摆烂bǎi làn

Letting it rot

bǎi làn le.摆烂了。I give up.

摆烂, “let it rot”, means you stop trying to fix a bad situation and let it get worse on purpose. It is the mood word that followed 躺平 in 2022.

Took off: 2022
Started in: NBA talk
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

躺平 is a calm choice to want less. 摆烂 is messier: the project is failing, the exam is tomorrow, and you have decided not to care. It is often funny because it is so open about giving up.

How people use it

It is now ordinary online Chinese for students, workers and sports fans. When Oxford chose “goblin mode” as its word of 2022, Chinese media translated it as 摆烂模式.

琦琦

论文写完了吗？
lùn wén xiě wán le ma?
Done with your paper yet?
还没，我已经摆烂了
hái méi, wǒ yǐ jīng bǎi làn le
Nope. I’ve given up on it.
后天就要交啊！
hòu tiān jiù yào jiāo a!
It’s due the day after tomorrow!
先睡一觉，明天再说
xiān shuì yí jiào, míng tiān zài shuō
I’ll sleep first and worry about it tomorrow.

More examples

明天就考试了，我决定今天摆烂。
míng tiān jiù kǎo shì le, wǒ jué dìng jīn tiān bǎi làn.
The exam is tomorrow, and today I’ve decided to give up.
这个项目没救了，大家都摆烂了。
zhè gè xiàng mù méi jiù le, dà jiā dōu bǎi làn le.
This project is beyond saving. Everyone has stopped trying.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 摆烂 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

Most accounts trace it to Chinese sports talk, where 摆烂 translated the NBA term “tanking”: a team losing on purpose to get a better draft pick. Tencent News described that use in April 2022. It moved through esports talk in 2021 and then into everyday chat.

By 2022 it was everywhere online, and Sixth Tone named it one of the buzzwords of the year. 咬文嚼字 left it off its list on purpose because of its negative meaning.

The original. There is no single image. Sixth Tone’s list of the words of 2022 explains it in English. Sixth Tone