TikTok is full of created slang and trend bait.

Currently, the number of languages ​​on TikTok is exploding. It’s kind of beautiful until you figure out why. Every time you scroll, new terms vie for space in your head: “orange peel theory,” “cheating,” “girl hobbies,” “fussy budgeting,” “cozy 75” and more. . These are being funneled into the collective consciousness not because they are relevant or necessary, but because random people have made videos making up these terms in hopes of getting the word out. is. I saw a man say this the other day. For example, do you eat dinner and then sit on the couch? The video currently has over 100,000 likes and over 600 comments. He then repeats the word, as if to hammer home to his audience that this is a phenomenon worthy of its own moniker: “Dinner and Couch Friends.” attractive!

The argument that the constant stream of phrases vying to become widely used slang exemplifies a deeply online people’s deep appreciation for language, or their desire to connect across the complexities of human experience. there is. Perhaps you identify with the concept of “polywork” (i.e., working multiple jobs) or were raised by an “almond mom” who was obsessed with dieting. Maybe this video from the guy who coined the term “weekend effect” to describe the feeling of wasting your weekends really speaks to you. Perhaps “first time cool syndrome” is something you have overcome yourself.

But perhaps you’ve never heard any of these terms, or you’ve heard so many of them that you’re starting to get a little tired of them. It’s nothing new that TikTok accelerates the trend cycle, creating an incentive for users to remix or react to the latest viral video and forget about it once it’s no longer a reliable source of viewing. What this has led to is micro-trends and niches for people to try things on, only care enough to get attention, and throw them away for the next thing (people even talk about “e-girls” and “goblin mode”). It is a graveyard of aesthetics. (Already?). And for the past few years, TikTokers have been busy trying to create the next new trend.

It’s happened so often that some TikTokers have even created parody videos about people’s desire to be the creators of the term. “This is my impression of TikTok influencers who come here and start describing an experience or an emotion or a type of human being that can literally be defined in the dictionary,” she said in a video posted last September. Brenna Connolly said. Someone encountering or feeling something like this for the first time talks about it in a crazy authoritative, educational tone. ” Connolly, a 20-year-old student from New York, says her video was inspired by another viral video. In the video, a woman laments the “‘What about me?’ effect,” a phenomenon she coined to describe the phenomenon when people on TikTok comment on videos. and “Find a way to get along with them.” “I think she’s nice and kind, but there’s a way to describe it in one word. You don’t have to label it as ridiculous at all,” she said. says to me. She speculates that the onslaught of neologisms she’s noticed here on TikTok over the past year or so is due to people’s collective search for identity. The way we have tried to explore it is by labeling and categorizing every possible part of human experience.

In After School, a newsletter about Gen Z consumer trends, Casey Lewis features two of these viral terms in the subject line every issue. The fact that so many people can type it in their email subject line every day speaks volumes about the pace at which they are fired. Recent examples include “Doomscrolling and Daylists,” “Work Island and Generation Zyn,” “Stanley Moms and Sephora Tweens,” and my personal favorite, “Earnestcore and Resolutionsmaxxing.”

“Gen Z is nothing if not a marketing genius,” she says of TikTokers’ ability to push viral phrases. What struck Lewis, who has been covering trends in youth culture and marketing since 2008, is the shift between where these terms and phrases used to be used and where they are now. She said: “When we were kids, magazine editors and fashion designers set trends, but now editors are literally just reporting on what people on TikTok are doing. ”

Unlike slang, which generally spreads organically within a particular group and is then adopted (and often appropriated) by the masses, these kinds of catchy phrases and new terms have historically been created top-down, meaning books, books, etc. It has been disseminated from cultural products. movie. For example, Shakespeare coined his 1,700 controversial terms, while “gaslighting,” “friendzone,” and “catfishing” all originate from professional playwrights. However, that doesn’t mean this doesn’t still happen. In 2016, The Cut coined the term “millennial pink,” and it would be surprising if such a term were coined today if it didn’t come from a TikToker.

And unlike slang, these phrases were invented for a more ironic purpose: that others might use them. When then-16-year-old Kayla Newman posted a Vine admiring her eyebrows, she had no intention of the phrase “on freak” becoming a candidate for 2015’s “Word of the Year.” But it happened, and she never made a dime from it (she later crowdfunded a campaign to launch a hair extension product line; her website is currently down. It seems that there are). “I gave words to the world,” Newman told The Fader at the time. “I can’t explain that feeling. At this point, I haven’t gotten any recognition, I haven’t gotten paid. I feel like I should be compensated. But I also feel like good things come to those who wait.” Masu.”

TikTokers are well versed in the ways social platforms capitalize on minority cultures, especially Black femme fatales, but they’re also learning from previous generations’ failure to profit from their contributions to the culture. They know that it’s highly unlikely they’ll make a lot of money naming the next new trend (after all, you can’t trademark slang). Also, if you’re lucky enough to come up with a term, you’ll get a brand sponsorship deal, or two. Instead, they seek authority and influence. They borrow from mean girls, “I’m trying to make ‘fetch’ happen” is simply to say that I’ve made ‘fetch’ happen.

“I can understand why people would want to come up with something that’s used all over the internet,” Connolly says. “I think about the girl who invented ‘Girls’ Dinner’ and how great it is to see everyone saying it all the time. It’s an inside joke that keeps using it with their friends and their whole circle. But it’s also a type of craving behavior that Lewis predicts TikTok’s largest user base is starting to see through. “I think this year there will be a backlash against content that is obviously created with the hope of going viral,” she says.

Of course, TikTokers aren’t the only ones trying to achieve various fetches. Judging by the sheer volume of coverage of phrases like “beige flag,” “quiet quit,” or “yakuza wife aesthetic,” journalists working on Culture Beat essentially have no idea what’s trending online. They are caught up in everything that is going on and are hoping to take advantage of that trend. Existing virality. So, heck, I might as well join in. I refer to the proliferation of tryhard slang online as “trend bait.” If you make a TikTok about it, be sure to tag me.

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