The internet moves fast. Nowhere is this more evident than in its use of slang. It seems every month there is a new word dripping from the lips of those in the know. But where do these words originate, and how do they come to inhabit the mercurial world of Gen-Z slang?
To understand some of today’s slang, we must first look at the idea of nicheness. Something ‘niche’ is anything that exists within a specific group and would be largely unknown to those outside it. Niche things will almost always escape their bubble, however. Everyone will know about them and eventually, everyone will forget their original meaning or provenance.
This can be seen in various current slang terms. The examples I will use are two words: ‘overstimulated’ and ‘vocal stim’. Various corners of the internet have long served as safe spaces for neurodivergent individuals as places to learn about their conditions and how to manage them, among other things. Both of these words originate from those spaces. ‘Overstimulation’ is typically associated with ADHD and/or autism, and is described by therapist.com as “when your senses receive more information than you’re able to process, leading to discomfort.”
A ‘vocal stim’ is common among those with autism.
“It refers to repetitive sounds or vocalizations that support sensory regulation, emotional expression, or focus.”, according to neurosparkhealth.com.
The greater internet, in adopting these two words and turning them into slang, has stripped them of their nuance and medical meaning.
A person with autism may develop a tune they hum to regulate themselves; they may also rock back and forth with the melody–all of this being part of their complex experience navigating life. Alternatively, a neurotypical individual may see a popular meme and begin repeating it over and over for comedic effect, then gleefully proclaim it as their new ‘vocal stim’.
A neurodivergent person who is sensitive to noise may enter a public space and become deeply uncomfortable with their environment–their anxiety might spike and they could enter a state of near fight-or-flight.
A neurotypical person might realize they have an assignment due and upon becoming a little stressed, they might tell their friend they are feeling ‘overstimulated’. You get the picture.
There is a clear life cycle of the slang word that we can see here: a word with a complex and specific meaning within a group is adopted by the broader youth culture and used in a comedic light–in this case, the comedy originally lay in a level of hyperbole; but as these words continued to be used, even that nuance was no longer maintained.
There is essentially no way to prevent this life cycle. In this age of the internet, characterized by speed, these words will run their course. They will or won’t receive backlash, which we have seen with ‘overstimulation’ and ‘vocal stim’, but either way, they are liable to die out.
If these ever-changing slang terms are part of the ‘zeitgeist’, it’s worth breaking that word down: ‘geist’ (spirit) finds a cognate in the word ‘gust’, a brief rush of wind. Just as the zeitgeist is the spirit of the age, so too is it a gust of wind, whipping through our moment until it trails off into entropy.
