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.
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.
“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”
I’m 47 years old. I have never even heard of Hollywood Undead.
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.
the urban word dictionary is about to get even more popular
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.
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.
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.Quit taxing their gig so hard-core cruster.
I’ve been watching Language Jones lately, and I think he’s got a good and academically well-informed take on this topic.
Reminds me of Nadsat from the movie, A Clockwork Orange. Haven’t read the novel yet.
The book is amazing.
Every generation has this article published about them, congratulations, you are officially old and out of touch.
