How Brands Ruin Slang | Otherwords 

Totes

fo sho

Boppy

frfr

No cap

Same. If they were my friends they wouldn't bullshit me.

Yep. Literally the only kind of advertising that doesn't immediately fill me with rage at this point is something like "here is our product, it's a well-made product which is very useful, it's created ethically and is less expensive than you might think! Maybe consider buying?" which is like.... 0.001% of ads.

@@shockofthenew Agreed.

Seriously I go from not caring about their existence to actively detesting everyone behind that brand and their disgusting attempt to look like authentic people/content online.

@@WellingtonCordeiro Yeah, I feel as though they are just insulting our intelligence. If they have so much contempt for us, why should we feel anything but contempt for them?

To bad.

@@undefined7141 Not doing it. No.

💯💯💯

Very much agreed. Overwords is an overall well done, informative /thought-provoking channel that serves a very important educational function. I WISH that I'd had short vids like THIS (and the equally well done Crash Course Videos that the Green Bros. put out) as a younger person. Ty for your service Otherworld Producers/Host.

PBS got wack they barely complained about racism 2015

🤣

I think this is pretty much the best explanation for why it feels cringy, even when brands use it in kind of the right contexts.

​@@markdavis7397 Oh definitely. I don't remember what the actual words for them is, but it's something like an infix (putting "whole" in the middle of "another" to change the meaning) plus linguistic re-analyzation I think it's called? (where the original way "another" came about was "an" + "other" but, bc "an" is only used in front of a vowel and "whole" starts with a consonant, instead of dropping the "n" sound to become "a" + "whole" + "other" which seems more formal (for lack of a better word), it was said as "a" + "whole" + "nother"). At least, that's what my limited linguistics knowledge leads me to believe happened lmao.

@@markdavis7397 Ohhhh. I misunderstood what you said lmao. That's definitely very interesting.

@@markdavis7397 Interesting, I was not aware of this. The Merriam-Webster website gives some examples like: "For discrecion is a vertue the whiche without fautynge leadeth a man to the ryghte waye inclynynge or wauerynge no more on the one syde than on the nother…." -Thomas Paynell, The Assaute and Conquest of Heuen, 1529 I suppose it is hard to know whether the usage of "a whole nother" is a carry on from this earlier usage, or if it is something more informal like "un-fr*ckin-believable" where they add a word in the middle of another word for emphasis. And then there is a question if "another" comes from "an other" or "a nother" in the first place.

23 skidoo, dude

@@llsilvertail561 Tmesis? Is that the term you're thinking of, for that infix thing? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmesis

Men have been documented having sex with food, so I guess it's legit.

the mcchicken vine

Well you ever seen Burger King's "wake up with the King"? You ever yknow wake up with the King? It was probably meant to be lewd

It's likely they were told by an unpaid intern who was subsequently ignored. 😂

I don't remember "hit that" but I do remember them using "get jiggy with it."

I didn´t know "woke" was originally a Black community term. That´s so interesting ! As a mixed-race black/white gay man, i´m always sad to ear "woke" used as a derogatory term for anything minority related. Then again using minorities´s own langage to create scapegoats is nothing new.

that's fox news for ya

As a white person I remember first hearing the word woke during the Ferguson protests in 2014 in the context of people 'waking up' to structural racism and taking it seriously. It was a new one on me at that point... then just a few short years later it was being misused all over the place by non-black people to mean "anything related to social justice or diversity (which I don't like and think is stupid)."

It's sad in a way, but also a bit amusing when right-wingers try to make being socially conscious sound like it's somehow a bad thing.

It’s bizarre how they can take uplifting words like woke or social justice and just say them as if they’re bad and no one in their group feels even the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance or, like, you know, embarrassment.

My bling is on fleek, no cap - NOW BUY MY PRODUCTS!!!!

My older coworkers do this too well with other words. They're really old too and they all seem to speak that way. It sounds genuine when they say it too.

Deez quilt is on ice, bae. They be dripping all over your face.

I feel like "bling" might be one of those that makes it into standard English. A little too early to tell, but when grannies are using amongst themselves, that's a sign right there.

@@rmdodsonbills Yeah I think bling has been around quite long enough for it to become one of those words within the next five years. Personally, I'm hoping groovy will become as common as cool. I just want everybody to sound like hippies lol

Thank you for saying "cringey" and not "cringe". "Cringe-worthy" also works.

I didn't know what that meant, but it sure didn't sound tasty!

I've never heard "zoinks" or "jinkies" used outside of Scooby-Doo. Do they have broader histories, or are they original creations that have just become part of the lexicon?

@@Hallows4 Same here, apparently, the term jinkies comes from the '30s. Although from my minute of Googling, I think that zoinks was a Scooby Doo creation completely.

@@Hallows4 Zoinks, Scoob!

"Nifty" is a delightful word

@@The420033 "Nifty" is a nifty word

Finally it makes sense to me, thanks for sharing

Yeah, there have definitely been a number of gag slang items invented on the internet to purposefully troll older generations. The brief craze about "jenkem" from the 90s comes to mind.

They should have ran Peaches a check. This is why some of us get mad when black folks be online defining our slang and how to use it. Just so non-black folks on social media can call our language "internet language."

@@LadyAstarionAncunin exactly!!

@@LadyAstarionAncunin literally 😭

Middle aged is the correct term, not "middle age" since that doesn't actually mean anything pertaining to your years on earth. If we're all going to get insane about how people use words, let's at least use the language correctly and save the damned suffixes and adverbs.

@@user-dd5eh5lu3o Yes, when used as a modifier that's correct. Middle age would be the time period if that's what somebody is interested in talking about without being more specific about whom they're referring to other than by general age.

One of the best things about being middle aged is that I don't need to keep up with the slang like I did when I was younger. But, I have found that if I am going to use it, that it's generally best to do so in an ironic way of pointing out that I've been around the block a few times rather than trying to pretend that I'm a hip or with it. To quote Grandpa Simpson "I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!"

I'm middle aged and I am also black and live in a fairly predominately black city with income inequality issues. So I use the slang I use because we all use it. It's interesting to me to see white folks co-opt our slang and then decided when that slang term is "over" or when they think someone is too old to say some slang word. I just know being middle aged in my community does not preclude me from my usage of slang relevant to my community.

I'm middle-aged and I just say whatever I say. I'm not too concerned about it LOL!

@Matt Culbreath I'm going to try it out on my teenagers later I'm going to be like that's Slangy

You've got about five days to use it before Subway makes it unslangey. Go!

Stop trying to make "slangy" happen! :)

@@rmdodsonbills it's going to be SO SLANGY 🤣

you be slangin it?

That alone must have given whichever gay activist started that a case of the warm fuzzies. It's almost as good as the US Navy giving the Village People the use of the deck of one of their ships in exchange for rights to use In the Navy for promotional use. I have to laugh every time I think of thinking they could use a Village People song for that, with or without permission.

"You have some queer friends, Dorothy." "The queerness doesn't matter, as long as they're friends."

...I feel like I have seen you in many online communities before, but I can't quite put my finger on which ones ( other than this one ).

Same. Can't forget that one.

Some men did.

Ugh. I hate it when non musicians use "gig".

@@stikcler What about carriage-makers and boatbuilders?😉

@@stikcler that is a weird thing to hate ngl

the fact that I forgot it was widely used because in recent years I'd only see drag queens using it. I'm 100% pulling the ESL card here I'll take no accountability for this

@@stikcler Interesting take for a comment on a series all about the evolution of language.

I found a magazine from 1921 using the word simp in the same context as contemporary slang, so its nothing new.

@@Tadfafty that is actually a totally different piece of slang! simp, as popular from the 1920's on was short for simpleton :) funny that "simp" happened to develop as a slang word two separate times, almost a hundred years apart!

@@ChaiKirbs I thought current simp was a shortening of simpleton. It has the same meaning, right?

@@Tadfafty not even close, this is one of those cases were urban dictonary actually works

​@@Tadfafty pretty sure it's derived from "simpering" as if you're a "simp" for X person or character that seemingly translates to "I am so weak for them oh my god, they are far too attractive, if they stepped on me I would thank them and ask for more". Which, simpering as a descriptive verb or whatever the label is, tends to be like showy obsequiousness. Like adulation or brown-nosing, fawning etc. The interesting thing to me though is "simp" is no longer just a noun and has been verbed; "I simp for X" tends to refer to the active or habitual state of being a "simp" for X. Granted, there's a potential by proxy implication that X person is so attractive they make you stupider because you're too busy internally flailing and fawning over them... but that's a side implication more than the core meaning from the uses I've seen. At least on Tumblr and I think Twitter, in media fandom circles.

same-and I regret reading most of the definitions I find on there 😭

Troll entries, man.

I hear ya bro. And you don't even look that old ;)

I still use "uffda" a lot, personally. "Uffda tuffda" if I'm feeling spicy.

@@natmorse-noland9133 As I said it might be my particular location that doesn't anymore. The Midwest actually has quite a lot of regional accents themselves. I suppose that is what happens when your region is going through a vowel shift.

No one in my Midwestern town uses uffda

I still hear uff da quite a bit. I’m not sure if the younger kids say it though. My teenagers say it, but then will catch themselves and kind of make a joke out of it. I don’t even notice when I say it, it’s so ingrained in my speech pattern.

Also the slang they used came from black women and teen girls.

While all the rest of the English language came from whom, exactly?

@@user-dd5eh5lu3oscythian horsemen

@@user-dd5eh5lu3o Obviously English comes from England which is white people, but different slang terms in the language can come from people of various racial backgrounds. Idk what your point is. Not everything has to revolve around you at all times.

@@AskMiko more often the other way around. And some words (like "zhoozh") come from British gay slang (polari). It's always more complicated.

I still have a gig bag for my guitar from Sam Ash.

It was even into the '90s and early '00s. In fact, I don't really remember it being commonly used for short term jobs more generally until Uber and the like decided to profit off of technically not slave labor.

Gig line.

The term “gig” probably went “viral” in the 1990s and 2000s because full time permanent jobs that paid a living wage were scarce, being replaced by short term jobs, or “gigs.” In the 1980s, many technical jobs were “outsourced” to contracting outfits, who would hire people and place them in the offices of their clients. A kind of slang developed in which we (I was one of those for a few years) referred to ourselves as “wh**es” (because we weren’t “married” to a company), and the “headhunters” managing our accounts would drop by occasionally to talk to our supervisors and us, so we called them (informally) our “p*mps.” After a certain amount of time, we were often offered a regular job with the company we worked at.

Slang is seen as uneducated because it does not adhere to academic English rules.

You're never to old to use slang, it's just that as you get older, you're typically more associated with the mainstream establishment and any slang you're using is probably going to have been around long enough to be accepted. That being said, sometime before I hit 30, I was too old to use the slang of highschool and college students without it sounding cringe. I could use the slang of the internet from kids that age and it generally sounded fine. But, with nobody knowing how old the people doing the typing are, it's not surprising that it didn't sound too bad. Personally, I don't use slang unless it's something that is regularly used in a community that I'm a part of. And the line between slang and just industry specific communication isn't always that big of a leap.

@@SmallSpoonBrigade Same. I use slang from the communities I'm part of, mainly the online anime and breadtube communities, and I think it's fine.

I just go full chaos brain. Use slang anachronistically, chaotically and aggressively. Mix and match everything you've heard into an appalling mess and glory in its chaos.

@@MrGksarathy TBH, I have a feeling that if you didn't do it, that would sound weird and make people cringe. A lot of it is identity, but a lot of it is experience. If you haven't got the experience to know what a word really means and how to use it, it's going to sound strange, no matter what the intent is.

And that's why it changes so fast. You have to change your code as soon as it gets decoded. That was probably true back in the stone age, too!

I'm not black, but I grew up in an area where present continuous "be" was common and accepted, thus, it's native to me; similarly, I have several other linguistic factors commonly associated with AAVE. (As a very young adult, I lived in an entirely different country and picked up (and retained) several linguistic features from there as well.) Now, as an older adult, much of all of that is so fossilised in my idiolect that I don't recall which is what, making it difficult to intentionally code switch for folks. I've had someone actually say "it's weird how fluid it sounds when you say that" - the that referring to one of those attributes, and only then do I realise. I then worry that the person thinks that I'm "putting it on" for them, and I'm embarrassed.

Y'all be cool... right on.

No lie. Or when an employee decides to use swear words in their pitch to you that they never would've done with a non-Black prospective customer.

@@fthurman sameee. i grew up around aave constantly despite not being black (im white hispanic) and i can really relate with what a lot have said in this comment section about aave and how weirdly its been adopted by people recently. i frankly dont mind whoever uses it but it oftentimes becomes so unrealistic and honestly just unnecessary that i get when ppl dont like when others who didnt grow up around aave start co-opting it cause its "cool gen-z speak" or whatever

I say "do be..." and "he be..." etc., but I always do it to be cutesy... It would be weird if a manager said it to me, unless it looked like he was just trying to be silly and not be taken seriously. If I did it, I would either be trying to look adorable or silly.

Nadsat! Yaaay!

@@goldenheart3887 You're either a Burgess fan or a Kubrick fan (or both), but either way: I salute you. :)

Anthony Burgess invented the Russian-based slang for the book for that same reason -- because he didn't want it to sound dated. An example that I think does Burgess one better is the short story, "One Night in Television City," by Paul Di Filippo, which appears in his collection, Ribofunk. Di Fillipo pays homage to Burgess by situating a scene in a "metamilk bar."

@@stevesmith291 Huh. I've not heard of this story, but I'll certainly be looking it up. Thanks. :)

@@curiousworld7912 The stories in the 1996 book Ribofunk take place in a future dominated by biotechnology.

Also, if you aren't part of that group and use the slang of that group, typically you use it incorrectly or in the wrong context.

This is ridiculous, and I actively avoid slang as I usually find it ridiculous-sounding. No one should be barred from using any non-offensive term, regardless of what "group" they belong to. People REALLY need to stop trying to control what enters other people's minds and come out of other people's mouths. We'd all be a lot better off for it.

@@IDontWantThisStupidHandle It's not that you're not 'allowed' it's that other people will feel you're inauthentic, disrespectful, and probably trying to manipulate them. You're also likely to use the slang incorrectly and say things you didn't intend or which don't make sense (as brands often do). It's like a 50-year-old who tries to talk to a bunch of 13-year-olds in 'teen slang' or a white person who starts trying to use AAVE when talking to black people, or an upper class person who starts self-consciously affecting working class slang when talking to a workman. You're 'allowed' to do that... but your intended audience isn't going to enjoy it.

Linguistics is the only science that allows us to have a well written pragraph with "b*ssy" in the middle of it. I love it.

BTW you're not allowed to call anyone "sis" because that's what my sister called me in the 70s and I'm pretty sure we were using it before you were around.(See how STUPID this argument is?)

They do, but it’s more adults using it. I wouldn’t really want to hear a kid using this word anyway, because it has sexual connotations behind it

That's one of the reasons why it's not really worth it as an adult to try and use slang. By the time that you pick up on how to use it, it's already dying and you just look like a poser.

Kids need to learn to reed and right good English two.

As do you.

​@@herodaresfire4512 whoosh

It's also often limited to specific games' communities. People online using "F" without knowing it's a reference to Call of Duty are always surprising.

For a very small donation, I get PBS straight from the website. That let's me get all the science, social, musicals, and new stuff like: The Great Outdoors with Baratunde... I think it's called passport. They have an app.

@@shawnholbrook7278 but can I download the videos there? I don’t really use the website unless there’s a PBS documentary I want to watch that’s not airing again anytime soon.

Woke is being used as a substitute for the N word? I have never seen that.

@@Caterfree10 There are ways of downloading RU-vid videos without paying anything. It doesn't count as pirating if you're using it for legitimate fair use reasons. It's available to watch for free, it's not as if you're just going to repost it or plagiarize it. Plus, that feature *used* to be free to everyone before premium was ever even a thing anyway. Hiding it behind a paywall after years of being readily available is just BS, and I see no problem in circumventing BS.

@@Richard_Nickerson look at how conservatives use it as a pejorative, especially when black people are involved. It’s absolutely being used as a substitute for the N slur among other slurs.

Crunk was widely used in the early-mid 00s as the way kids use lit. Phat was another popular hiphop term from the late 90s that nobody says anymore. When Lil John phased it the word crunk did to.

Okay, I'll give you the current version of the litmus test. (This will not sound comprehensible if you know it all, but it's likely you don't, so this should work.) 'Oh! Oh! Jail for OP! Jail for OP for a thousand years! Thou hast insulted mine Blorbo! I shall send thy little meow meows to Eeby Deeby! This, I say, is not based af! I shall burn your glup shitto UT AUs! Your MCU ABO fic on AO3 shall be flamed like the horse in the plinko!' Yes, I regret even typing this, but I must test you.

@@glasscardproductions4736 even as a gen z I still don't understand half of this

@@xlown8561 Okay, here's the translation, but if anyone wants to try the test, don't read this yet. 'Oh! You are deserving of terrible mockery, for you have insulted my favourite fictional character whom I constantly point out in their canon media! For this crime, I shall envision your favourite problematic fictional characters who are mostly compromised of older men who have committed reprehensible atrocities being tormented in Hell! I do remark that your treatment of my favourite fictional character is unfair and unforgivable! I shall insult and degrade your work of literature known as Fan-fiction concerning your affinity for merging the topics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the genre of typically intimate universe rules known as the Omegaverse which you have posted to the public website known as Archive Of Our Own.'

@@glasscardproductions4736 i get like 90% of that

@@R8Spike, either you're on the really unhinged part of the more popular social medias, or you're on Tumblr.

@ghost mall it is cringe! Slang is naturally an in-group reference, which means it is mesnt to be used by members of a small defined set of people. When Corporates become big enough, no amount of "community hire" will make it authentic. We can empathise with a person, even with a small group. We can't empathise with a large amorphic amalgamation of people, which is why we can empathise with "the workers of a local store" but not with "the supermarket chainstore". Slang just can't work for large Corporations. Even if they're the worlds most diverse and community-aware, they are still just "too big to slang".

...and that is what makes Dr B the coolest. (also cute AF)

I remember they went as far as sponsoring the game skate 3 to, I assume, keep up that rebellious image

My one friend used to say, tsup hoooooooolmes. Like Sherlock Holmes. It always cracked me up.

@@markdavis7397 A friend of mine was having a racial crisis because he had only ever had sex with white women. He was like, do i hate myself, do i hate my race, do i hate my mother? He wanted to pick up a black girl. So he and i went to the premier of Colors. He threw the kitchen sink at those girls, and he struck out, but he went down swinging. But in retrospect, i think the fact that a square head like me was the best he could do for a wing man, kinda tells the whole story.

TONS of words started as slang, and we can't possibly be asking for permission from its originator to use our language today. Most of our common words come from French and other languages, anyway.

Nearly every word in most languages started out as slang if you go far enough. Having a board that decides what should and shouldn't be a word is challenging at best. Apart from constructed languages that can be more or less fully formed from the start, languages had to evolve from the sounds that early hominids were making covering the needs that they had and evolving from there to cover things as more and more ideas needed a comprehensible way of expressing them.

Every point of communication is a game of telephone

I use 30's slang all the time. In American we have such a rich tapestry of language, why not take advantage of it?

I liked the episode of the Simpsons where they went to Australia and the kid saw a bull frog and commented that he would have called it a chazzwuzzer. Not that bullfrog really makes that much more sense other than containing the word frog in the name.

@@SmallSpoonBrigade Bullfrog is a just a name given to some large species of frog which are deemed aggressive. A bull is noted for being bellicose. I suppose it makes some kind of sense but one might as well call them "wolf-frogs" or "bear-frogs". That would make about as sensbile as "bullfrog".

😁🙋‍♀️ one of my favourite words is incorrigible. And my age group said, "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your (baloney). Also: I have a cornucopia of useless knowledge.

*"Then there was the time we wore 'I'm the Guy' buttons, and thought 'let's not and say we did!' was wit..."* - S.J. Perelman

And when used outside of those professional settings it becomes "jargon". I mean, it's jargon either way. But when you're in the know it's just the local lingo.

There's practical reasons for that. Unless the need grows beyond that group, there's little reason for their to be a convenient way of expressing it already in the language. It even works with sign languages if you're working in a place where it's very loud, there's a good chance that there will be agreed upon signs that pop up to cover things that aren't already covered by a more general gesture.

I run a small business and I'm my own accountant. Is that TMI?😂

Homosexual men were called gay because they were viewed as being literally happy all of the time, ie laughing, cheerful, exuberant. Later, they were actually calling people gay which meant they were gay and lame. Then when pc culture occurred, people wanted to to say it meant lame. But the reason why the word gay was used because the speakers were saying that being gay was whack, lane, etc

23 skiddoo!

Well I think that's tops

@@collin4555 It's a bear!

Eh, it's a euphemism for a job that gets you booted off platforms if you even mention that you do it without being euphemistic, even if you don't advertise it or dress in a "slutty" way. It comes from a sound on tiktok that was a song about an actor who was sick of explaining auditioning, so they resolved to just tell people who ask "that I have a full-time job, as an accountant" "Nobody asks you questions when you say you're an accountant (What do you do?) I'm an accountant (Where do you work?) At a place where accountants work (Do you like your job?) Yes, I like my job, and my job is an accountant" Sex workers, most often online porn creators (on platforms like OnlyFans, Fansly, etc.) *really* found this joke relatable and it spread like wildfire for a moment, and the euphemism stuck around once the song stopped being a meme. I think part of it is probably also that they don't have an employer who automatically subtracts taxes from a salary (in the countries where that's a thing) and they gotta do it themselves, and so they do some accounting as part of earning their money. And it is a euphemism, so it works much the same as "unalive" except the topic is spicy movies instead of logging out of meatspace. If you'd prefer another euphemism, there's plenty to choose from: corn farmer, spice merchant, mattress actress (though that one is hilariously transparent), and a lot of others I'm not thinking of. If you still dislike it with the background, blame the non-spicy actors. They're the community that song originally came from, sex workers just found it relatable.

@@storyspren Excellent explanation👍 Also, you just made me remember how confused I was when everyone on tiktok started talked about "corn", but this time it was *actual* corn because of that one kid at the state fair or whatever.😂