How to learn slang

I’ve always loved having a diverse group of friends, and to be more specific, friends that are different than me. While it’s often easier to form friendships with people look like us, I think I learn more from friends who are different, which could include anything from their political views to their Myers-Briggs, in addition to the typical things like ethnicity, religion, and age.

Let’s take age as an example — since I’m the eldest of all my cousins, I’m used to playing and hanging out with people who are younger than me. In school, though, I generally only befriended those from my own class or those above me. In hindsight, I guess that stemmed from being, for lack of a better word, a snob — as in, what could these underclassmen possibly have to teach me?

Well, joke’s on me, because in recent years I’ve been hanging out a fair amount with friends who are, shall we say, somewhat younger. Not only that, but I’ve been finding myself learning quite a lot from these friends, and in particular slang and what kids are saying nowadays.

If I had to pinpoint when it all started, I’d say it was circa 2012, when my cousin Brian taught me what #yolo meant. I knew it was 2012 because I told him about Gangnam Style around the same time. Prior to that I also picked up some online chat lingo from Brian whenever he’d use abbreviations / acronyms I didn’t recognize. Instead of asking him what they meant, though, I usually just figured it out on my own.

If anything Covid has made the process easier. Earlier this month I was playing online board games with some of these younger friends when they started discussing how some cards were “OP.” While listening to their conversation I nonchalantly googled, “what does OP mean?” Sure, I could have done this pre-Covid, but now I’m just behind a screen and nobody’s the wiser that I had no idea what they were talking about. I also don’t mind asking friends to explain young people terms to me, but why do that when I can just google it real-time and write a blog post about it later?

Of course, figuring out what something means is one thing, but using it in casual conversation as if you’re hip and relevant is another. That’s why I was particularly proud of myself for properly using “OP” in a sentence the following week. Granted, it was while playing the exact same game online, albeit with different friends, but it was a step in the right direction.

In closing, I want to share a list of ten other “young people terms” I’ve learned in the past couple years or so. I’m still trying to work them into everyday conversation in my never ending quest to appear cool to everybody I know, but I’m curious, for friends in my age group — how many of these have you heard of and know how to use in context?

1. Flex
2. GG
3. Let’s go
4. Move
5. Rip
6. Sgtm
7. Sus
8. Tilted
9. Tfti
10. Wrecked

For my friends who introduced me to this list — I have a more advanced version of the quiz for you: who am I associating with saying each of these terms? (Can be >1 person.) I want to say that the winner gets a prize, but I have no idea what the prize should be…so I’m open to suggestions.