Every generation has slang, but Gen Alpha’s has a particularly unhinged quality, some parents say. Still, experts say their bad rep isn’t totally deserved.
In the beginning, there was “skibidi.”
It appeared abruptly in the lexicons of kids under 14 — the first slang term unique to Generation Alpha. Parents’ ears perked up as they began to hear it around the dinner table. It could mean bad, cool, or nothing at all, their kids explained. Then a dozen more incomprehensible terms followed suit.
Gen Z’s “slay” and “tea” are officially vintage, giving way to “sigma,” “gyatt” and “fanum tax.”
Everyone’s getting whiplash.
This is not even vaguely new.
The difference is the rate at which new slang is born.
The primary difference is that the slang ends up born (and abandoned) on the national and international levels, whereas in times past slang would become lodged in the regional vernacular first, and some of it would never move ‘up’ to replace old slang. In a sense, then, there was more slang in days past - it just was less ‘standardized’.
I kinda get that. We called anime “Japanimation” in the 80s. Nothing racist there for y’all haters, just what we called it. But you’re right, never heard that term outside my local group.
Every generation has this article published about them, congratulations, you are officially old and out of touch.
As a Gen-Z, I feel this divide is the result of our gen growing up on the internet and Gen-Alpha growing up in the internet. Like culturally I feel Gen-Z still had roots to reality hidden behind layers of absurdism and abstraction. Gen-Alpha however feels like it’s generating new cultural landmarks with no connections to reality.
Like, skibidi was absurdist humor, which is now being covered by absurdist layers. It’s absurdism all the way down! It’s like some twisted form of enlightenment. To clarify I don’t say this in a necessarily negative light, I just think it’s interesting from the viewpoint of our species as a whole.
I know Gen-Z was experiencing a stage of wanting to assert real connections to the world against algorithmic forces, before covid that is, now I think we’re a little scattered again.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the ranting of an out-of-touch opinion writer caught in a moral panic.
They’re just annoyed that the world is changing around them. People have made the same complaint about literally every generation before.
I was thinking about this last night because I saw this meme and felt like it was very “boomer humor” which got me thinking about how humor has seemingly changed throughout the years.
It does seem absurdism is much more common nowadays, however it’s not just that either, there’s layers of nuance usually that makes it “deeper” as well.
Would be interesting to see a deep dive on how humor has evolved through the years aside from my biases. You make an interesting point about it being “no connections to reality” but I’m not sure it’s entirely correct.
Dividing us into generations is a way to make us feel segmented and separated. The concept of generations is made up, we shouldn’t feel tribal about the era we were born in.
It could mean bad, cool, or nothing at all, their kids explained
So it’s a Schrodingly word
It’s literally as literal as literally
Fuck fucking fuck fuckers…FUCK
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
^^^[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)
wiki ↩︎
Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word.
Not any different from, cool, hot, or ass.
Well it’s different from cool, hot, or ass because skibidi and gyatt isn’t a real word. I never heard a new word that got so many meaning shoved into them so fast it become meaningless.
skibidi and gyatt isn’t a real word
Every word that we use wasn’t a real word until it started getting used. Rejecting new words is a prescriptivist fallacy. If anything this is an exciting time, because we get to study accelerated language changes.
Rejecting new words
That wasn’t my intention at all lol, please reread what i wrote.
They’ll go away soon enough. It’s just been dialed up to 11 through media like tiktok.
the urban word dictionary is about to get even more popular
I think you mean it’s about to go gyatt, skibidy sigma before the kids get older and it gets an ohio negative aura.
It’s about to go booty elite?
Hyper dingo, no skort!
This is basically repeated every 10 years. Some of them will stick around for the long-term some will die. I don’t for see skibidi or gyatt stick around long-term. At least not unironical. I’m in my 40s and I don’t have any peers who still use words like “phat” or “whateves”. But someone saying bling would not seem out of place.
Remember that year or two where everything cool was “da bomb”?
I’ve been watching Language Jones lately, and I think he’s got a good and academically well-informed take on this topic.
Thank you for that. I have a new subscription to binge.
Can’t wait for some local news with traditional reporting of teen slang:
“Is your teen child using slang like ‘no cap’? It could indicade that they are having Sex-Without-Protection. More at 11.”
Quit taxing their gig so hard-core cruster.
Get hip with the new jive, daddy-o!
Reminds me of Nadsat from the movie, A Clockwork Orange. Haven’t read the novel yet.
The book is amazing.
There’s a lot more in the novel that isn’t in the film.
That said, the copy that Kubrick used to adapt into the film did not have the final chapter of the novel (it was an edited down American version) and it is such a better ending than the book.
