galaxy-brain

English

Alternative forms

• galaxy brain

Etymology

From a popular image macro meme in which a series of increasingly absurd or surreal thoughts is paired with images of a human brain expanding and emitting progressively brighter beams of light, thus ironically framing the ideas as too profound for average minds to comprehend.

Adjective

galaxy-brain (comparative more galaxy-brain, superlative most galaxy-brain)

1. (Internet slang, sarcastic) Appearing to be insightful and profound, but actually absurd, incomprehensible, or nonsensical.

   Synonym: galaxy-brained

   • 2018 September 20, Barry Thompson, “Heavy Leather Topless Dance Party”, in DigBoston, page 12:

     On the surface, none of this makes sense. Yet it becomes rational once you explore the context—in fact, if you glimpse the bigger picture, the scene crosses the threshold into galaxy-brain logic.

   • 2019, Natalia Galicza, "For The Record", The Fine Print, Winter 2019, page 10:

     Permatemp, the upcoming album from A. J. Herring's usually one-man band Velma and the Happy Campers, seeks to explore the galaxy-brain realization that the only permanent thing about life is its impermanence.

   • 2019 October 28, Laura Bradley, “Does Joker Really Have to Be About the Joker? Warner Bros. Execs Reportedly Debated Just That”, in Vanity Fair:

     Hollywood is no stranger to the occasional galaxy-brain take, but this one is pretty out there—as Warner Bros. execs evaluated Todd Phillips’s Joker script back in 2017, they reportedly found themselves in “lively conversations” centered around one jarring question: Does Joker really need to be about, like, the Joker?

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:galaxy-brain.

See also

• big brain
• 4D chess
• 5head