Mike
Ah, the whirlwind world of slang terms, where each generation crafts its lingo, leaving the rest to fumble through translations. Remember when “groovy” was the bee’s knees, or when “lit” finally didn’t just refer to a well-lit room?
Well, fasten your seatbelts, because Generation Alpha is taking us on a new linguistic and trend joyride. Born with technology at their fingertips, these young wordsmiths and trendsetters are concocting their own slang, fashions, and socially acceptable trends to keep us all up to date.
One Tiktok mom is making sure all of us “olds” stay in the know. Her Gen Alpha daughter broke it down.
“Do not even think about wearing pants that even hint at being tight. Don’t even try a straight-leg leg jean, it’s like barely making the mark. If you do anything, if you listen to anything, that’s the takeaway.
Starface pimple patches are social currency. They are also a replacement for money, I’ve been told, so you can trade them for other things. But they’re absolutely an accessory, not just a necessity, but they’re both.”
“Early 2000s haircuts on the boys. My daughter calls them ‘Chad cuts’, I don’t know if that’s colloquial to Southern California and LA or if that’s universal, but they’re around, the flippy, the long, they’re back.
Hoodies, hoodies, hoodies. There isn’t any cardigan in sight. There are barely any jackets. It’s all about hoodies.”
“This one has been happening for a little while now. But if you have a PopSocket on the back of your phone, you should take it off and throw it away or burn it. Because PopSockets are the skinny jeans of phone accessories.
The only acceptable phone accessories, aside from like a cute case, are the little bracelets that attach to your wrist and then attach to your phone.
You can also have the suction cup sticky things from Amazon, if you have both, you get a little bit of street cred, but a PopSocket is an immediate side eye and immediate millennial marker.”
“When it comes to shoes. It’s very chunky. So this is especially for girls. Uggs, sandals, tennis shoes, we’re going chunky, think like Skechers 2005 to 2007 style. It’s very much back and a little bit more of like a chicer way. But any shoe is preferably chunky.
Staying on the chunky theme. It’s also really important to make sure that your jewelry is chunky. We’re not necessarily going with super petite anymore unless you are dealing with earrings and hoops.
Jewelry is very chunky, very playful. And the everyday jewelry is primarily silver, not gold. I’m seeing this silver jewelry trend everywhere. I’m clearly participating in it myself. So I think they’re onto something here. It’s not just them, but it’s like very much a thing for them.”
“This next one is my daughter and I’s biggest tension point. She feels, and she says that she speaks for her generation, that millennials are way too sensitive about always having to use ‘kk’. She feels like ‘k’ is a perfectly acceptable response. And she thinks that we need to get over it. So if you get ‘k’, you’re not necessarily getting an attitude, you’re just getting a response.
This is an editor’s note. Also, for everyone who was so offended and triggered by my last video, I am not saying that you need to be following the trends of middle schoolers. You can hold on to your skinny jeans, I just am in these middle school trenches with my daughter, and I work in fashion, and I find these things fascinating. So do with this information what you will. It’s gonna be okay.”
“This is going to come for the throat of every millennial, but not only are skinny jeans out, so are skinny leggings. If you’re going to wear a legging, it needs to have some kind of flair to it, or you need to be wearing sweatpants.
This next one is also very much an attack on millennials, and I apologize in advance because it hurts me too. Throwing a cute piece sign when you’re trying to take like a cute fun selfie is no longer a thing, in fact, my daughter always tells me it’s cringe when I do it. It is however acceptable to do a heart, or if you really want to impress, you can do the middle finger big heart.”
“We all know at this point that coquette is very in, as are ribbons, but ribbons are level one of coquette. My daughter said that if you want to get to like max level, you need to be wearing a lot of lace.
A Blair Waldorf style big headband, or even just a heart headband in general, is no longer a thing. However, the thick, chunky elastic headbands are very much acceptable, but you need to make sure that you’re pushing your bangs back with them.
If you have to wear a T-shirt on its own, that’s fine. But it’s much more acceptable to wear a T-shirt and always have a long sleeved shirt of some kind underneath it.”
“And last but not least, ‘slay’ is very much on its way out. You can say ‘major’, but that’s still kind of for like the old cool kids. My daughter says that you need to say ‘you ate that’.
For example, when she likes the dinner I cook she says, ‘you ate that’. I also once talked myself out of a parking ticket in front of her and she also said ‘you ate that’.
As always, please try not to get too upset by this. You can keep your skinny jeans and your PopSockets I’m just here in these trenches, sharing Jenny’s perspective because they think it’s interesting and kind of funny.”
See the Tiktok here:
@faithhitch Trend update from genA, im in these middle school trenches so i might as well share #trendforecasting #middleschool
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h/t: BoredPanda