this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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And grok used to mean "understand", not "nazi shithead propaganda machine".
And meme used to refer to a unit of cultural information that spreads by imitation, not a funny picture on social media.
In fairness to memes, that definition is still largely true, its just that the common usage tends to refer to this specific form of meme. Like with squares and rectangles, not all anthropological memes are image macros, but all image macro memes are a subset of anthropological memes
This feels like your boss saying you get a company car and then giving you a scale model of a car with the company logo on it.
Memes are absolutely fascinating
It was one of my favorite words.
Such is life
From Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. I wonder if the estate could sue for damages.
We still have extortion
The X makes it cool 😎
(I see the Futurama reference didn't work sorry)
It’s only because someone else took the letter X and made it objectively uncool. What a shithead.
True. I forgot about that. Mostly because fuck Twitter and that guy anyway.
TIL grok is an actual word.
It's from Stranger In A Strange Land. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a great summary of that book on their channel
I recommend Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It's a pretty influential work of early science fiction.
Mind you, it's been like 30 years since I read any Heinlein. Not sure I'd feel the same way about his stuff now as late teen me did, but the many books of his I read definitely shaped a lot of my philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jAkplrZci0
Saved to watch later. Thanks.
Yeah no sorry the origin was always gross. Stranger in a strange land is just heinlein's weird fetish porn where he justifies old men sleeping with young girls (sound familiar?)
And grok was always a term used by weirdos who thought the book was deep for some crazy reason and wanted to sound like they were part of this insider intellectuals club
What? He gets freaky in some other books, but Stranger is pretty clean for a free love manifesto. Every character I can think of was a full grown adult, I don't think there's a single scene even euphemistically depicting an old man sleeping with a young girl. All the sex even referred to was between people of relatively close age.
Grok just means to understand/drink fully. You drink water, and it becomes a part of your body. You understand an idea, and it becomes part of your mind. It's an efficient word to communicate "understanding something fully enough to functionally incorporate it into your worldview". It's not that intellectual.
That's a rather puritan and skewed perspective. Afaik Stranger in a Strange Land is a very weird book but very tame and not pornographic at all. And it was an important artwork that explored the themes of the 60s sexual revolution. A time where people knew very little about sex and gender and questioned everything.
Please don't interpret this as a defense of Robert Heinlein's books as it has been decades since I read them and it sounds like you might be more familiar with them. But weren't all the women in Stranger in a Strange Land older than Michael Valentine Smith?
Are you confusing the character with Lazarus Long from Time Enough for Love, et al? I think he was thousands of years older than some of his (adult) love interests...
I dunno. I only ever used it as shorthand for being able to understand the basics of something. Also, words can change for the better. So in this case it went
gross -> fine -> gross.Grok was also a support character in the game Paladins.
I'm going to keep using it as a verb. If people are dumb enough to assume I'm dumb enough to use xai, that's not my problem.