The Thing by Hailey Miller

Let me explain you a thing.

It has many forms. It lurks throughout the internet world, finding its form through the whims of the average internet user. Nobody really knows when it made its debut entry into the world. It seems to have simply appeared, not really starting with a certain person but with multiple. It is “The Thing,” and it is already here worming its way into your life.

So what is “The Thing”? It’s a sort of internet slang used when a user doesn’t wish to restate or rephrase the entirety of a certain post, text, or picture, instead replacing the noun(s) with “Thing.”

Largely used on hit internet interactional sites such as Tumblr, deviantART, and occasionally Facebook, “The Thing” has stayed in surprisingly solid popularity along with “I can’t even” and the ever-popular “What is air?” While fluctuating as most online fads do, “The Thing” has never had a significant drop in usage since its arrival.

One of “The Thing’s” forms is to help people “find the thing.” This “Thing” can range from text posts to pictures that users want a certain (usually well-known) person to find.

“Make John Green find The Thing,” for example, is a major hit on multiple internet sites. John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in our Stars and Looking for Alaska, is also internet famous due to a vlog he does with his brother Hank on their YouTube channel, the vlogbrothers. On places such as Tumblr, a picture of a green triangle with John Green’s face on it is a fairly common sight as fans try to get the author to acknowledge a certain idea or praise them.

This is but one of the many ways that “The Thing” can appear. “The Thing” can also be used to express exasperation on one’s ignorance without embarrassing or offending the other person too much. When a user wishes to correct someone’s ignorance of a topic, they will often say, “Let me explain (to) you a Thing/the Thing”

While proper grammar is not always involved and bias is generally included, what follows the statement is usually a well thought-out and sincere explanation of the topic. This has helped many people start a clarification paragraph on the internet, since it is the one-size-fits-all of topic sentences.