The Free Press
A lot of people like to say Gen Z is doomed—that they live on their phones and have no ambition and can’t even hold a conversation. But lately at The Free Press, maybe because we’ve had such brilliant young people in the office, we’ve been wondering whether the popular stereotypes about Zoomers are plain wrong. So, for this year’s high school essay contest, we asked the experts to tell us: How are we misunderstanding your generation?
We received hundreds of submissions, with high schoolers from California to Kenya to West Virginia to Finland all writing in to share their most pressing thoughts on Gen Z and its place in the world. Agustin, an 18-year-old living in Nashville, argued that “I see my generation as a continuation of the 1960s. Rebels fighting with a cause. Burdened by the wars, poverty, and mistreatment.” Owen, a 15-year-old from Miami, wrote that “we need to bring back the Karen . . . someone willing to bluntly tell the truth and sternly say, ‘You can’t cut the line.’ ”
From questioning whether they would have been friends with their parents, had their ages overlapped, to reflecting on the pressure of being the generation that’s expected to save the world from climate change, these high schoolers captured the Gen-Z zeitgeist in every possible way.
But one essay stood out.
Today, we’re thrilled to publish a piece by Mallory Valis, a 16-year-old from Toronto, Ontario, with a penchant for literature and photovoltaics. And that’s not the only new word she’ll teach you, because Mallory’s essay is about a defining feature of Gen Z: internet slang. “Rizz,” “sus,” “cap:” Mallory argues that these words should be respected, because they unite Zoomers across the world, no matter their life experiences.
Granted, as anyone who has sat across from a Gen-Z family member at Thanksgiving knows, their slang can be confusing to an outsider. So to help you out this holiday season, we’re also publishing a Zoomer glossary at the end of the essay. We urge you to try a few words out on your niece who can’t stop saying, “These cookies slay.” —Maya Sulkin
Bro, this intro is high-key gonna slap. Just let me cook.
Oh wait, I should be more formal.
Uhh. . . . Henceforth I commence my righteous thesis. Yeah.
In the eyes of older generations, Gen-Z slang besmirches the Sacred English Language™ with its base, loose, and astonishingly convoluted wordplay. By now, you’ve heard it before. Words sprouting like weeds in conversations with friends or wriggling through Instagram comment sections: rizz, fit check, girlboss, slay, simp. . . the list spirals downwards into a pit of sacrilege.
As my generation enters the workforce, articles have appeared to show adults how to decode our cryptic tongues. Meanwhile, The Washington Post points out that much of our slang is appropriated from black culture.
It’s giving . . . sus. (That’s Gen Z for suspicious.)
Gen Z is not exactly a champion of our own slang either. Our language has a preordained silliness that piles up into brain rot, an expression summarizing internet culture’s sigh-inducing effects on our intellectuality.
Besides, why should anyone care what words we use? ChatGPT has swept up the dilapidated student into its arms and the two have ridden off into the sunset. Gen Z is free to speak in vapid internet jargon as we scroll through Instagram Reels and let the machines do the brute work. So there mustn’t be anything meaningful to our slang, right?
Cap. (That’s Gen Z for not true.)
This viewpoint entirely discredits the importance of slang itself. While language takes decades to evolve significantly, its fast-living alter ego, slang, shows us how things really are: It has the power to critique and mock contemporary society for the benefit of those stuck in it.
The internet is the esteemed incubator for Zoomer slang. Social media, despite all of its blasphemous repercussions for our well-being, provides youngsters with a sense of—dare I say—comfort in a shifting and uncertain world. This is what makes Gen-Z slang so entirely ours. It blooms in the divide between Gen Z’s internet presence and our physical one, being practically impossible to understand if you have not been born and raised in the slim glass rectangle we call home.
I did a summer program this year with teenagers from all over Canada. We were strangers, separated by hundreds of kilometers of highways and lived experience, but upon arrival I witnessed a linguistic community snap into place and set us apart from the older staff. They were words that we had all tasted before, broken bread over with past friends. Sayings like positive aura arose from a far more profound sense of understanding than we could admit. Language creates community.
The thought that Gen Z is “doomed” because of its slang originates certainly from a newfound obsession with distinguishing generations from another. Hair parted at the side is “millennial”; middle parts are “Gen Z.” Boomers struggle to understand memes, and Gen Z struggles to find work. What is ours, and what is theirs, and how does that make us more worthy?
This creates a rather harmful divide between otherwise similar people and hinders intergenerational understanding. Older generations may feel threatened by this odd, impenetrable horde of words that are invading familiar environments—hence the articles written on “decoding” slang in the workplace—and will be more encouraged to discredit it.
Youth, meanwhile, have a feeling of treading in uncharted waters: Pushed past the buoy line on matters like climate change, AI, and political tensions, brain rot, our descent into “nonsense,” becomes just another sign of our downfall. We often forget that we are not the first ones to face mass destruction, and that cold-war boomers used such strange words as zonked, fink, and boob tube. We can forget that slang is just as normal as certain doom.
What has bro been yapping about?
(That translates to: So what?)
Slang is an organic way of speaking that reflects the lived experience of a group, and it can be just as important as high-level words for conserving both individuality and community. That is not to say that we should neglect high-level language in pursuit of simplicity, but rather that both forms of communication have their purpose in the modern world. Our true linguistic hindrance is AI, not slang.
While the two determinately feed off of one another, the former allows us to sink into complacency in a world free from self-exploration and expression. Language is power. We must understand the significance of our slang and continue working to keep it undeniably, obtrusively, magnificently Gen Z.
This holiday season, why not weave a few of these words into conversation, to impress your Zoomer relatives. . .
Aura: a transcendental sense of cool
Bro: short for brother, sometimes used as a pronoun
Clapback: a well-placed quip in response to an insult
Cooked: doomed
Fit check: the act of appreciating one’s outfit
For real: relatable, true
High-key: intense, undisguised
Mid: average, unsatisfying
Real: true, relatable
Rizz: short for charisma
Salty: upset, in a jealous way
Shook: surprised, shocked
Slap: excellent, hard-hitting
Slay: to succeed
To cook: to dominate, to succeed
W: short for win
Mallory Valis is the winner of our 2024 Free Press High School Essay Contest. For more wisdom from Gen Z, read last year’s winning entry by Ruby LaRocca, “A Constitution for Teenage Happiness”—then share it with your Zoomer nieces, nephews, and cousins this holiday season.