Viral Language

Viral Language Helena Aeberli looks for rizz in Adam Aleksic’s “Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.” By Helena Aeberli July 20, 2025 Cultural Studies Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic . Knopf , 2025. 256 pages. LANGUAGE IS A MEANS of communication and a container of meaning. It enables us to come together to share intentions and coordinate actions, to form relationships and communities, to distinguish between in-groups and out-groups. It serves as a medium for artistic expression, and is often but not always the medium in which we think. Language is a system and a tool and an art form all at once, and as such, it is constantly changing and evolving alongside us. According to Adam Aleksic—and anyone who spends enough time on the internet will agree with him—human communication is currently at an “inflection point” characterized by the rapid spread of “personally recommended, short-form video content.” Thanks to the development of algorithms, language is undergoing a transformative shift rivaled only by earlier developments in writing, the printing press, and the internet. New words, accents, dialects, grammatical rules, and inflections are emerging in response to personalized filter bubbles, platform guidelines and censorship, influencer marketing, and the complex mechanics of virality. If you’ve ever claimed you have “rizz” or “aura,” tacked “-pilled” or “-core” on the end of a word, or worried about the spread of “brain rot,” then congratulations. You’ve participated in the development of algospeak. In his new book Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language, Aleksic, an influencer and educator known online as “The Etymology Nerd,” explores the causes and consequences of this nascent linguistic epoch. Linguistic evolution is nothing new. Inventing new terms to circumvent censorship can be seen in centuries-old practices of bowdlerization, named for the expurgated editions of Shakespeare published by the 19th-century editor Thomas Bowdler. Substituting dashes (— —) or, increasingly, asterisks (*) for vowels in offending words altered the way people wrote, while adding a healthy dose of humor. Eighties chat room leetspeak, which adopted creative respellings like “5U1C1D3” or “$U!C!D€” to dodge censors, provides another clear pattern for contemporary neologisms like “unalive.” Aleksic refers to this process of dodging platform censorship as playing linguistic “Whac-A-Mole,” and claims, somewhat reassuringly, that we’ve been doing it forever. What has changed is the mediating role played by technology—specifically, by algorithms, the sets of rules and calculations used to determine the stream of personalized content users encounter on social media—in linguistic development. There’s no Bowdler lurking behind “unalive,” just a complex and self-sustaining piece of code. And it isn’t just self-censorship. Algorithms are the invisible force shaping everything we encounter online, influencing the emergence, diffusion, and sometimes decline of new words. Language now spreads like memes do: by going viral. Aleksic is an enthusiastic guide with an infectiously optimistic outlook, one that doesn’t quite align with the usual hand-wringing about internet slang. Excited by the opportunistic hyperspace of social media, “the beautiful, chaotic idiosyncrasies” of our new linguistic world, he’s far from a doomsayer. “Unalive” and “grape” are less examples of a culture in denial about the realities of death and sexual violence than ingenious adaptions to the algorithm, representing “an extra way of expressing ourselves that we’ve developed to fit a specific environment with specific constraints” (of course, they could very well be both). We’ve never been able to control the pace and direction of linguistic evolution, nor that of technology. If anything, algospeak is a sign of human resilience, ingenuity, and humor, a mark of the creative ways we can adapt to our changing situations. The Rizzler song—to which a whole chapter is dedicated—isn’t a sign of children’s rotted brains but a pivotal moment in the rapid development of new slang, one that marks the emergence of a distinctive Gen Alpha style of communication and humor. Despite the unpromising subject for those of us who aren’t middle schoolers, this is a fascinating piece of etymological analysis. As it incorporated a whole host of already-trending slang words formed into an annoyingly catchy anthem, the Rizzler song operated as a kind of algospeak aggregator, pushing the audio to anyone who had previously shown interest in any of those words. Catnip for Gen Alpha, an ironic cringefest for Gen Z, and a morbid curiosity to older generations, the Rizzler song was primed to spread at “warp speed.” You’re so skibidi … A win for the algorithm, this could possibly be a win for children’s cognitive development as well, operating as a form of brain-stimulating “language play”—a far cry from the usual expressions of concern. Possibly. The problem with all this bright-eyed enthusing is that it can conceal the political dimensions of Aleksic’s subject. If language is a bearer of meaning, it is also a bearer of power, one that shapes the ways we define ourselves and live our lives. There is a dark side to algospeak. Personalization connects individuals with shared interests in online communities and provides a common language to unite them, which is all very well in the case of Taylor Swift fans but rather more unnerving when it comes to incels. Nor are these online communities wholly closed off to the outside world, leading to context collapse when terms with a hyperspecific meaning escape their original frame of reference. “Blackpilled,” “cuck,” “sigma,” and “looksmaxxing” all originated in incel communities on 4chan before becoming mainstreamed, spreading previously niche ideas as well as words. Preteens might not know the origins of the words they’re using (“sigma” features in the Rizzler song), while adults might use them ironically. But algospeak has enabled aspects of incel ideology, such as the hardcore body practices associated with “looksmaxxing,” to enter the mainstream, influencing “normie” culture even as their more noxious elements are diluted. It isn’t just incel terms that undergo context collapse. Aleksic quips that “if a word doesn’t come from 4chan, it’s probably from AAE [African American English] ”. Much like the spread of incel slang, the mainstreaming of AAE is caused by the blurry boundaries of the filter bubble and the ease with which unique words lose their cultural value in the face of “linguistic appropriation” for trends. The co-optation of AAE—from “cool” in the 1940s to “bae,” “fam,” and “fleek” in the 2010s—is one of the most striking aspects of contemporary linguistic evolution, particularly since the rise of short-form video. A vernacular that developed in the context of systemic racism and the struggle for power and belonging has now been memeified into “internet slang,” a form of “digital blackface” that Aleksic links to a long tradition of racist stereotyping including 19th-century minstrel theater. The threat of filter bubbles is thus twofold—that “communities can harm us” (as in the case of incels) and “we can harm communities” (as in the case of AAE). Yet this somewhat cautious (and itself catchy) analysis doesn’t go far enough. Who is “we”? Is this picture of divided communities really all there is, or is there something else at play? Language, as any good Foucauldian can tell you, is an expression of power. Linguistic systems communicate ideology as well as words, and changes in the linguistic domain are often accompanied by broader shifts in cultural beliefs, attitudes, and influence. Take “girl dinner,” a term that began trending in 2023 to refer to a light, nutritionally negligible replacement for a full meal, often consumed by young women. For Aleksic, “girl dinner” is a successful example of “trendbait”—“saying things specifically in the hopes of becoming a viral trend.” On one level, this is true: “girl dinner” illustrates the relationship between algospeak and memes, and their entangled viral circulation. Yet “girl dinner” emerged within a broader cultural shift that has seen not just the “hot girl walk” and “girl math” but also the rise of the “tradwife” and #SkinnyTok, alongside a wholesale attack on women’s rights, including abortion bans and pronatalist policies. What is the direction of causation here, or in the spread of incel slang? What role do trends like “girl dinner” or “tradwife” play in the propagation of reactionary anti-feminism? And what does the algorithm do to the relationship between words and those who use them—and even between words and culture on a broader scale? With critical analysis, “girl dinner” starts to look intimately connected to the spread of incel slang Aleksic so deftly traces. The recent career of Elon Musk, himself a member of the terminally online and an incel in spirit if not in name, is another case in point. Musk’s “rebellious” AI chatbot Grok provides a service filled with slang and swearing, as do Musk’s own posts. And Musk loves memes—one meme in particular. There was his investment in the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, then there was the Doge mural at his Starbase township, and then, of course, there was the Department of Government Efficiency. This particular iteration of DOGE, once an innocent misspelling of “dog” used to refer to a particularly shifty-looking canine before being slowly co-opted (like Pepe the Frog) by the online Right, has been responsible for the systematic dismantling of American DEI programs, Social Security, and USAID. In Musk’s career, ideology, meme, and language mingle together in a toxic witches’ brew, providing less a recipe for ingenious creative play than one for—well, we’ve all seen the news. I wonder if this tension at the core of Algospeak comes from the fact that Aleksic is himself an influencer, with over 740,000 followers on TikTok. He’s refreshingly candid about the tactics influencers have developed to monetize engagement and go viral online—and that these tricks are a form of emotional manipulation in the Darwinian competition for attention. The age-old tabloid toolbox of rage-baiting, clickbaiting, and sensationalizing gains an extra importance when influencers must grab and hold a viewer’s attention in an endless, ever-scrolling feed. This is why you see the “Gen Z shake,” where younger influencers start their video with their phone in hand, before setting it down, jolting the viewer’s perspective. This is no cutesy generational quirk, but rather a deliberate tactic designed to interrupt the undifferentiated stream of content the viewer scrolls through and to capture their attention—the influencer equivalent of an anglerfish’s bioluminescent snare. Older influencers are more likely to begin their videos with the “Millennial pause,” a notable intake of breath that suggests a lack of familiarity with the economics of short-form video content. The Millennial pause might have sufficed on YouTube, but on TikTok it’s younger generations who top the food chain. Algospeak, it seems, can extend to gesture too. Many of Algospeak’s most perceptive insights—like this one—are about the rising class of influencers. In a perceptive chapter on accents, Aleksic explains “why everybody sounds the same online”—which is to say, why everybody sounds like the Kardashians. Like the Gen Z shake, certain styles of speech act as hooks to grab and retain the viewer’s attention, giving the illusion of conversational authority. Uptalk, in which syllables toward the end of a sentence rise in intonation, and macroprosody, or the decision to stress more words than necessary, are the same “floor-holding strategies” used to entertain toddlers on shows like Sesame Street. The implications of this are profound, and not just for our egos. The attention economy is promoting a particular sort of voice, one that is becoming globally homogenized along American lines, and that is influencing our offline voices too. A 2020 Guardian investigation found that British children were adopting “YouTube accents” due to the high levels of American digital content consumed during the pandemic. I’ve witnessed this happen to more than just children—even the most self-respecting Brit catches herself saying “y’all.” At the same time, TikTok, along with Instagram and Substack, is the way the Etymology Nerd makes his money. He can only criticize them so much. To his credit, Aleksic is frank about this, detailing the times he has unintentionally angered TikTok’s oversensitive censors and the compromises he has made as a result. A video posted in October 2023, analyzing the etymology of “from the river to the sea,” received a fraction of his usual views, as did subsequent posts. In response to the shadowban, Aleksic stopped making content about the conflict. Yet surely there’s more to say here, not least about social media’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Take the word “creator,” which is used throughout Algospeak as shorthand for “content creator,” another term for “influencer.” This is itself a word that is evolving, though “creator” is less obviously an example of algospeak than the memeified slang of the Rizzler song is. I took a cue from the Etymology Nerd and checked the OED. “Creator” began life in the 14th century with a capital C, as a synonym for God. By the 16th century, it had broadened out to encompass anyone who “creates or brings something into existence,” particularly actors and designers. Nowadays, you’re more likely to see it applied to influencers, who are less concerned with bringing something new into existence than with curating what already exists. As this odd evolution suggests, language is a medium for art, one as concerned with style, form, skill, and imagination as it is with communication between groups and individuals. What is algospeak doing to our art? What is it doing to our creativity, in the traditional sense of the word? Aleksic doesn’t really address this, which is fair enough. In the age-old division between language and literature, he falls firmly on the side of the former. Algospeak may serve as a form of brain-stimulating play, but as attention spans and literacy rates plummet, it’s hard to see the benefits. At the end of 2024, the US Department of Education announced that 28 percent of American adults now possess the lowest level of literacy—approximately the level of a third grader—in comparison to 19 percent in 2017. The statistics for children are particularly dire: 40 percent of American children cannot read at a basic level, with the numbers much worse among marginalized and low-income students. Similarly worrying statistics are reflected worldwide, with a sharp decline in global literacy scores following the pandemic. As Rose Horowitch wrote in a viral essay for The Atlantic titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books”: “Whether through atrophy or apathy, a generation of students is reading fewer books,” with professors at elite colleges forced to strip back reading lists as teenagers struggle to keep up with previously attainable levels of literacy. The same professors told Horowitch that new students asked about their favorite books are more likely to name young adult bestsellers than classics. The explosion of open access AI, which means even students in such prodigious humanities courses no longer have to directly engage with complex language on a meaningful level, is only making matters worse. There’s a connection here. Perhaps the common denominator is the algorithm, and the rapacious social media companies hungry for profit, but algospeak itself is surely not blameless. Aleksic describes the spread of viral terms like “girl dinner” or “my Roman Empire” as akin to borrowing quotations and neologisms from Shakespeare. Except there’s one major difference: the Rizzler song is not Shakespeare. Percy Jackson is not the Iliad, and scrolling through a TikTok hashtag is not the same as deep, sustained engagement with a work of classic literature. “Content” and “art” are not synonyms, and “creators” are not always creative. Yet while just under half of American adults reported reading a book for pleasure in 2024, the average American is checking their phone on average 159 times a day, and spending over two hours on social media. In the brave new world the algorithms have built for us, linguistic evolution might be thriving, but literature risks becoming a casualty. Algospeak reaches an optimistic conclusion—that we are not, in fact, “cooked.” Whether it stands the test of time might depend on whether there are still readers left to find it. LARB Contributor Helena Aeberli is a writer and researcher from London, based in Oxford. She is currently working on a PhD on early modern eating disorders. Share Copy link to article LARB Staff Recommendations Algorithmic Life We need to understand the algorithm to understand our algorithmic lives. Forgetting the Social in the Age of Social Media? Craig Calhoun contributes to the Provocations series, in conjunction with UCI’s “Who Do We Think We Are” conference.