Mindlessly scroll through TikTok long enough and youâre bound to stumble on one: An older person, possibly a boomer, gesturing blithely at somethingâmaybe itâs a B&B, maybe itâs a set of blindsâand unfurling a litany of Gen Z slang. âNorthumberland Zoo hits differentâ; âslayâ; âno capâ; âItâs giving literate.â To date, there are nearly 4,000 of these videos, and theyâve been viewed millions of times.
Each view feels like a nail in some sort of linguistic coffin.
Thatâs not to say the âGen Z writes the marketing scriptâ videos arenât cute. They are. Most of them even feel earnest, their cringeyness intentional. But as anyone on the internet, or anyone who has experienced adolescence, will tell you: Once anyone over, idk, 35 starts using your slangâmaybe once theyâve heard it, evenâitâs over.
Perhaps it should be. What becomes more evident as this meme multiples is that a lot of this slang isnât actually Gen Zâs. âItâs giving,â âslay,â âservingââthese terms are decades old, filtering from Black/Latinx ball culture and into the mainstream via shows like RuPaulâs Drag Race. âRizz,â the Oxford English Dictionaryâs word of the year in 2023, is newer, but when itâs being used to tout the collection of the Royal Armouries, itâs far removed from the Twitch streams of Kai Cenat, who popularized the term.
Intergenerational razzing happens all the time, especially online. When âOK boomerâ took off in 2019, The New York Times said it was the âend of friendly generational relations,â a sign that Gen Z was fed up with being looked down on by the older cohort. Millennials, still Very Online, were too burned out to really pick fights, but Z seemed willing to speak its mind, to become the internetâs culture engine. Sometimes this manifested in the adoption or appropriation of what came before; sometimes it meant creating language and humor thatâs all but impenetrable.
When Gen Z then started looking down on Gen X, however, the refrain quickly became that this was the one age group that was not to be fucked with. Latchkey kids grew up touching grass, and getting insulted online hits them differently. They may reply to your TikTok, or possibly just send their most notorious and most polysyllabic white rapper after you.
Now, boomers and Gen Xers are getting on TikTok and turning Zâs slang into a marketing ploy, something that feels both funny and antithetical to the younger generationâs self-proclaimed hipness and Xersâ anticapitalist bent.
âGen Z writes the marketing scriptâ isnât the first TikTok trend to go viral by sending up the ways various generations speak online. Two months ago it was about asking Gen Z staffers to edit your video and then posting their quick-cut compilations of awkward âumsâ and pauses.
