What happens on your favorite internet forum or chat group right about 3pm in the afternoon. All the sudden you notice everyone is gone and you are all alone. Then you realize why. It's time for everyone to spend the last two hours of the workday actually producing something to justify their continued existence as an employee. Occurs for stay at home parents too, it's the point where they realize they better clean the house and throw in a load of close to justify their continued existence as a non-employee.
Adapted for the preteen and teen set: What happens around 10pm when all your friends had to get offline so their parentswill think they are actually going to bed and to sleep, resolves in about an hour.
"Holy crap, there were 10 people here a second ago, where'd they all go? Oh, it's 3pm already. Man this day went by fast. I hate temporary online friendlessness. I guess I had better get some work done before I go home."
Jack: I know what you mean.
Angelica: I
Jack: What?
Jack: Where'd you go?
Jack: Oh, it's 10pm, I'm going to get something and be right back, come back when your parents think you are in bed.
Jack: I am not deterred by temporary online friendlessness.
when you're holding up your phone and making faces at it, as though you are taking a selfie, but you're really taking a picture of the person across from you or the wall or anything else that seems interesting but you don't want to be caught dead taking a picture of.
This action is often made more convincing by wiggling the eyebrows or opening the mouth, to pretend you're trying to get a Snapchat filter to work.
FRIEND A: "Did you just take a stealthie of me?"
FRIEND B (turning phone around): "no I was just using snapchat's new filter, see?"
The grindset is a contemporary ideology of self-exploitation disguised as strength, deeply tied to the aesthetics of the “sigma male” and to new digital forms of patriarchy. It promotes the idea that human worth depends on productivity, economic success, absolute emotional control, and the ability to work endlessly, turning vulnerability, rest, community, and tenderness into signs of weakness. Beneath its rhetoric of discipline and power often lies a profound inability to relate healthily to pain, fragility, and human interdependence.
“That’s the grindset, brother. While weak men sleep and complain, sigma males stay disciplined, work in silence, suppress emotions, and build power while everyone else wastes time chasing comfort.”