If you mindlessly scroll through TikTok long enough, you’re bound to come across one: an elderly person, possibly a boomer, gesturing happily at something (maybe it’s a B&B, maybe a set of blinds) and unfurling a litany of slang from the Generation Z.”Northumberland Zoo has a different impact”; “kill”; “without limit”; “is giving literacy.” To date, there are almost 4,000 of these videos and they have been viewed millions of times.
Each vision seems like a nail in a kind of linguistic coffin.
That’s not to say the “Gen Z writes the marketing script” videos aren’t cute. They are. Most of them even feel serious and their embarrassment is intentional. But as anyone on the Internet, or anyone who has experienced adolescence, will tell you: once someone older than, I don’t know, 35 starts using your slang, maybe even once you’ve heard it, it’s over.
Maybe it should be. What becomes more evident as this meme proliferates is that much of this slang doesn’t actually belong to Generation Z. “It’s giving,” “killing,” “serving”—these terms are decades old and have filtered from black/latino dance culture into the mainstream through shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. “Rizz”, the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year in 2023, it’s newer, but when used to promote the Royal Armories collection, it’s a far cry from the Twitch streams of Kai Cenat, who popularized the term.
Intergenerational scandal happens all the time, especially online. When “OK Boomer” took off in 2019, The New York Times said it was the “end of friendly generational relations,” a sign that Generation Z was tired of being looked down upon by the older cohort. Millennials, still very much online, were too exhausted to really pick a fight, but Z seemed ready to speak his mind, to become the cultural engine of the Internet. Sometimes this manifested itself in the adoption or appropriation of the previous; sometimes it meant creating language and humor That’s almost impenetrable.
However, when Generation Z began to look down on Generation quickly became that this was the only age group not to be fucked with. The Latchkey kids grew up touching weed and being insulted online affects them differently. They might respond to your TikTok or possibly just send their most notorious, polysyllabic white rapper after you.
Now, boomers and Gen
“Gen Z writes the marketing script” is not the first TikTok trend to go viral by highlighting the ways various generations speak online. Two months ago it was about asking Gen Z staff to edit your video and then publish your quick builds clumsy “ums” and pauses.
