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When an uninitiated is asked to define “Word Chewing,” one most commonly encounters a scatterplot of similar guesses: Is it a sex maneuver? Is it how they’re trying to teach Gen Alpha to read? Is it the original Swedish version of Number Munchers? Dear god, Father Author! Tell us! Tell us! they scream, dumb terror in their piggy little eyes and slackened jaws as they read their precious satire website.

Wrong on all counts, genius. In fact, Word Chewing is worse than all those things. For those who wish to brace themselves appropriately, I’d say it’s a hair less awful than those erotic tickling clips from the Tickled documentary, but handily worse than getting punched in the special ninja way where your splintered nose-bone shoots up into your brain.

Hey, here’s some now!

No, that is neither a flipbook of a man who photographed himself having a stroke every day for a year, nor is it a zoetrope of high-speed photos taken to resolve a bet between two 1870’s railroad magnates. Rather, it’s a sadly misguided young person doing – something – set to the song “Satisfaction” by Eminem. I guess you could say he’s “chewing” the words, but to me it looks a lot more like an AI-generated Jim Carrey impersonator.

The small cadre of weirdos who sustain the Word Chewing movement are taking making funny faces to its logical conclusion: getting everyone to hate you. It’s kind of like air band, except instead of miming all the instruments, you just mime the vocals REALLY HARD. The equivalent would be a Pink Floyd cover band playing “Money” by doing a drum solo with a Gallagher mallet.

Fortunately, articles hosted on Patreon lack embedded video support. I say “fortunately” both because the audio on these is just the copyrighted song or quotable clip in question, making an aural component unnecessary, and because it shields you, my precious readers, from contracting a curse where everyone in your life slowly starts talking like this. These things are like the video from The Ring, but scary.

Word Chewing is also a lot like tobacco chewing, in that it’s a scourge that gives you mouth cancer (or if it doesn’t, we should do science until it does). And despite all efforts to the contrary, its tumor-like growth has engulfed much more than just music. Here’s someone chewing up a line from their favorite movie, Honey, Let’s All Kill Ourselves.

As with any weird trend, there are those who hop on the bandwagon to have a bit of harmless fun, and then those who center their life around Word Chewing and rehearse alone in their room for hours on end. A truly outstanding Chewer is like a good prom date – there’s lots of hand stuff involved, a little tongue action, and about twelve seconds of rhythmic bouncing.

And remember, a Word Chewer’s face and part of their upper torso is their instrument. Just like a skilled actor protects and nurtures their body, many Chewers take special care to maximize face-appeal. For example, here’s someone doing their makeup while also masticating the scene from Family Guy where Stewie gets his period.

Other perennial favorites of hers include the American Pie “band camp story,” the scene in Audition where the girl makes the guy eat a bowl of his own vomit, and the Ed Bradley “Revisiting Emmitt Till’s Murder” segment of Sixty Minutes. Once finished applying, she’s ready to make TikTok magic!

Fun fact: this clip fell backwards in time and is actually the origin of humans fearing clowns. But makeup isn’t the only augmentation a Chewer might rely upon. Eventually, as it does, CG came onto the scene, which many of the Chewing oldheads say cheapens what was once a noble art performed for the kingly courts of the Hapsburgs. There the Crown Prince of Austria would sit in his glory, watching stuff like this:

For the Word Chewing sea is deep and dark my friends, with currents and counter-currents. While some futz with their phones, others embrace time-honored practical effects, like a tear stick to simulate crying, or gloss on the lower lip to give a little pop to the nightmares I’ll be having from now on.

Toss in some legit moves, a hundred dollars’ worth of lights and costume pieces, and ten hours of practice, and you can perfect the illusion to such a fine degree that it will make your followers feel like they’ve been sucked into a video game. Specifically, Dance Dance Revolution mixed with that VR headset that blows up your forebrain.

In-camera effects don’t need to be flashy and expensive, though. Giving your Word Chewing vid flair can be as simple as taking advantage of foreshortening and forced perspective, like the great Peter Jackson used to make Elijah Wood small. Hey, speaking of making wood small, this repels me.

Still, what keeps me coming back to Word Chewing – aside from deep-seated psychological trauma that forces me to clutch masochistically at anything that brings me the pain I so deserve – are the unadorned classics. These essentially fall into two categories. There’s the folks who are basically just lip syncing really emphatically:

And then there are the those that compile a bunch of tiny clips and still images into a video flipbook:

As you dive in, the craft opens up to reveal its myriad layers. For example, like some kind of twisted mouth-jazz, a lot of the subtlety of good Word Chewing lies in the words you don’t chew. Observe how this Chewer makes use of the space between words to explore the nuances of the music.

Mmm, subtlety. Incidentally, I would rather see my daughter start an OnlyFans page than a Word Chewing channel. But there’s no time to focus on that, because here’s an OnlyFans model showing off her Word Chewing skills! Personally I’d prefer to have a sex worker chew on my penis than watch them chew words, but I’d gladly pay them a monthly subscription fee to stop doing both.

It’s striking to note that this was filmed as “the talent” sat in a car parked in front of her son’s school. In the annals of parents embarrassing their kids while picking them up, this is the Mona Lisa. When the other kids saw her doing this, they all blacked out and instinctively descended on her son, ripping him limb from limb with their bare hands in a Dionysian frenzy.

In fact, Word Chewing in your car in public is an entire subgenre. Here’s a human being born of another human being who once walked through life with dignity instead of shame.

Whereas I’m constantly afraid another driver will see me scratch the far side of my nose and misinterpret it as a pick, these brave warriors are out in the streets working mouth muscles usually reserved for taking dental X-rays.

Ultimately, Word Chewing continues to thrive, and no comedy article full of jibes can stand in its way. It goes on evolving, as younger practitioners incorporate things like separate camera setups and real cinematographic and editing choices.

I want to stress that again. These were choices. This was a series of decisions made by someone with free will and in full control of their faculties. It’s not like someone chained these people up and made them Word Chew.

Great. Way to make me look like an asshole, GIF I laboriously made and placed in the article. Just for that, I’m ending on the duet between that girl with the eyes and that guy with the teeth! You brought this on yourself, fucker.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do something more worthwhile, like practicing with my Tech Deck mini finger skateboard. I’ve almost got my pop shuvit nailed.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: CommonCentz, who has committed no face crimes the internet can prove.