Approximately ten years ago, the term based started to gain popularity as a way to describe a quality of not being concerned with others’ opinions. This term originated from the rapper Lil B, also known as TheBasedGod. Interestingly, the term based was originally associated with being “addicted to crack cocaine,” derived from the term freebase, which refers to the conjugate base form of an amine commonly used in the preparation of freebased cocaine. The term freebase is a combination of free (indicating no ionic bond) and base (indicating a pH greater than 7). Today, based has been adopted by online meme communities as an antonym of cringe and by the alt-right as an antonym of woke.
