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.

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.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        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’.

        • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          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.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 months ago

    Slang is stupid, film at 11:00. This is just old people complaining about young people. We’ve been doing this for literally thousands of years. It’s not newsworthy, not even in in the modern age of 6 second attention spans.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 months ago

    Every generation has this article published about them, congratulations, you are officially old and out of touch.

  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    3·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Zombiepirate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      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.

  • A_A@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    After having thoroughly learned the language of their parents, around 8 or maybe 12 years old, children are good at learning languages and they play at doing better than their parents … inventing things … testing them.
    They want to know that they are good enough and to prove this to themselves they have to do better in some way than their parents.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    My 14-year-old isn’t especially slangy, but occasionally she asks me if I’ve heard some term or other, and I invariably haven’t. Most recently, it was “Scene,” which is apparently some sort of fashion aesthetic.

    • Klanky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      ‘Scene’ kids were the Hot Topic emo kids when I was a teenager 20ish years ago. As someone who was into 2nd wave emo, it always made me die a little that ‘Scene’ is what most people think of when they hear ‘emo’.

    • Zahille7@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      “Scene” was around when I was in middle and high school around 10 years ago.

      They were like the preppy goth kids, who listened to Avril Lavigne and such.

      Edit: there’s also a Hollywood Undead song that has the lines “wake up, shave beard, grab beer, put on some scene gear”

      • solrize@lemmy.world
        01·
        2 months ago

        And Harry don’t mind if he don’t make the scene. He’s got a daytime job, he’s doing all right.

        Avril Lavigne? Of Lavigne and Shirley? ;)

  • msage@programming.dev
    11·
    2 months ago

    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.”