canon event
noun
A formative life experience; a relatable episode of good fortune or hardship
What does canon event mean?
A canon event is an experience in a person’s life that comes to shape or define who they are. On social media, it is commonly used to refer to relatable, often embarrassing, incidents that happen to people in the course of everyday life as a playful comment on personal growth.
Examples of canon event
i think my october canon event was someone spreading a rumor that i died and then having someone i knew for 3 days confess their love to me
—@simonthepuertorican, TikTok, 29 Oct. 2024
Somewhere a twelve year old girl’s mom is giving her a copy of Pride and Prejudice. We cannot interfere; it’s a canon event.
—So would I be who I am without sickle cell disease? Was a sickle cell diagnosis my canon event?
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Where does canon event come from?
Canon event was popularized by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a 2023 animated film featuring different versions of the superhero Spider-Man, set in a fictional multiverse. In one scene, a Spider-Man explains to another that, despite their differences, every Spider-Man undergoes similar painful experiences in their lives—which the film calls canon events—that form their shared, distinct identity as Spider-Man characters, and that attempts to interfere with these events have disastrous consequences. The death of Spider-Man’s uncle, for example, is one such canon event. This scene of the film sparked a social media trend immediately after its release in June 2023. The trend, which went viral on TikTok, featured people making humorous exaggerations of minor embarrassing episodes or awkward phases, and describing them as canon events pivotal to their growth and development. Many videos of the trend used music from the specific scene in the Spider-Man film, captioning the observation they are sharing with “I can’t interfere, it’s a canon event.”
The canon in canon event refers to sanctioned or accepted plot points, characters, and other aspects of storylines that govern fictional worlds, especially in multimedia franchises adapted from comic books, science fiction, or fantasy. Canon, originally meaning “a rule or law, especially decreed by a church,” evolved as a term for other officially recognized books or other creative works. While similar uses of the specific phrase canon event do predate (and likely influenced its use in) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the film and subsequent Internet trend spread general use of the term and cemented its meaning in reference to specific events in fictional media.
How is canon event used?
Canon event is primarily used on social media to refer to incidents that have happened to a person. It might refer to a commonplace setback, such as getting a cold, or a more intense trial, such as experiencing a breakup. The term can also be used in describing a positive development in one’s life, such as earning a promotion at work. The term has evolved from its original use, and now informally (and often playfully) captures various highs and lows that a person experiences, and which provide a universal observation on a common human experience.
