In my humble but very correct opinion, slang has been one of the best and most interesting things that language has created. The notion that an entire generation can slosh together jargon, forming an entire language of its own, is as “gnarly” as it gets. Slang, or “a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal,” has historically been used for some “in-group” to communicate with each other in a way only they understand. That’s pretty rad. However, what is not rad is that this spring break (or “spreak” if you will), I heard a 50-year-old man string together “6-7” and “looks-maxing” into a sentence. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to rip out my ears and cry more. This wasn’t a one-off occurrence, either. This year alone, I’ve heard several men and women with law degrees and PhDs rifle off words like “looksmax” and “mog.” I’m really starting to think that slang has simply become uncool.
For one, slang has arguably become too accessible. Because of the internet and our addiction to social media, everybody from toddlers to grandparents are tapped into (or at least have the potential to) web culture. For all intents and purposes, slang is effectively one big inside joke. Some people get it, most people don’t. It takes years, if not a whole generation, for it to be colloquially infused into the public lexicon. In the early 1930s, “groovy” (derived from the term “in a groove”) was coined as a term used within the jazz community (primarily African Americans) to describe a song’s rhythm and smoothness. By the 1940s, almost 10 years after its inception, “groovy” simply meant cool (funnily enough, another word to describe jazz) and was used by just about everyone, not just jazz listeners. Slang nowadays feels like it has skipped over the marinating it needed to do and everyone is using it all willy-nilly. Slang can no longer define cultures or generations if everyone of every age is acting as the propeller for its popularity.
In any case, can slang truly be cool if it’s not really based on anything? Because of the high-speed velocity of the internet, the origins of slang instantly become obscure and irrelevant. The word or phrase thus loses all meaning because no one really remembers what it means: it simply becomes a buzzword to throw around. Our most egregious offender of this is, of course, “6-7”. I’d argue most people have forgotten the term came from a video of a basketball player describing his height. It is for this exact reason that we don’t even call these words slang anymore: it’s been degraded to “brainrot.” Just like how everyone is taking part in modern dayslang and thus degrading any generational culture, the lack of longevity further strips away slang’s potential to have a lasting impact on language.
I am not saying that slang should go obsolete, or that it will. There are so many vernaculars that are being used by groups, creeds and people I simply do not know about. There are so many cultures that I am positive are making slang on a smaller scale that are poignant and informative. I really can only report on what I know or what I have researched. Furthermore, I’ll concede that sometimes internet slang does work. “Rizz,” as overused as it is, is a clever shortening for “charisma.” It is simply that the slang being used as the throughline between Generation Z and even Generation Alpha is unsophisticated at best and irrelevant at its worst.