\n<\/p>\n
This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American’s board of editors.<\/p>\n
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Rachel Feltman.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve ever heard a youth say \u201cskibidi\u201d and lamented the downfall of the English language, today\u2019s episode might surprise you. Our guest is Adam Aleksic, a linguist and content creator known online as the \u201cEtymology Nerd.\u201d He recently wrote a book called Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language, which explores how algorithms are changing the way folks communicate.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
It might feel like the rise of \u201cbrain rot\u201d is literally rotting brains, but Adam argues that supposed Internet gibberish actually follows the same patterns humans have used to create language for thousands of years; the difference is just the speed and scale. And far from dumbing down the discourse these new words and phrases often crop up to serve important social functions.<\/p>\n
Scientific American associate editor and sometimes sub-in Science Quickly host Allison Parshall recently sat down with Adam to chat about this brave new linguistic world. Here\u2019s their conversation.<\/p>\n
Allison Parshall: How would you describe your linguistic upbringing [on] the Internet? What was your, like, formative experiences there?<\/p>\n
Adam Aleksic: My first experience with the Internet was really Reddit. I was very bookish and didn\u2019t interact with the Internet much until sophomore year of high school, where I started this etymology blog, which back then was called EtymologyNerd.com, and I would post a word origin a day. And I would start, like, looking around on the Internet for other, like, resources for etymology, and I stumbled on the subreddit r\/etymology, and that was actually one of the best ones out there, so that was where I started dabbling. I was posting there\u2014I was like, \u201cOoh, I like the fake Internet points\u201d\u2014started posting on some other subreddits. I made maps and made infographics, and so I would post those, and they would do well, and then I started posting other stuff.<\/p>\n
So that was my first experience, like, learning how to go viral on the Internet, but it was also just …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Hmm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Like, my encounter with the Internet as a person. And then, I don\u2019t know, after high school I stopped going on Reddit. I was pretty offline most of college, and then, when I was graduating with a linguistics degree and didn\u2019t know [laughs] what to do, a friend suggested, \u201cHey, maybe you should try making videos.\u201d And I was like, \u201cWell, I know how to go viral; I might as well give it a shot. It\u2019s better than anything else.\u201d [Laughs]<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah, most anything else, yeah. Were there any words that r\/etymology subreddit used that you remember\u2014maybe not words but just, like, particular ways of being and talking to each other?<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, I do remember early slang words and being fascinated by them, and this was all from Vine, really: like \u201con fleek\u201d or \u201cbae\u201d …<\/p>\n
Parshall: \u201cYeet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Or \u201cfam.\u201d \u201cYeet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: All that. There were the 4chan words bleeding into Reddit …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: So I did see the words like \u201cpilled\u201d and \u201cmaxxing\u201d and that stuff before, like, it started really leaking into the mainstream. So that was definitely stuff I was aware of and interested in because I was interested in language, [though I] didn\u2019t really start analyzing slang for my job until after college. But, like, reflecting, like, post\u2014after the fact, you really start to see, \u201cWow, this is what was happening then,\u201d and it\u2019s useful to have been in the weeds.<\/p>\n
Parshall: My crucible was Tumblr. And I\u2019m using this …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Right.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Like, slightly as a segue because one of the memes that I first saw on there that became so popular even more recently, to the point where it made the transition over to TikTok, was the \u201cmitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell\u201d meme. This is, like, slightly self-referential because I recently learned that Scientific American coined that; it was, like, the first use of the phrase …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Really? Wow.<\/p>\n
Parshall: In 1957.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: [Laughs]<\/p>\n
Parshall: And I\u2019m curious, like, not to put you on the spot, but I am curious if you know anything about that meme or just, like, how you\u2019ve encountered it, how it has changed over time. Is that something that you know about?<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Well, there\u2019s a bunch of stock phrases that are humorous to people because of their overrepresentation in our culture. And [\u201cmitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell\u201d is] funny because obviously it showed up in all these early documentaries, and we started making jokes parodying the fact that it\u2019s so present. Honestly, that\u2019s what brain rot is, too, and if we look at\u2014right now there\u2019s \u201cDubai chocolate Labubu Crumbl cookie\u201d brain rot, and that\u2019s funny because it\u2019s parodying this overrepresented thing in our culture …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: And what was \u201cmitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell\u201d? Before we had viral algorithmic feeds bringing us the same recommended content over and over again, what would we parody? We\u2019d parody mass culture, and we still are in many ways. But that is a time-honored linguistic process.<\/p>\n
Parshall: It\u2019s interesting \u2019cause it seems distinct from the other phenomenon you mention a lot in the book, which is, like, where something becomes popular because it was actually quite niche, but then, through many particular reasons\u2014maybe it fills a lexical gap or it just sounds funny, like \u201cdelulu\u201d\u2014it just gets picked up. Do you think of those as two separate things or maybe two sides of the same coin?<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Humans use words because they\u2019re funny or interesting or cool or fit a useful niche. In the case of \u201cmitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,\u201d it\u2019s funny to us, and there\u2019s an underlying social reason for [its] funniness, but no, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s, it\u2019s really fundamentally new. I think maybe because of the highly competitive nature of memes competing with each other in algorithmic environments, we do tend to, like, feel like words seem funnier or there\u2019s more memes driving language than maybe there could\u2019ve been in the past.<\/p>\n
But in terms of the stock phrases\u2014I don\u2019t know if you ever took the FitnessGram PACER test.<\/p>\n
Parshall: [Laughs and puts on a voice] \u201cThe FitnessGram PACER test.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aleksic: \u201cThe FitnessGram PACER test is a multistage …\u201d<\/p>\n
Parshall: Absolutely.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, exactly …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: So, like, anybody growing up, like, our sort of age encountered that, and that\u2019s a funny phrase, and I\u2019ve seen FitnessGram PACER test memes on the Internet as well. Memes also call attention to shared realities, shared cultural backgrounds, and it seems niche, it seems like, \u201cOh, this is this small detail from our childhoods,\u201d and yet it\u2019s\u2014calling back to this niche shared experience feels like you\u2019re part of an in-group, which, at the end of the day, is a repeated thing.<\/p>\n
Again, nothing is really that new. It\u2019s the feeling of being in a group that defines how we interact with each other as humans, and that\u2019s something I really try to explore in my book, and that\u2019s something that is common to the mitochondria thing and the FitnessGram thing: it\u2019s calling attention to this very specific thing we all had together.<\/p>\n
Parshall: It reminds me a little bit of the day after the SAT, when obviously no one is supposed to be posting SAT memes online, but everyone is posting SAT memes online …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I would love going to the SAT memes subreddit\u2014exactly.<\/p>\n
Parshall: It was, like, the most profound feeling of community that I can remember, at least at that point in my life. And you\u2019re so disconnected, you don\u2019t know who these people are, but, yeah, that question did suck, yeah.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: The best parts of the Internet are when you feel that collective effervescence because that\u2019s what drives us as humans: this feeling of connection to other people. And social media literally mediates that, but it can make us feel that feeling, get that hit of dopamine, and …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: When social media creates echo chambers or groups or even, before algorithms, on Reddit when we had these communities\u2014I found my community of etymology people, and then there\u2019s the community of people who took the AP exam\u2014and you feel really good being in these groups, and you feel really good in your Tumblr niches.<\/p>\n
Parshall: I think people even feel really good saying \u201cSkibidi Toilet sigma rizz,\u201d and I\u2019m curious, one of the things …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: That still defines an in-group of people who are in on the joke. I mean, all, all language, at some level, signals your belongingness to a group.<\/p>\n
Parshall: I remember when the Oxford [English Dictionary\u2019s publisher, Oxford University Press,] proclaimed 2024 the year of \u201cbrain rot,\u201d and I feel like there was a lot of, like, hand-wringing and thinking about, like, \u201cOh, this is rot.\u201d And, like, even the way we talk about it is, is, like, poking fun at a feeling of malaise that a lot of us have. But I am curious if you can talk a little bit more about why you think people are feeling that\u2014like, people are pointing to that \u201crot\u201d feeling, but also why you think it\u2019s wrong to think of it as, like, a degradation.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I think it\u2019s very important to separate language and culture here\u2014and I guess you can\u2019t fully ever\u2014but neurologically, with any word, there\u2019s nothing worse for your brain about that word than any other word; words don\u2019t rot your brain. And so I think there\u2019s the implication to cast other cultural concerns onto the words that are associated with cultural phenomena [we\u2019re worried about]. Like, \u201cskibidi\u201d is associated with the Skibidi Toilet YouTube [Shorts] series, which is seen as brain rot because it plays into that idea of algorithmic feeds and shattered attention spans and declining literacy rates. And [we take] those negative feelings and we cast those aspersions onto the idea of Skibidi Toilet, which alone, by itself, is a piece of cinema\u2014it is! I don\u2019t know\u2014like, you go to …<\/p>\n
Parshall: I\u2019m gonna review it on Letterboxd.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: [Laughs] It\u2019s just, like, what we culturally perceive as, like: \u201cOh, this is a movie\u201d versus \u201cthis is not a movie\u201d; \u201cthis is high art\u201d versus \u201cthis is low art.\u201d That\u2019s always been culture. That\u2019s, like, our subjective experience in defining what we think is good and bad in society that we only then use to, like, create value judgments on.<\/p>\n
I think, like, look at\u2014pop art plays with that boundary between what is low art and what is high art.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I, I think, if Andy Warhol were around right\u2014today, he would be making, like, Skibidi Toilet paintings.<\/p>\n
Parshall: [Laughs]<\/p>\n
Aleksic: [Laughs]<\/p>\n
Parshall: Oh, it\u2019s an image. That\u2019s an image. I\u2019m picturing the face, yeah.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: No, but just the idea is that this is still a subjective thing, at the end of the day, and the image of a toilet is not neurologically bad for you any more than the word \u201cskibidi\u201d is bad for you. However, we have these other cultural concerns that we port over [to] it, we bring into this genre of comedy that we call brain rot.<\/p>\n
Brain rot, to me\u2014I think the Oxford English Dictionary, when they did the Word of the Year, they got it mostly wrong because, yes, it does mean this feeling of neurological damage caused by the Internet, but more people use it to describe this comedic meme aesthetic of nonsensical repetition, calling back to the idea of rotting your brain, but the meme itself doesn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n
Parshall: You\u2019re not \u201csigma\u201d-ing yourself into some sort [laughs] of, like, lower attention span or something. That is just, like, words we\u2019re using to describe something we\u2019re feeling, but the words themselves are not furthering any issue here.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Right.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: The conversation about algorithmic media and how good or bad it is for our society is a separate\u2014an important conversation to have. But if I\u2019m talking about language in this book, which is the main focus, I really wanna try to separate that and say …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: \u201cNo, it\u2019s not wrong that your middle schooler is saying \u2018skibidi.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Parshall: I\u2019m sure\u2014I can\u2019t remember what I was saying then, but it was surely …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: We were saying all kinds of …<\/p>\n
Parshall: No more sensical.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah [laughs].<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah. I, I am curious about the algorithms. Obviously, the title of the book is Algospeak, and that\u2019s referring to, if I understand correctly, how we change words to get around censorship. There are a few examples from your book that I loved. I\u2019m curious if you have any favorites of\u2014particularly interesting examples of the ways that people have adapted to the algorithms and the censorship to try to change how we speak.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Honestly, my favorite examples really only became mainstream after I finished writing the book. The word \u201cbop,\u201d for example, is now widespread on the Internet to mean \u201cpromiscuous woman\u201d but is commonly understood to mean, like, an OnlyFans creator, and to older people it used to mean \u201coh, a good song.\u201d But because …<\/p>\n
Parshall: I didn\u2019t know about this.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: No, \u201cbop\u201d is\u2014it means \u201cprostitute\u201d; it means, like, \u201cOnlyFans creator.\u201d And that is widespread how it\u2019s used on algorithmic media. And it\u2019s an incredible example of algospeak …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Because people don\u2019t even think of it as such. That\u2019s how the creators are using it, but\u2014ask any person in Gen Alpha, and that\u2019s what the word \u201cbop\u201d means to them. And this is perpetuated by influencers and content creators tapping into that engagement treadmill, where they\u2019re trying to go viral by hijacking what is essentially a meme and it is content circumvention at the same time …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: And there\u2019s a viral Bop House of, like\u2014[an] OnlyFans content creator house that [helps] perpetuate the meme further, and individual people will self-identify themselves as a bop.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: And this is just a thing that nobody did, like, a year before, and people don\u2019t even think about it as algospeak, which makes it somehow better at being algospeak.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Wow, it\u2019s, like, a double whammy: it\u2019s, like, the algospeak to get around the, like, censorship of saying what you really mean that might get censored, but then also, it feeds into that other thing you mention a lot in the book, which is, like …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Turning the keyword into metadata that then feeds the cycle and feeds the virality.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I think that makes it more memetically fit to spread and to stick in our language.<\/p>\n
Parshall: You mention, like, \u201cmimetic fitness,\u201d and it reminded me about the ways that we talk about the spread of language [as] being …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Like, viral and evolutionary. Do you think …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I\u2019m not a fan of that …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Go ahead.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, I\u2019m not a fan of that metaphor; it\u2019s reductive. You kind of have to use it because if I\u2019m just shorthand talking in a conversation, I have to oversimplify. But really, there is the\u2014ideas, ideas don\u2019t exist outside of our head. The only way ideas spread is: somebody has a feeling about a situation, and they want to express that feeling, and they encode it into a medium\u2014and this is also a metaphor here. What that really means is: I physically change reality in some way. Right now I\u2019m articulating words, which is allowing you to understand my headspace. That is a physical alteration in the universe that can then be reuptaken by someone else.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: In reality this idea does not exist in these sound waves I\u2019m creating …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: It\u2019s [that] you now interpret it through your cultural appraisal, through your unique background and all your associations you have of language and all these words, and you take a slightly different idea out of it, and it can be a similar idea, and we refer to these similar ideas as memes. But memes only maybe compete inside an\u2014any one individual\u2019s head …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Hmm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: You feel like you like a word better than some other thing. But it\u2019s not competing in the wild; there\u2019s no idea space where these memes are fighting against each other. But we have to use that metaphor because it\u2019s super difficult and hard to say, \u201cI have a feeling about something, and I physically alter the universe, and then you uptake your own feeling out of it, and there\u2019s aggregate feelings of how feelings occur.\u201d [Laughs] Not very useful. But yeah, sorry I had to really put a disclaimer on the viral metaphor, which I think …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Is a real hindrance to the field of mimetics, which is, I think, a very important thing to be looking at, but the metaphor of [language] \u201cgoing viral\u201d\u2014literally a virus\u2014is problematic.<\/p>\n
Parshall: One of the things that stuck out to me a lot in the book was just this breakneck pace of how fast things are evolving right now. Labubus were popular for, like\u2014I mean, this isn\u2019t really a word, but then the meme\u2014the word itself does become a meme. But now I feel like Labubus are over, because I feel like people got onto it …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Parshall: And it\u2019s done now. And I\u2014if I took one week off of social media, I probably could have missed almost all of the Labubus. When you think about how breakneck the pace is, what are you thinking of the consequences of that, compared to what we used to do, which is, like, \u201con fleek\u201d is popular for months?<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, well, on one hand that just means we have to be more responsive as creators and as consumers of content to be tapped into the algorithmic trend, which helps these platforms. I do think, now, if we are going back to the cultural angle and not the linguistic angle \u2019cause linguistically, it\u2019s\u2014this is just really cool that there\u2019s new words coming and [these are] new ways for humans to express themselves and this is fun to study for me. Culturally, I am a little concerned, perhaps, that\u2014there\u2019s two types of communication, really; Harold Innis, in his book The Bias of Communication, breaks this down. But there\u2019s space-biased and time-biased communication. Time-biased will last longer across time, and space will just take up a lot of space right now but turn over quickly. So, like, news cycles versus a book: [a book] will stay longer, but a news cycle will reach more people. And viral communication reaches a lot of people really quickly, but it doesn\u2019t last long …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Like an oral tradition or something.<\/p>\n
And the difference is, like, these oral traditions, these more time-biased forms of media, are ritualistic. They\u2019re meant to build community. The root of the word \u201ccommunication\u201d comes from the same root as \u201ccommunity\u201d because that\u2019s what the original purpose was: building community. And I worry that the surplus of this space-biased communication, which is just filling up [space]\u2014it\u2019s, like, the word \u201ccontent\u201d literally means it\u2019s something that just fills up space. And I\u2019m worried that means we have less connection to one another, perhaps, through a \u201cmedia study is cultural theory\u201d angle. Linguistically, again, it\u2019s just fun that we have new words.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yeah. Do you get excited every time there\u2019s a new word, like, or …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Totally, I mean, it\u2019s just\u2014well, it\u2019s good for me that I stay in business [laughs]. It\u2019s definitely good …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Another long day at the word factory.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: [Laughs] Yeah, a linguist be like, \u201cI have a word due at midnight.\u201d No, it\u2019s, it\u2019s, it\u2019s a lot of fun, and it\u2019s especially rewarding to see that this framework I outline in Algospeak continues applying to new situations. I talk about some words that are already clearly outdated; I mean, if \u201cLabubu\u201d is outdated already, \u201cskibidi\u201d sure as heck is. But, like, it\u2019s not the words themselves that\u2014I use them to paint this picture of [the fact that] the algorithmic infrastructure underlying language evolution is here to stay and it\u2019s going to keep affecting words in this way that I\u2019m discussing. We see that with the word \u201cbop\u201d emerging now. We see this with new trends of brain rot. The iterations are following the same patterns, which is\u2014and in many ways the same patterns that humans have always relied on to communicate with one another …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: But shaped uniquely by this new medium and its constraints and its advantages.<\/p>\n
Parshall: One of those constraints or advantages or whatever that stuck out to me a lot as seeming pretty important is the \u201ccontext collapse\u201d one, where, like, basically, we never know who we\u2019re talking to or who is talking to us. Can you tell me a little bit more about the ways that ends up impacting the words we use and how we feel about them?<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, context collapse means you perceive something in a new context, right, and you don\u2019t know where it came from originally. And that means, practically, you lose the power that those words originally had. Let\u2019s look at African American English. A lot of words that we use today\u2014slay, serve, queen, ate, yass, bet\u2014[a] lot of these come from the ballroom scene in New York City in the 1980s, which was this queer, Black, Latino space. And there\u2019d be, like, a regulatory function: if you were a, a white girl saying \u201cslay\u201d in the 1980s, it\u2019d be, like, strange; people would look at you funny.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s none of that because the context is different. So what would happen on social media is people feel like they\u2019re speaking to one audience, the algorithm\u2019s gonna intercept that and distribute it to another audience [because] that\u2019ll just make more money for the algorithm. And that\u2019s where the context collapses. Now you\u2019re a white girl looking at a mother in a ball house say the word \u201cslay,\u201d and you feel like, \u201cOh, this person\u2019s talking to me. It\u2019s on my For You page; it must be for me.\u201d And you interpret that, and then you now make a video saying \u201cslay,\u201d and then now, only one degree removed, now we have a white girl saying \u201cslay,\u201d and this is viewed by other white girls\u2014maybe your video goes more viral\u2014and context collapses. Nobody even knows that it came from, like, the ballroom scene ever because it just comes …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Directly from the mouthpiece of the white girl saying \u201cslay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm. Do you feel any particular type of way about this? English being a lingua franca, where it\u2019s, like, on the one hand connecting more people; on the other hand many languages are dying or being neglected, and that\u2019s awful. It\u2019s this double-edged sword, maybe there\u2019s no way to fully reconcile it, but it seems like on the one hand, oh, connecting so many people with cultures they wouldn\u2019t have seen before, and on the other, like, a dilution of what those cultures want to be when they\u2019re separate.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, well, the way I reconcile it is I think we should just make as many people as aware as possible of what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s not my job as a linguist to tell you, \u201cThis is what you\u2019re gonna say; this is what you\u2019re not gonna say.\u201d It\u2019s my job to, like, publicly observe these changes that are occurring, and you make your own judgments. Again, separating the language and culture, but the culture is always there\u2014it\u2019s intertwined. You should make your own conclusions about what you wanna say. I certainly say or don\u2019t say certain words based on my value judgments of how much I like saying those words. I think that\u2019s reasonable; you have to do that. And I think everybody should be more informed about language so we can be more conscientious as communicators.<\/p>\n
Parshall: I wanna wrap it up, but I, also, I think maybe a good place to, to do that would be to ask a little bit more about one of the sentences that you have toward the end of the book, which you said, \u201cWe live with the algorithm, but our resistance to it is embedded in our counterculture.\u201d I\u2019m curious if you can tell me a little bit more about how you see us resisting the algorithm or maybe how you feel like you try to resist the algorithm. How do we live with this?<\/p>\n
Aleksic: It\u2019s a fact that this is how most people are consuming information now. It is also the best way to reach people, and it is influencing our culture, whether you\u2019re on social media or not. A lot of people aren\u2019t, but you\u2019re still in a cafe or a bar, and you hear, like, Sabrina Carpenter come on, and that came on because it\u2019s popular on the algorithm. So your headspace is still being defined by this influence of, of social media, and the language you hear people use around you and the language you end up adopting or your kids end up adopting is still gonna be coming from the algorithm, whether you like it or not …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: So yes, we live with it, and it\u2014you can\u2019t just bury your head in the sand and pretend it doesn\u2019t exist. But also, it\u2019s valid to be upset about some of the things the algorithm\u2019s doing. It\u2019s valid to be concerned how these social media platforms are trying to commodify our attention so they can sell our data and sell us more ads, and all that is so valid, and it is okay to resist that and push back\u2014which is a human tendency, to resist\u2014and when things feel like they\u2019re overly forced on us, we find the breaks in the category, find ways to think laterally and come up with new ways to express ourselves and our concepts.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: [The meme genre of] brain rot is poking fun at algorithmic oversaturation. A lot of our expression is a subtle resistance because language is never just one thing at a time. I\u2019m not just saying words; I\u2019m saying words in the context in which I\u2019m saying words, and the context is through the algorithm. So if I\u2019m an influencer trying to communicate to you right now, maybe I want to recognize, on some level, that I am forced to do so.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Get meta with it a little.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I try to in my videos.<\/p>\n
Parshall: [Laughs] Yeah, I think that works. Our creativity, like you said, knows no bounds, and it\u2019s interesting that some linguistic contexts really allow for that, but it seems like we\u2019ll find a way.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I also think we\u2019re always gonna stay ahead of the large language models. They\u2019re always trying to catch up to what humans are saying. But you ask ChatGPT to generate slang words, and it\u2019s gonna sound stilted …<\/p>\n
Parshall: Mm.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Because it\u2019s devoid of context. Humans are always a step ahead because what these algorithms have is a map of language, not the territory of language, and the territory is constantly evolving and pushing past new boundaries.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Hmm, like you\u2014what you were mentioning earlier, I was thinking about: the, like, your head to my head. It doesn\u2019t exist outside of your head to my head. And I think one of the reasons why I feel so unsettled looking at, like, ChatGPT-written writing is it\u2019s pretending to exist outside of the head, but it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Yeah, that\u2019s just a bunch of numbers that are predicting a response that you wanna see that are mirroring your mannerisms. Yeah [laughs], it\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Well, I feel so, like, simultaneously fond and [have], like, love for Internet culture and what I always\u2014I alternate between \u201cI\u2019m not gonna go on TikTok at all this week\u201d to \u201cI wanna be on TikTok as much as possible because I wanna feel like I\u2019m part of it,\u201d and I don\u2019t know if you have a way that you\u2019ve come to reconcile those emotions …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: No, that\u2019s the paradox, I think, central to interacting with the Internet, right? It\u2019s the best way to be tapped into the culture. I think it\u2019s our moral duty to responsibly interact with culture and be aware of how, how, you know, the algorithm\u2019s shaping us. But I think ignoring the algorithm altogether seems sort of bad because then you can be quickly blindsided by sudden cultural or political shifts. You, you should be aware of what\u2019s happening, and you should be generally, yeah, aware of things in general.<\/p>\n
So I think it\u2019s, it\u2019s okay to interact with the algorithm responsibly, but again, I come back to that idea that we should be as aware as possible. I personally, yeah, I doomscroll [laughs] a little bit, but then I set my own boundaries. Like, I, I set my phone in another room when I go to bed, and I read a little bit, and that\u2019s a really good boundary for me because now I\u2019m able to still have my doomscrolling time in the morning or whatever, but now I can accomplish something or feel like I\u2019m mixing forms of media or not just consuming one form of media or being controlled by the media. All of that seems important simultaneously.<\/p>\n
Parshall: It\u2019s fascinating to me how we\u2019re all kind of feeling through the dark of navigating our own relationship with healthy boundaries for social media on our own, and it seems\u2014I don\u2019t know, it seems like we\u2019re all, like, sitting around an AA meeting, like, trying to figure out how to make it work for us, but …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: I think, culturally, we\u2019re still gonna be grappling with this for a while. Hank Green, I think, put it well when he called this a \u201cGutenberg-level\u201d shift. We are experiencing a revolution in the media we\u2019re consuming, and, like, we don\u2019t even know [the answers to key questions]: Oh, how much should we be giving our kids technology? How much should we be interacting with technology? Should I go dumb phone? Should I go flip phone? Should I delete this app or keep this app or go grayscale? And we\u2019re all very much figuring that out. And I think it\u2019s not gonna be solved, and technology\u2019s gonna keep advancing, so we need to be extremely tapped into culture and to our own feelings and to the situation at large.<\/p>\n
Parshall: At the very least I don\u2019t wanna be caught off guard when my little cousin says the next version of \u201cskibidi.\u201d [Laughs] I don\u2019t wanna look not cool.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Exactly, exactly.<\/p>\n
Parshall: Yes.<\/p>\n
Aleksic: Well, you\u2019re gonna look not cool no matter what …<\/p>\n
Parshall: I know. We do …<\/p>\n
Aleksic: That\u2019s, that\u2019s\u2014our job is to look uncool, yeah.<\/p>\n
Parshall: You have to make peace with that.<\/p>\n
Feltman: That\u2019s all for today\u2019s episode. We\u2019ll be back on Monday with our weekly news roundup.<\/p>\n
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Allison Parshall and edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.<\/p>\n
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American’s board of editors. Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Rachel Feltman. If you\u2019ve ever heard a youth say \u201cskibidi\u201d and lamented the downfall of the English language, today\u2019s episode might surprise you. Our guest is Adam Aleksic,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[3412,13761,956,13759,1145,13760,213,13120],"class_list":{"0":"post-22444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-adam","9":"tag-aleksic","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-etymology","12":"tag-internet","13":"tag-nerd","14":"tag-talk","15":"tag-transforming"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}