Self-injury slang online: building community through language

When I first discovered self-injury communities on Reddit in 2018, I was surprised by the amount of slang terms members were using and that I couldn’t understand. “Styro”, “beans”, “grippy sock jail”, anyone who isn’t part of the community would have trouble making sense of these terms.

The fact that online communities can create an entire vocabulary around such an obscure topic is very interesting. This lexicon is public information, anyone can access threads on Reddit, Tumblr, or public comments on Instagram, although it requires time and curiosity to be fully understood and used appropriately. I don’t claim to be familiar with all the slang terms that can be found online. Slang also evolves fast¹, so it is important to document it before it becomes lost into obscurity. I came across some terms 7 years ago that are already no longer in use, and recently discovered new words I had never heard of before.

Of course, self-injury slang also varies between online communities, social media platforms, and countries. Here I’ll be referring to slang used by English-speaking people that I have witnessed on Reddit and Tumblr between 2018 and 2025. I haven’t seen these terms on any forums yet.

Creating a sense of community

While initially the use of self-injury slang terms confused me, I gradually got used to it and integrated them into my vocabulary. I wasn’t the only one, as every now and then a new member would post on self-harm sub-reddits, asking about the meaning of a word, trying to fit in. Self-injury slang may appear exclusive at first. Someone who is unaware of the meaning of these words may not understand messages and feel excluded. Language plays a key role in creating a sense of community, it is shared knowledge². This is a new vocabulary created by people who self-injure for people who self-injure. The sense of community and belonging is particularly important given the seriousness of self-injury. People who struggle with mental health issues may find relief in knowing that they are not alone, that others understand what they are going through³.

This sense of community goes beyond the mere shared experience and vocabulary. Self-injury slang even translates into humor, through the use of memes that can only be understood by members³. For example, to “hit beans” is slang for cutting to fat, and “salsa” for blood. Memes displaying a can of baked beans or a jar of salsa sauce are common and immediately understood, even though they are rather outdated now.

Some of these slang terms may not be exclusive to self-injury, and can be used in other communities dedicated to mental health. For example, while I often came across the phrase “grippy sock jail”, which refers to a psychiatric hospital, in self-injury subreddits, I’ve also witnessed some occurrences among communities which revolve around depression or borderline personality disorder. This is not surprising given communities are often permeable, and given the high rate of comorbidity of self-injury with BPD or depression. Members who engage in self-injury and suffer from BPD may learn slang in self-injury communities, and transfer it to BPD groups and vice versa.

Talking about specifics

Slang related to self-injury enables members to refer to very specific topics without having to write lengthy descriptions. The most common example is the severity of a cut. Some members occasionally post anatomic illustrations of the skin to illustrate each slang term and the layer it refers to. From what I have witnessed online, the depth of cuts is often an important aspect for people who injure themselves. Online competition, and the unhealthy association of the severity of self-injury with the severity of emotional suffering, makes those who cut deeper more validated than those who cut on more superficial layers of the skin. Terms like “styro” (dermis) or “beans” (fat) are often used by members to celebrate or brag about the severity of their self-injury, while the derogatory phrase “baby cuts” invalidates those who scratch their skin.

Slang about the severity of a cut can also become handy when seeking medical help, as the use of precise terms that are known by everyone in the community enables members to avoid lengthy, and potentially unclear, descriptions. This also prevents members from explicitly mentioning gory details which can be triggering to some.

Minimizing the severity

Self-injury slang enables members to talk about serious topics in a lighter way, which can be less triggering. In their words, they “yeeted with their slicey boï and now have to clean the juice”. The words are cute, often stem from food vocabulary, and would almost make us forget the harsh reality they refer to. This is a way to cope with a normally difficult topic, to make it sound less serious. Not everyone in the community enjoys these euphemisms however. Some members express their disagreement with the use of words, arguing it normalizes and trivializes it². From what I could observe in these communities, it seems older children and teenagers are more fond of such slang than adults.

With increasing concern about the harmful effect of internet use, social media platforms now block keywords related to self-harm, eating disorders, or suicide. By avoiding using sensitive words such as “cuts”, “self-harm”, or “blood”, members found a way to escape censorship on social media and to preserve their community. This can be done by using slang terms that are unknown to the general public, or by changing the spelling of words such as “s3lf h4rm” or “cvt”. For example, despite #selfharm being banned on Instagram, self-injury communities can bypass the ban and find relevant content under #selfharmmm or #selfharn⁴, or ambiguous hashtags such as #blithe^{1, 3}.

Because these obscure terms can have serious meanings, parents, health professionals, and anyone who works with teenagers should be curious and aware of the language youths use. Importantly, the use of slang is not limited to self-injury. Slang and obscure terminology is widely used within eating disorders communities, with terms such as “Ana and Mia”, or “thinspo”.

The table below gives some of the most common slang terms, along with some examples of the way they are used in a sentence. The table is not exhaustive, I have omitted more rare terms I wasn’t aware of, as it seems to me they are not even known by everyone in the community. I believe the most popular terms are “baby cuts”, “beans”, “styro”, “SH”, “styro” and “yeet”.

References

[1] Moreno, M. A., Ton, A., Selkie, E., & Evans, Y. (2016). Secret Society 123: Understanding the Language of Self-Harm on Instagram. The Journal of Adolescent Health, 58(1), 78-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.09.015

[2] Sukhija, V. J. (2023). Slang and Self-Harm: A Qualitative Exploration of the Usage of Slang on Reddit Self-Harm Communities [Master’s thesis]. https://thesis.unipd.it/handle/20.500.12608/48647

[3] Guccini, F., & McKinley, G. (2022). “How deep do I have to cut?“: Non-suicidal self-injury and imagined communities of practice on Tumblr. Social Science & Medicine, 296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114760

[4] Fulcher, J. A., Dunbar, S., Orlando, E., Woodruff, S. J., & Santarossa, S. (2020). #selfharn on Instagram: understanding online communities surrounding non-suicidal self-injury through conversations and common properties among authors. Digital Health, 6, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055207620922389

Slang term	Lay or medical term	Explanation and example
baby cuts (noun)	cut to the epidermis	“Baby cuts” can be invalidating and minimize someone’s distress if their cuts are not considered deep enough. “Baby cuts are as valid as styros”
barcode (noun)	cluster of parallel scars	Such scars look similar to a barcode “My leg looks like barcode”
beans (noun)	fat	Online self-injury communities find that fat looks similar to beans “I hit beans”“I cut to beans”
butterfly (noun)	steri strip	Steri strip bandaids look similar to butterflies. “Butterfly bandages are so useful”
cat scratch (noun)	cut to the epidermis	These cuts involve the superficial layer of the skin, and look similar to scratches. When asked about these, people often explain that their cat scratched them as an excuse. “I do cat scratches”
enchantment table (noun)	scars or self-injury wounds that do not follow an organized pattern	Such scars and wounds apparently bear similarities to enchantment tables in Minecraft. They are often opposed to “barcodes”. “I go enchantment table”“Enchantment table on my thigh, barcode on my arm”
grippy sock jail (noun)	psychiatric hospital	Patients are often given non-slip socks in psychiatric hospitals, hence the name. “I’m back in grippy sock jail”
laffy taffy (noun)	fascia or muscle	Laffy taffy is a candy, which apparently looks similar to muscle. I haven’t come across this term often, potentially because cuts to the muscle are more rare. “I cut to laffy taffy”
mango day (noun)	a day with self-injury or self-injury thoughts	This term is more recent than the other ones. It stems from a video of someone cutting a mango that is reminiscent of self-injury. “I’m having a mango day”
play fruit ninja (verb)	to self-injure	Inspired by the mobile video game in which a player must slice fruits. “I want to play fruit ninja on myself”
salsa (noun)	blood	Sometimes preceded by “forbidden”: “forbidden salsa”.The term can be used in memes with an image of salsa sauce. “There are salsa stains on my bed”
sewerslide (noun)	suicide	Sounds similar to suicide. Sometimes the word “commit” is coded as “kermit” “Don’t kermit sewerslide”
SH (noun and verb)	self-harm	A shorter way to refer to SH. “Why do you SH?”
slicey boï (noun)	self-injury tools	This term seems to be outdated now, it seems it was mainly in use from 2019 to 2022. “My mom took my slicey bois”
spicy (adjective)	stingy	Often used to refer to showers during which injuries sting. “Just had a spicy shower”
strawberry gashes (noun)	cuts	This term is now outdated. “I’ve got strawberry gashes on my body”
styro / styrofoam (noun and adjective)	cut to the dermis	“Styro cuts” reveal a white layer which is deemed similar to styrofoam. “I hit styro”“Are my cuts styro?”“How long do styros take to heal?”“Is my styro cut infected?”
yeet (noun and verb)	cut, self-injury	This term was one of the most popular, but is now outdated. Adjectives can be added to change its meaning. For example, “heat yeet” refers to self-injury through burning, and “final yeet” to suicide. “I yeeted yesterday”“They saw my yeets”
yeet juice (noun)	blood	Similar to “salsa” “My yeet juice dripped on the floor”