“Bro, your drip is mid but your rizz is immaculate no cap.” If that sentence made perfect sense to you, congrats: you might be fluent in Gen Z slang. If it sounded like gibberish, buckle up. As a Gen Z college senior in the U.S, I’m here to spill the tea (translation: share the insider info) on why my generation’s slang is downright iconic – and hilariously bizarre. We’ve basically invented a new digital dialect that leaves even older siblings scratching their heads in confusion. It took me 2 hours to explain to my dad how to use “lowkey and highkey.” From TikTok trends to Twitter memes, our lingo evolves at lightning speed, making even Millennials feel ancient. Here’s why Gen Z slang is “the best, weirdest, most creative slang era” ever, periodt.
So how did all these bizarre terms enter our daily conversations? The short answer: the internet, especially social media and meme culture, turbocharged slang in a way no previous generation has seen. Gen Z lives online, and our slang is born and spread in TikTok sounds, Twitter threads, Instagram captions, and meme group chats at a breakneck pace. It’s Darwinian lingo evolution on fast-forward.
Viral Incubators: Platforms like TikTok are major slang factories. A silly catchphrase or a catchy audio clip can spawn a new saying practically overnight. One day you see a TikTok of a guy saying “six, seven” in a funny context, and suddenly everyone is quoting “6-7” as an inside joke for no reason whatsoever (True story: “six-seven” became a bizarre meme response after a TikTok edit of a basketball player dropping those numbers in a song: proof that Gen Z will geek out over the most random things, even plain numbers. We’ll turn anything into a joke.)
Because millions of us scroll these apps, a new term can go from niche to nationwide in a day. As one lexicographer put it, slang now “shifting more quickly” is real. Social media lets us see and copy informal language from millions of people instantly, something no generation had before. In the past, you might pick up slang from your school or local scene; today, one viral tweet or TikTok sound and boom – kids from Texas to Tokyo are saying “It’s giving main character.”
Gen Z slang doesn’t just spread fast: it changes fast. New words erupt in popularity, then sometimes die off just as quick. Remember when everyone was saying “YOLO” or calling things “on fleek”? (No? Exactly.) What’s popular this semester might be cringe by graduation. Even we joke that by the time our parents learn a slang word, we’ve moved on. A journalist observing this noted how a phrase can explode overnight and “die out as quickly as it came.” Slang turnover now is tremendous compared to earlier decades.
Old School vs New School: Slang Showdown
Gen Z definitely didn’t invent teen slang: every generation has had its wild words. But ours is arguably the most extreme remix yet. To appreciate how funky our slang is, let’s pit it against some past eras:
The 1950s: Your grandparents were slinging slang back in the day and some of it was pretty colorful. In diners and drive-ins, the cool kids might say “Daddy-O” to a friend (the 50s version of “bro,” more or less), or call little kids “ankle-biters”. Something excellent was “ginchy,” and if you were cruising for a bruising… well, that meant you were asking for trouble. A lot of 50s slang now sounds adorably tame or just plain odd. (“Gee whillikers, that Hepcat’s really hip!” – translations available upon request.) As one writer put it, each generation’s slang makes the previous generation’s “seem trite, corny, and even embarrassing. So while daddy-o and swell were the bee’s knees in the 50s, by the 60s they were cringe, much like how “on fleek” had a short shine in the 2010s before we buried it alive.
Valley Girls and 80s Teens: Like, oh my god, the 1980s had its own totally tubular slang, fer sure. The Valley girl dialect in particular, popularized by Moon Zappa’s 1982 parody song, gave us gems like “grody to the max” (disgusting/gross) and “gag me with a spoon” (an expression of extreme disgust). Basically the equivalent of saying “I literally can’t even.” Every sentence was peppered with “like” and “totally” “Like, gag me, that outfit is grody”. It was a whole vibe that older folks mocked then, much like some people mock Gen Z’s “OMG I’m dead slayyy” mannerisms now. Fun fact: that valley-girl “uptalk” and vocab was considered an airheaded fad, but bits of it (using “like” constantly) have permeated our speech nationwide. So in a way, the valley girls walked so VSCO girls and e-girls could run.
2000s and Millennial Text Speak: Early internet users (late Gen X and Millennials) popularized abbreviations like LOL (laughing out loud), BRB (be right back), TTYL (talk to you later), and the pervasive OMG. They also gave us leetspeak and gamer slang: pwned, n00b, rofl, LMAO – the works. At the time, older adults thought this was ruining the English language (sound familiar?). But those acronyms seem almost quaint now. I mean, who even says “ROFL” anymore? We Gen Zers have largely dropped full-on text acronyms in favor of emoji and ironic misspellings. (Example: where a Millennial might reply “LMAO that’s hilarious,” a Gen Z will send back a skull emoji or write “I’m deceased.” Same sentiment, new flavor.).
Comparing eras, you notice one big difference: the volume and speed of Gen Z slang. 1950s teens maybe had a few dozen hip phrases in circulation (plus a bunch of regional ones). 1980s valley talk was a specific subculture. 2000s text slang was about efficiency and early net culture. But Gen Z? We have an avalanche of slang, sourced from all over internet gaming, Black Twitter and AAVE, drag and ballroom culture, K-pop stans, Vine/TikTok audios, you name it. We’re remixing and inventing words daily, borrowing from many communities (sometimes controversially lots of mainstream Gen Z slang originates from African American Vernacular English and LGBTQ+ ballroom slang, which raises issues of cultural appropriation when used without context). The result is a wild patchwork of expressions.
Why We Speak in Memes: Coping, Identity, and Clout
Okay, so we’ve established that Gen Z slang is fire (awesome) and moves faster than a caffeinated TikToker. But why do we use slang so much? What drives my generation to basically create a new mini-language full of in-jokes and absurd phrases?
Slang is the secret handshake of Gen Z. Using these weird words signals that you’re part of the club: you get it, you’re online, you’re one of us. Linguists describe this as “linguistic identity work,” where young people coin slang to set themselves apart and build a shared identity. Just as previous youth cultures had their lingo (beatniks, hippies, skaters, etc.), today our culture is largely internet-based. Dropping a “no cap” or “big yikes” in conversation shows you’re fluent in the digital zeitgeist. It’s almost like speaking a dialect: one scholar noted older generations often feel “it’s as if we’re speaking a different language” than them, and honestly we kind of are! Slang helps form an in-group: when I call something “mid” and my friend laughs, we both know we’re on the same page, culturally. If I don’t want to go eat we say “chalk it”, sometimes if you are too lazy then just “chalk.” We even adapt our speech depending on audience; many of us code-switch, using heavy slang with peers, but dialing it back with older folks or in formal settings. As Brewster from Merriam-Webster says, “slang is an inside language… a way of saying something special” that marks belonging. So, part of our slang obsession is about belonging to a community, forging a generational camaraderie through funny words. We grew up in chaotic times, and making a meme out of everything became a bonding ritual.
Social media algorithms actually favor trendy language: the more people engage with a slang term, the more it gets shown, leading even more people to adopt it.. It’s a self-feeding loop. New slang also emerges to evade content filters (so-called algospeak). For example, saying someone “unalived” themselves instead of died became common on TikTok to avoid demonetization algorithms. Similarly, terms like “spicy eggplant” might be code for something that would otherwise get flagged. We’re literally inventing words to game algorithms: a very 2020s phenomenon.
Moreover, the fact that we converse so much in text (DMs, tweets, posts) means we play with spelling, punctuation, and typography for effect. Slang isn’t just spoken: it’s written in viral tweets with all lowercase for irony, or with extra letters (“slaaayyy”) for emphasis. As Brewster noted, “slang was traditionally auditory… now it’s written,” Gen Z has basically turned casual writing into an art form of its own – digital body language, if you will. We abbreviate mercilessly (why say “that’s suspicious” when “sus” will do?), and we invent terms to keep up with our rapidly changing online lives. New platform, new lingo: Twitter gave us “ratio” and “OOMF” (one of my followers), Being extremely online means our language is always morphing to fit the space.
Finally, there’s a bit of a clout chase in using fresh slang. Nobody wants to be the oldie still saying “YOLO swag” when everyone else moved to “bet – that’s bussin.” Keeping up with slang has become a minor social currency. If you drop the latest phrase appropriately, you might seem funnier or more in-the-know (cue the upvotes and retweets). Conversely, nothing causes secondhand embarrassment like someone misusing slang to try to appear cool (looking at you, brands and that one aunt who comments “#fire #lit fam” on your posts). So, we have an incentive to stay current: it’s socially rewarding within our circles.
Embracing the Chaos, Creativity, and Community
Is it the best slang era of all time? Naturally, I’m biased, but I’d throw a “yas, slay” in agreement. Why? Because our slang isn’t just a few goofy phrases: it’s an entire subculture of humor and identity. We’ve taken bits of language from every corner (previous generations, AAVE, internet subgroups, global pop culture) and mashed them into a vibrant collage that is uniquely Gen Z. It’s inclusive (new slang catches on from Seoul to London to LA in a blink), it’s ever-changing (keeping us on our toes), and above all, it’s wildly creative. Who else would think to use random numbers (“6-7”) as a joke punchline just because it sounded funny in a TikTok? Who else would turn “mother” into a slang term for an iconic woman (e.g. “Taylor Swift is mother, period” – meaning the ultimate queen)? We roast, we roast ourselves, we make everything a meme. No one talks “normal” anymore and that’s the beauty of it. Normal is boring.
Instead, Gen Z built a chaotic, colorful dialect that lets us connect and express ourselves in the most extra ways possible. It might confuse older folks (and even us at times), but it brings us together. It’s a language of shared experience: of growing up online, of collective anxieties and inside jokes, of a generation that has seen some stuff and choose to say “I’m dead ” about it rather than cry.
Looking ahead, our slang will undoubtedly keep evolving. Gen Alpha (the kids after 2012) are already cooking up their own lingo (help). But I suspect some Gen Z-isms will stick and even enter the mainstream lexicon, just as “selfie” or “emoji” did. And even if specific words fall out of use, the spirit of our slang, the ironic, rapid-fire, deeply communal way of creating language, is likely here to stay. We’ve shown that language can be bent and reinvented in real time by anyone with a smartphone. That’s kind of amazing when you think about it.
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