word ijbol.” The tweet garnered over 63,900 likes.
The word sparked similar puzzlement among the general public. Just two days ago (July 4) someone tweeted(opens in a new tab), “wdym ijbol is i just burst out laughing i thought it was a korean word…” The tweet received over 3,000 likes. The week prior another user wrote(opens in a new tab), “I THOUGHT IJBOL WAS A KOREAN WORD EVERYONE WAS USING AND GATEKEEPING THE MEANING????????? Why am I so stupid lol.”
The confusion over ijbol’s true meaning just adds to its allure. It’s a term that’s caught on due to its ridiculous nature. Brooklyn, a 21-year-old student in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who specializes in tweets about United States Vice President Kamala Harris winning the “ijbol war”(opens in a new tab) told Mashable, “[Ijbol] is sort of funny just to say? It’s a rather unusual abbreviation which makes it more intriguing / funny. It’s also being used in conjunction with “idgaf” which a lot of Twitter users find funny at the minute.”
Ijbol is so silly that using it frankly makes you want to ijbol. As my roommate so wisely texted me, “I stay ijboling when I say ijbol.”
