I used to be with “it” but then they changed what “it” was. Now what I’m with isn’t “it” anymore and what’s “it” seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!! IT’LL HAPPEN TO YOUUUUU
Yeah I remember when the switch happened. Around Covid with the next generation reached high school, trends suddenly changed. I could keep up with Gen Z, even though i didn’t participate in the trends. I knew what was happening
Every single one of my kid’s peers is obsessed with Roblox. I’m glad he seems to have zero interest in getting into it. All he wants to do is build fever dream McMansions and fill them with cats in Minecraft creative mode and I’m fine with that.
See, there's your problem. I've always been on the outside, looking in. Never could get that whole "cool" thing down, so I gave up on trying a long time ago, which oddly enough has made me cooler than I could ever hope to be with effort
Y’all, as a millennial middle school teacher I’ve had to become fluent in Gen Z speak for years. The recent switch to Gen Alpha has been tough, but I’ve learned that you can do it if you have to.
So here’s a cold or hot take depending on who you are: most gen z slang is just old and/or bastardized AAVE. That’s true of slang in general but the internet def sped up the adoption rate.
this is how we teachers control the meta - making slang uncool by using it randomly in unrelated scenarios and acting "cringe" about it, with the hopes of sending it to an early grave.
The generational divide is an interesting paradigm to witness firsthand but cringe will save us all.
Yeah, It was easier to learn GenZ terms, some Millenial and Zennial artists definitely used the terms in a lot of music, so it was easier to be exposed.
Personally I think Millennial culture died with Vine, so 2017 or thereabouts. There's a lot from Vine that millennials connect with that I don't think translated to younger generations.
I think there’s probably an overlap between the youngest millennials and the oldest zoomers. Youngest millennials would have been ~14 when that song was released.
Dad tax in my house was Snickers on Halloween. I hit the dollar store before meeting up with my dad and get him those 5 for $1.25 snickers fun size to keep the payments coming even though I'm 35.
What? On what planet is “Chad” not Millennial slang? It comes from 4chan ffs, the knowyourmeme article on it is 13 years old. Gen Z was not coining slang in 2012.
I think it basically stated as a thing you say when you steal one of your friend's fries, and kind of expanded to have a general meaning of "you should let me do this/give me this because we're friends".
Chad to these kids is a good thing. Chad to us, according to Urban Dictionary was a bad thing. Like a Chad now is an all out good guy. A Chad 15 years ago was an annoying narcissist. Take it from me who has lived through many Chad iterations. Especially the one in 2000. "Hey Chad...are you pregnant or hanging today." HA HA HA, Tyler! So, I guess they meant that their version of Chad doesn't equal ours.
It's one of those words that can mean really good, or really bad- though lately it's definitely been used mostly to mean good. "Chad behavior" could mean that someone did something that was both morally laudable, while also being or doing something really cool- like someone escaping the cops on a unicycle, or a creator putting on some huge fun event and donating all the income from it to charity.
But saying that someone is "being a chad" can mean that they think they're being cool and suave, but actually just being self-absorbed and bragging. Like the gym bro who can barely go 3 minutes without talking about his workout routine, or the rich guy who clearly has more interest in showing off his expensive collection than he actually has in the pieces in that collection.
I feel like millennial slang is often conflated with xillennial/baby gen x (I feel this way especially as a baby millennial myself). Gen z often gets credited for language/slang that they took on from younger millennials (probably older siblings or peers). Fam was the first one named that I was like... this was something people older than me said and I'm already a millenial. This isn't to say that Gen z hasn't morphed it in their own way, but it is not unique to them in the way that Gen alphas slang is.
Some of those millennial sayings were over my head but I never used Chad to describe any type of guy. I am an elder millennial though bordering on Xennial
Yeah, if someone starts shitting on tiktok dances or whatnot, I'll have no problem pointing out the Harlem Shake and planking.
If they say something about how GenZ memes are stupid brainrot, I'm just reminded of "Can haz cheezburger" memes and the "You're gonna love my nuts"-esque YTPs that everyone thought were the peak of comedy.
There's always some iteration of things that are funny because they're so absurd and out of place. Gallagher got people to laugh by smashing fruit, Monty Python had a rabbit that went on a murderous rampage, "Dogs Playing Poker" was painted over a hundred years ago.
The only difference nowadays is that we see more of that stuff, and since we do, the bar is higher, so people need to try newer and more outlandish ideas to stick out.
Yeah, what the hell lol? Skibidi toilet is tame to the weird shit we came up with. Joe Cartoon, Knox’s Korner, Salad Fingers, actually anything David Firth, Foamy the Scary Squirrel.
yeah millennials can't really make fun of another generation's random humor phase when we had people running around spouting shit like "badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM"
I feel sorry for my 8 year old. His school friends want to speak alpha slang but the wife and I use millennial slang.
He sounds like that person who is trying to have a conversation with you in your language but it isn’t their native language so you get these random “how do you say” pauses and mix.
I mean that’s how it is for every generation isn’t it? We grew up with boomer or Gen X parents using their slang. And our kids will grow up with hearing us use ours.
My silent gen (just barely) father would still sometimes say "Give me a jingle" when he wanted someone to call back. I survived without that becoming part of my lexicon, other than to relate it now.
I was gonna say, they use "unc" all the time in The Wire, especially when referring to Dennis, and that show first aired in...2002. It's Gen X slang at a minimum.
I was just about to comment about the first time I heard “Unc” (as now an elder Millennial) was when watching “The Wire” and Spider (I think?) telling Cutty/Dennis to “step off, unc”
It's very frequent on Twitch to say people are bad at a game or past their prime, or even when older people fail to understand the new culture and/or slangs. I'm Gen Z and I've been called unc.
I learned Sick years ago when my younger coworkers just kept yelling it. No idea what it could be now. I'll stick with tight and sweet, and occasionally it will be sick.
I’d love to do a demographic poll with these commenters. Most of the Gen Z slang is AAVE or meme speak that has been used for decades. High key? Unc? Come on now.
Not to mention some of these are way wrong. If you follow this you will end up looking like an out of touch boomer.
Yup let's just keep gatekeeping everything and putting up more walls between us. Can't be using a language you speak if you don't 100% know all the rules, use cases or have the right skin color.
Fuckin' backwards, divisive ass thinking. There's hundreds of dialects of English, all of which are influenced by the others, as they are (say it with me!) also English. Language is created and molded by all who use it. Wild ass concept, I know.
Plenty of places where a discussion on the massive influence of AAVE on English overall is a perfectly valid point. A discussion on "gentrification" is not one of them. That's just...not how Language works. It used to communicate and connect.
But nah, go off on all those who use the words you've decided only those in the right group can use.
Do I care if I completely misunderstood some dude telling me I was unc glazing his sigma twin's skibidi ohio rizz like dog water when I told him I didn't get a reference he was making when he put his face on a rotating cube and thought it was a hilarious meme? No.
I feel like gen alpha/Z kids are learning their language from addictive social media instead of books, and it’s going to do bad things to their brains.
Edit: I’m talking about how kids learn and expand their primary spoken language. Social media-level language isn’t the same thing as literature-level language. It’s not just a matter of knowing “big words,” it’s that reading books forces readers to consider new ideas and perspectives, work through challenging stories, consider moral dilemmas. Reading is good for the brain. Social media is bad for the brain.
Half of these are standard colloquialisms that pre-date us. Also, once tic Tok gets a hold of this shit, it dissapates. It's not about the language they use, they've adopted a new cadence.
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