The End of Slang: The Out-of-Touch Adults’ G...

Youth tradition strikes quick. New slang is created and deserted in days, entire communities set up round a blurry {photograph}, jokes change into memes, memes change into rituals, and all the things may is deserted earlier than you even discover it exists. It is wish to attempting to review a snowflake: As soon as you may take a look at it, it is already melted. So it’s this week, as I have a look a brand new lexicon of brain-rot slang (which may probably not be slang), a meme format based mostly on threatening to eat your Uber driver, and the performative disappointment of youth. Plus, as a reminder that we nonetheless nonetheless share one thing, a video about humanity’s endless fascination with digging holes.

What do “Kevin,” “gurt,” and “IKIAB” imply?

I cowl slang so much on this column and hold a running glossary of Gen Z and Gen A words, however I am unsure what to make of “Kevin,” “gurt,” “IKIAB,” and numerous different slang phrases born previously couple of weeks. To many younger folks, something dangerous could be described as Kevin, and the phrase gurt means one thing like “sensible however harmful” and IKIAB is an acronym for “Imma hold it a buck,” which implies “I am telling the reality.” However possibly they do not imply something.

All these new phrases are a part of the rapidly evolving world of brain-rot memes, and so they straddle a line between self-aware parody of slang and precise slang. IKIAB was coined just a few weeks in the past by TikTok consumer @xznthos, who declared it was new slang that everybody would now use. Gurt was invented and defined just a few days later, and Kevin a few days after that. This led to creating up slang phrases turning into a meme format in brain-rot movies, with every kind of individuals declaring that every one sorts of phrases now imply every kind of issues. However do they? Is slang actually slang simply because somebody says it’s and lots of people see the video?

Taking it a step additional, a writer at Daily Dot requested Google Search’s generative AI Overview to define nonsense phrases like “banana slurp” and “cyclops vibing,” and it answered that banana slurp “might doubtlessly be a misinterpretation of ‘that’s bananas’ or ‘she/he went bananas,’ which each imply one thing is loopy, wild, or extraordinarily agitated,” and that cyclops vibing “primarily means that an individual is having fun with themselves and in a superb place, even when they’re depicted with a considerably intimidating or uncommon picture like a cyclops.”

So you do not even want an individual to have ever used a phrase or phrase for it to have a definition (at the very least to a pc), so when is a phrase slang and when is it nonsense? That is the type of query solely a complete stork smoother would ask.

What’s the “I am so hungry I might eat…” development?

The “I am so hungry I might eat…” development is manner simpler to grasp than brain-rot slang. It is a type of prank video the place you secretly file somebody’s response to you saying, “I am so hungry I might eat X,” with X being no matter is more likely to get the most important response.

It began with movies of oldsters saying “I am so hungry I might eat a child” to their youngsters, which is cute:

Then canine homeowners began threatening to eat their canines:

Then issues began getting stranger, like this video the place somebody threatens to eat their Uber driver.

However the top of the development is saying you are so hungry they may eat a random, particular individual from their sufferer’s previous. Like an previous classmate who may need been harmful:

or their first boyfriend:

or their coke seller from the 90s.

What’s the Hiccup Cult?

In case your baby has simply joined The Hiccup Cult, don’t be concerned. It isn’t a cult like The Individuals’s Temple; it is only a random TikTok factor with no actual that means. A number of weeks in the past, TikToker @annesstinkysock posted a video where they pointed out that the character Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon is kind of funny-looking, and that she’d modified her profile image to a picture of Hiccup. That is it. That is the entire origin story. For some motive nobody can clarify, this video was spat out to thousands and thousands of TikTok customers, hundreds (possibly a whole lot of hundreds) of whom modified their very own profile photos to Hiccup. A lot of them began following one another, and a cult was born. To affix, you simply have to alter your profile image to Hiccup and also you’re in.

TikTok cults aren’t new. There have been a ton of them revolving round an image of a hamster, or Dragon Ball character Goku, or minions. It is the type of factor that will likely be forgotten rapidly, however possibly it offers some sense of belonging for the 12 seconds it exists.

“Rejection truffles” take over the web

It is the time of yr when highschool seniors are crossing their fingers and receiving their acceptance or rejection emails from the universities they utilized to. As you’d most likely anticipate, social media is stuffed with movies of over-achievers crying completely satisfied tears as a result of they had been accepted at Harvard, Boston College, or all four of the Ivy League schools they utilized to. As you’d most likely anticipate, it is getting ridiculous. Simply try how elaborate this video is for stepping into UT Austin:

Good for her and all, however I imply, it is UT Austin? Anyway, I am extra within the individuals who will not be selecting between Yale and Dartmouth this fall. The development for the remainder of us, the also-rans and the almost-made-its, this yr is rejection cakes. Movies like this one:

and this one:

are offering a much-needed counter-narrative to all of the horrible success some folks expertise. I feel there’s one thing extra useful in performative shows of resilience than shows of delight, as a result of we won’t all get into Stanford, however we are able to all eat cake. Anyway, If you would like to take a look at younger individuals who have had their hopes dashed early as an alternative of getting them dashed after they graduate from their dream school there’s a bunch of videos here.

Viral video of the week: A Video About Digging A Gap

Quite a lot of youth tradition as of late lives as much as the “brain-rot” identify, however there’s at all times a yin to the yang, like this week’s viral video, “A Video About Digging a Hole.” This video is not going to rot anybody’s mind. In it, YouTuber Jacob Geller goes deep into the topic of holes. Individuals, notably youthful folks, have at all times been fascinated with holes, and Geller’s video examines the cultural and symbolic energy of the straightforward gap within the floor, discovering connections between Louis Sachar’s basic younger grownup novel Holes, Minecraft’s fixed digging and tunneling, 2025’s surprising blockbuster online game A Game About Digging a Hole, and far more hole-based media. This video is definitely worth the watch only for the part on The Kola Superdeep Borehole—the deepest gap people have ever dug.