Are you gagged with a spoon by today’s massively gnarly/dope/fresh slang?

Did I get that right, kids? Surely, I’m with it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not me who is the problem, it’s the children.

Given the current volatility of modern culture, it’s unsurprising that many examples of 2020’s most popular slang includes terms like “Karens”, “OK Boomer”, “cancel/canceled” and “tea”. “Karens” and “OK Boomer” are used dismissively, while the word “tea” stands in for truth. “Cancel/canceled” is pretty self-evident. These are words for expressing anger and frustration.

Now, popular language changes rapidly because we have constant access to new terminology via the internet. So, what makes up our individual speech patterns? In Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, linguist Gretchen McCulloch uses the example of “soda” to showcase how a name of a word can vary across regions (“pop” or “coke” elsewhere).