This blog is very sus.

So Among Us has been a bit of a fad lately. It’s basically a computer version of the classic Werewolf-style games where one (or sometimes two) people are secretly working to kill the rest of the group while the villagers (everyone else) try to figure out who the werewolves are before they all die. Among Us doesn’t have people covering their eyes or putting their heads down but instead has the crew having to roam through their ship or base fixing various broken systems. Eventually though, a dead body will be found and the finger pointing will begin. The Impostor(s) can only win by successfully throwing the rest of the crew off the scent until its deadly work is done and there’s not enough crewmates left to vote it out of the airlock.

Among Us has become popular enough that the term “sus” started dispersing through memes and chatrooms. As you might guess it’s just really a shortening of “suspicious” but easier to type out in a time-limited body discussion session.

sus red = “The red player was acting shifty and I suspect them of foul play”

Anyhow I pondered about that since I was starting to see “sus” bleed out into general usage. How long before this gets added to the Oxford dictionary the way “frenemy” was?

According to Google, my answer is apparently “over 200 years ago.”

Yes, “sus” was a thing long before Among Us, which just goes to remind me that some things we think are newfangled concoctions of the youths are in fact something grandma might have said or done. Or maybe even we ourselves did but forgot, until we’re alone in Electrical and Red comes strolling around the corner…