卡了

What does 卡了 mean?

卡 (kǎ) is what a card does when it jams in a slot; 卡了 is that, in the past tense. Formally it names lag, frame drops, a screen that stops answering. In practice it is a reflex: miss the shot and 卡了 flies into chat before you've decided to type it. Nobody believes you. The standard reply is 真的卡了还是菜？ (“was it really lag, or are you just bad?”), and the standard answer to that is to type 卡了 a second time. Away from games it covers anything that stalls: a buffering stream (直播间卡了), a frozen meeting feed (会议卡了). Roughly half the time it is a real complaint. The rest of the time it is a shield.

Where does 卡了 come from?

卡顿 (kǎdùn, “stutter, freeze”) has described choppy video since the broadband era of the 2000s, when any slow connection turned a stream into a slideshow. The shorter 卡了 form belongs to the 2010s and to multiplayer games like League of Legends, PUBG and then 王者荣耀, where a death got blamed on lag before it got blamed on aim. What made it universal was 2020. Everyone was suddenly on video calls, and “我卡了” turned into an accepted way to vanish from a meeting you never wanted to join. The excuse walked out of gaming and into ordinary life.

How to use 卡了

• 刚才那波不是我菜，是我卡了！
  Gāngcái nà bō bú shì wǒ cài, shì wǒ kǎ le!
  That last play wasn't me being bad — I lagged!
• 别催了，我这边卡了，画面都静止了。
  Bié cuī le, wǒ zhèbiān kǎ le, huàmiàn dōu jìngzhǐ le.
  Stop rushing me, I'm lagging — the screen is literally frozen.