A to Z of 2024: Gen Z and Alpha turn ‘brain rot’ and bizarre memes into new language

SINGAPORE – “Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law,” wrote 19th-century Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

Today, as Gen Z and Gen Alpha come of age in a hyperconnected world, their evolving slang reflects an online ecosystem drenched in pop culture references, viral memes and niche internet subcultures.

Gen Z is typically defined as those born in the late 1990s to the early 2010s, while Gen Alpha are those born in the following generation. The oldest member of Gen Alpha would be 14 years old today.

For a glimpse into their slang, take “demure”, Dictionary.com’s word of 2024.

The word became wildly popular after it was used by TikTok beauty influencer Jools Lebron in a video that has since garnered more than 54 million views. While the word has been used to poke fun at the “clean girl” make-up aesthetic, other users have adopted it to refer to anything vaguely positive.

Many of these slang terms were not coined by members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. These draw their origins from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), a variety of English spoken by black middle- and working-class urban communities, and the underground LGBTQ ballroom culture.

For instance, “wig” means to do something so impressively that it figuratively blows someone’s wig off, while “tea” refers to gossip or juicy secrets, with “spilling the tea” referring to the act of sharing such gossip.

Both emerged from ballroom culture before migrating into the broader internet vernacular used by Gen Z and Gen Alpha today.

Meanwhile, the term “no cap” – meaning that one is not lying – draws its roots from rap, while the term “rizz” – short for charisma – was popularised by American streamer Kai Cenat.

Gaming culture offers another wellspring of slang. The video game Among Us (2018) popularised the term “sus”, short for suspicious. The term “NPC”, used in video games to refer to a non-player character, became a way to mock someone’s lack of agency and control.

Meanwhile, another big word of the year, “skibidi”, a verbal wildcard with no definitive meaning, originates from the YouTube machinima web series Skibidi Toilet (2023 to present).

Machinima is a subgenre of animation that frequently employs the same engines used to animate games, thus creating a similar video game-like vibe in its works.

In this case, Skibidi Toilet was designed with the same engine used for the Team Fortress series of games (1996 to 2007).

Even the structure of the internet can be a source of inspiration.

The term “unalive” is a euphemism for words with death-related meaning, and is one way that internet users have adopted to skirt around social media platforms’ censorship of content which references suicide or death.

Meanwhile, the term “oomf” means “one of my followers”.

Some terms originate from darker corners of the internet. “Mogging” originates from pickup artists and the manosphere, the subset of the internet dominated by misogynists, incels (the involuntarily celibate) and men-focused creators, according to the online meme library Know Your Meme. It refers to outdoing or dominating another person, usually by appearing more attractive than him or her.

Another slang term, “sigma” – as in sigma male – was popularised by similar corners of the internet, and is based on a now-debunked theory about how wolf packs operate.

A sigma male is an independent and self-reliant man, in contrast to the dominant and social alpha male or the submissive beta male.

In essence, Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang reflects the melting pot that is the media diet of today’s internet users, increasingly shaped by social media platforms, gaming communities, streaming, and the borderless internet.

The Oxford Dictionary’s word of 2024 was

the phrase “brain rot”,

which it defines as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging”.

This expression’s use spiked 230 per cent between 2023 and 2024, according to Oxford Dictionary.

While the scientific evidence on how screen use influences the way people think remains mixed, the term does capture the technology-infused, meme-heavy and context-laden meaning of Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang today.