Recently, the internet has been flooded with all sorts of “hyw” memes, showing great potential to become the reigning king of absurd internet jokes in 2025.
Ordinarily, hyw is shorthand for 何意味 (hé yì wèi), literally “what does it mean?”—a pseudo-Japanese expression invented by Chinese netizens, similar to the classic “君日语本当上手 (your Japanese is excellent).”
The Meaning and Spread of “何意味”
Nowadays, “何意味” isn’t just being copied and pasted everywhere by gleeful netizens—it has spawned countless homophonic variations that are polluting everyone’s typing habits. It’s showing alarming signs of becoming the next “CCB” meme.
In an online ecosystem overrun by nonsensical memes, the sudden, viral repetition of a phrase like this is nothing new. But “何意味” has evolved into something so abstract that it’s genuinely hard to explain how it became popular in the first place.
The “standard form” of a 何意味 post is usually a long, incoherent paragraph written in a jumble of styles—ancient Chinese prose, small-town sentimentalism, light novel melodrama, and online wish-fulfilment fiction. None of that actually matters, however. What matters is that all those words slip away like water, while the three syllables “何意味” echo in your brain for days, refusing to fade.
The “何意味” Aesthetic
The associated memes and images are equally nonsensical—random pictures like noodle ads, restaurant signs, or obviously AI-generated photos, all containing some form of the hyw sound.
To the overly curious, “何意味” feels like a black hole—an abyss you can’t look away from. The more you try to understand it, the deeper you fall. It devours your logic and language, turning you into a mindless repeater that can only utter “何意味.”
If you search “何意味 meaning” online, you’ll quickly find yourself trapped in a loop of circular explanations—a glitch in the very system of language. It can only be felt, never understood. Any attempt to explain “何意味” using other words will inevitably fail, as if it hints at the ultimate philosophical question of existence itself.
As when you ask “What is Greek yoghurt?” and receive “I don’t know” in reply, “何意味” is what it is. To define it otherwise would collapse our linguistic reality. After all, raw fish is actually dead fish, a compass is just a steering wheel, coffee is soy milk, and your stepmother might be a crossdresser…
To truly grasp this meme’s abstract essence, you’ll have to sacrifice a few brain cells.
The Evolution of “何意味”
If “何意味” appears in an everyday conversational context, the speaker is likely a mild case—an asymptomatic carrier of the meme virus. They’ve started using the phrase, but haven’t yet been consumed by it.
At the advanced stage, “何意味” usually accompanies bizarre news headlines or incomprehensible statements, expressing confusion or disbelief. Depending on the absurdity of the target, it can even carry a subtle edge of mockery.
When used in sensitive or argumentative discussions, “何意味” becomes a weapon of sarcasm or dismissal—essentially functioning like a trolling emoji, especially common in political or ideological debate groups.
In the terminal stage of infection, users can no longer say anything but “何意味.” At that point, no one can tell if they’re trolling, pretending to be dumb, or genuinely incomprehensible. Only fellow sufferers can still understand and respond.
A more aggressive variant, “何异味” (“what strange smell”), has emerged too—used for friendly mockery or outright flame wars. The classic case is sending a nose-pinching emoji to tease an anime-obsessed friend.
If the “蚌、乐、孝、典、急” (five sacred curse-words of Chinese meme culture) represent specialised offensive tactics, then “何意味” is the all-rounder—a perfect blend of offence and defence. It questions your logic, insults your intelligence, and even denies your existential worth.
Yet, context is everything. For instance, “何异味” used toward foot fetishists loses its hostility completely—it instead means “smells strong, no need for more salt,” a mark of shared taste and mutual recognition.
The Holy Land of Nonsense Memes
To understand why “何意味” memes are so weird, we have to look at the battle for meme seniority behind them.
On the internet, “ranking by seniority” isn’t limited to college clubs pretending to be professionals—net communities do it too. Because pseudo-Japanese memes have been around in Chinese fandom culture for ages, it’s impossible to pinpoint when “何意味” first appeared.
So when the phrase recently went viral again, countless veteran users declared: “Didn’t we already use this years ago?”
Most of them were just confused onlookers, but a few were genuine “meme aristocrats” flexing their early adoption. Thanks to online amplification, 何意味 became the centrepiece of a full-blown Internet Seniority Contest.
Those endless AI-generated “hyw” image variants are part of that same game—mocking the meaninglessness of seniority-based elitism. What began as a parody evolved into an all-out “how collecting and creation competition.”
Some enthusiastic scholars have even “traced” the origin of “何意味” back to the Ming Dynasty—though a few of them clearly used AI art and historical forgeries in their “research.”
Meanwhile, the classic “何意味” long-form posts—like “The World’s Meaning Levels Dropped 1 Million Times, Only I Remained the Same,” “The Only One Who Understood Meaning in This Small Town,” or “My Billionaire Grandfather of Meaning Has Died”—are basically entries in the essay division of the same contest. Beneath their nonsense lies a unifying theme: a parody of seniority and elitism.
Once you realise this connection, the meme’s abstractness starts to make sense. But as a responsible, well-educated netizen, you should protect your language skills. Don’t let yourself dissolve into a babbling corpse that can only repeat “何意味” like the author of this very article.
The Ultimate Absurdity
As Chinese netizens continue to remix and deconstruct Japanese culture in increasingly absurd ways, the Chinese internet seems to be breeding an unspeakable entity.
If one day this thing breaks free of the firewall and goes global, it might utterly shatter the Japanese people's perception of language and meaning.
With masterpieces like Hakimi music before it and 何意味 literature rising fast, Japan may have no defence left. Translating this very essay into English might be the final nail in the coffin.
+ There are no comments
Add yours