How social media is changing how you talk | Adam Aleksic | TEDxPenn

[Applause] how many of you are familiar with the word un alive as a synonym of kill show of hands okay like 80% of you great now follow-up question how many of you have heard the word on alive being used in person okay I'm getting like 40 50% great those of you that said no clearly aren't Middle School teachers if you spend enough time around seventh and eighth graders you will hear them using the word it'll mostly be in informal situations but could show up in contexts like a student's essay on Hamlet's contemplation of unal living

himself or a classroom disc on the unal living that happens in Dr Jackal and Mr Hyde and these aren't hypothetical situations these are actual examples drawn from the thousand plus Middle School teachers I've surveyed about this word it's a weird hobby of mine I don't know clearly for such a recent word on alive shows up in an impressive range of scenarios but the main function appears to be euphemistic many kids use the word when they're uncomfortable talking about topics like death since un alive sounds like a less scary word and in many ways this is

nothing new we've been euphemizing death as long as we've had language the word decease for example comes from Latin Deus which was a euphemism with the pre previous Latin word for death Mor apparently even the stoic Romans were as queasy about death as today's middle schoolers but there is a crucial difference between un alive and deceased and that's that we only got the word un alive because you can't say kill on Tik Tok they have a mysterious algorithm that removes or suppresses any post that might violate their Community guidelines so people got around with that

with the word on alive the middle schoolers don't know this they see the word online or hear from friends and assume it's a word like any other and fair enough you probably didn't know where the word decease came from unless you're some kind of emology nerd but decease didn't happen because it was impossible to carve the word Morse into an ancient Roman t we are entering an entirely New Era of language change driven by social media algorithms as a linguist and content creator I've been in a unique position to see this happen from the inside

it's almost paralyzing I constantly feel how my own language is being affected and judging from the 40% of you who answered both of my questions it's beginning to change your language too and it's not just new words to avoid algorithmic censorship the very structure of soci social media is changing where words come from how words get popular and how quickly those words spread I believe some of you might be familiar with this song sticking out your gach for the rizzler you're so skibbidy you're so Phantom tax I just want to be your Sigma freaking come

here give me your Ohio for those of you out of the loop these are the lyrics to the rizzler song a meme created by a 13-year-old that went massively viral last year it's full of current middle school slang words like Riz Gat and skibidi and was instrumental in popularizing those words to a broader audience this is because social media algorithms reward repetition if a song is funny or catchy and people interact with it the algorithm will then push that that song to more people since it's proven to drive engagement on the app the same is

true of memes or words in general since trending metadata like hashtags will also be pushed to people who previously shown interest in similar content creators are very aware of this and we actively use trending audios or hashtags to make our videos perform better in the wake of the rizzler song for example we saw an explosion of people making videos with the words Riz Gat and skibbidy because they knew those videos would do well and as a result the word spread language has always been a little bit like a virus words are transmitted from one host

to another reproducing and changing as they infect different people along social networks but now the literally viral nature of social media is accelerating this process from start to finish in the span of just a year a word like Riz can go from complete obscurity to becoming the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year and the algorithm is the culprit but influencers are the accomplices we use whatever tricks we can to keep you entertained because that makes our videos do better which helps us earn a living this means that we often end up creating and spreading

words that help the system for example the suffix core has recently gotten very popular in gen Z slang to describe specific Aesthetics like Cottage core or Goblin core or Angel core and on the surface level these are cute you watch a cottage core video you like it later on you get more Cottage core content you might even start to identify with the cottage core aesthetic but here's the thing it's all fake the entire reason these Aesthetics exist is is because Tik Tok algorithm has decided that words like Cottage core qualify as trending metadata so creators

respond by making more Cottage core content that propagates the word and then more people interact with it which makes the word trendier and this happens because social media algorithms want to make you identify with Hyper compartmentalized labels since they can then give you extremely specific commercialized content catering to that identity now that you're a cottage Corp person you feel special every time you get a cottage Corp video you're like Cottage core oh the algorithm really knows me the algorithm gave you that identity you might even start buying Cottage core clothing or Cottage core decorations to

fit your new lifestyle as a cottage core person and that's exactly what they want the craziest part is they're not even trying to hide this Tik tok's business platform openly claims that subcultures are the new demographics and then gives businesses ideas for how to profit off the cottage core aesthetic essentially they're driving the mass production of identity building labels in order to profit off all of us and while there's nothing wrong with being on Cottage core Tik Tok it is a kind of echo chamber that affirms your cottage Corp personality the same is true of

any Niche Community created on social media and on one hand this is great for Linguistics because language change is always driven by groups with shared interest that have a shared need to invent new words on a live for example became a thing because mental health communities on Tik Tok needed a way to share their stories and spread resources on the other hand some of the linguistic communities created by the algorithm can be actively harmful many younger people have started using the suffix pilled to mean convinced into a lifestyle if I recently discovered that I really

like eating burritos for example I can say I'm so burrito pilled but that word was formed through analogy with blackpilled a term meaning convinced into incel Ideology Now incels are a dangerous misogynistic group they've perpetrated multiple terrorist attacks that have killed dozens of people and yet somehow the vocabulary is filtering into genen D slang because the algorithm gave these hate groups a space I like to consume videos about Urban Design and a few months back I got a video about how great it is to be a parking lot pilled pavement princess admittedly I found the

video pretty funny and I liked it which ended up giving me more Urban Design incel themed meme videos like one about being fossil fuel pilled and Bad to the Bone and another about being a walk pilled cardi maxer and a lot of people similarly encounter these words as they spread in ironic or meme context let's take another look at the rizzler song the lyric I just want to be your Sigma refers to the concept of a sigma male which incel is used to describe their desired position outside of the social hierarchy and again on the

surface level it's a funny meme it's innocent many people don't even know where it came from but for the few people who might be interested in the underlying idea it's now more accept to them because of the way that slang spreads on the internet it starts in some corner of social media becomes a viral Meme and along the way the emology is lost to a lot of people and this doesn't only allow communities to harm us it allows us to harm communities two of the main demographics that come up with modern slang are the gay

and black communities since marginalized groups consistently use language as a way to reclaim power all of our most popular internet slang words slay serve bson Queen cooked ate Gat many many others all come from queer or Black Culture these words originated as a form of creative expression independent from the straight white Norms of the English language but when those words began to be used online they were quickly taken by people who wanted to capitalize on the perceived coolness or comedic value of black and queer culture when a word like gach goes from an African-American English

pronunciation of godamn to being used as a noun for but in memes like the rizzler song it's ultimately exaggerated in a way that makes a farce of its pronunciation and meaning its original importance is diluted as it becomes widespread and you can be sure that none of the middle schoolers saying gach are aware of its atmology unfortunately just like the euphemization of un alive isn't new the appropriation of African-American English also isn't new we've been whitewashing black slangs since the days of cool and high five which at this point have become so mainstream they're just

seen as regular words but once again social media algorithms are a vehicle enabling and accelerating this process from start to finish they create communities that feel like they have a space to use their words and then open up those communities just enough to allow those words to spread that's how we got un alive that's how we got Cottage core that's how we got Sigma and that's how we got gach whenever I post a video talking about one of these topics I inevitably get the exact same comment we're so cooked meaning we're so screwed ironically this

is also Tik Tok slang coming from African-American English but I wanted to address it are we in fact cooked I I know I've just painted a very Bleak picture of the future of the English language and there are a lot of concerning Trends to unpack but these Trends all do follow the same historical patterns that we've seen time and time again I don't think we're sliding into a dystopian 1984 scenario because we're always coming up with new ways around media censorship if a word gets bent we'll just come up with another word like we did

with un alive I don't think middle schoolers are suffering from brain rot because younger Generations always latch on to New Slang as a way to build identity and the older Generations always say ah you're ruining the language but just like the people who were saying cool and high five back in the day the Middle School are saying Riz and gach and skibby toilet aren't going to be incapable of writing an essay I don't think our vocabulary is being corrupted by the commercialization of our language we've already been using brand names like Kleenex and Google in

everyday conversations so Cottage core isn't about to turn us into mindless consumer drones I don't even think we're Dangerously normalizing incel rhetoric if anything or slang is built on a shared mockery of incel ideas when a kid says something like I'm so burrito pilled they're not saying that because they're blackpilled but because the underlying idea is making fun of how incels talk in fact I think each of these words is a beautiful colorful addition to the English language that reflects the diverse cultural moment we're all in but I do think we should be aware we

should be aware when the way we're talking may have been conditioned by by the algorithm we should be aware when the words we're using may have been engineered to sell us things we should be aware when our language regurgitates extremist rhetoric and we should be aware when that language can be used to harm other people we should be aware of atmology in general because it helps us better understand who we are today we should be aware and with that I have just one final piece of slang for you it's uh a common phrase used by

younger people when we finish a winded explanation of something thanks for coming to my TED Talk [Applause]