GYAT ’S WHAT KIDS SAYING
Latest slang a mystery
Think Zoomer slang is baffling? Wait until you hear what the next generation is saying. Generation Alpha, made up of the kids born since 2012, has officially entered the chat.
Have you ever heard words like sigma — not the Greek letter — gyat or fanum tax? Apparently they mean alpha male, “girl your a-- thick” and the cost of stealing food from your friends, respectively.
As a Gen Zer myself, I’m not even a decade older than some of Gen Alpha, but I’m already confused by their slang and humor.
Cue the eyerolls and “OK Zoomer” insults.
Generation Alpha
Take the popular Gen Alpha song, “Gyatstacy,” which has gone viral in posts on TikTok, YouTube and Twitch.
Originally posted by a 13year-old TikTok user called @ovp.9 and sung in the voice of a clearly prepubescent boy, the lyrics are beyond comprehension.
“Sticking out your gyat for the rizzler. You’re so Skibidi. You’re so fanum tax. I just wanna be your sigma. Freaking come here. Give me your Ohio.” Don’t worry, Millennials, Gen X and Boomers — I’m lost, too.
According to a Morning Consult survey of Gen Alpha’s parents, some of the most common slang terms they overhear include “bet” (an alternative for “OK”), “sus” (an abbreviation for “suspicious,” first popularized by the online game “Among Us”) and “bussin’ ” (an adjective used to describe delicious food).
Stranger yet are Gen Alpha’s memes, two of which are referenced in the “Gyatstacy” song.
The most popular is “Skibidi toilet” — a 72-part (!) YouTube video series that depicts a war between toilets with human heads and humans with security cameras for heads.
The series was created by Georgian YouTuber Alexey Gerasimov, who is a Zoomer in his 20s.
Episodes regularly garner north of 100 million views, and Gen Alpha apparently love shouting “Skibidi” at random, according to parents and teachers.
It’s on TikTok
When you ask them to explain, as one TikToker did, incredulous kids can hardly believe anyone wouldn’t know what it is: “Skibidi Toilet — I don’t know how you don’t know this — but Skibidi Toilet is basically like someone’s head coming out of a toilet, and it can be any size. They eat people. It is a meme of something eating people, I guess. Like, the people are like robots, technically.”
That clarifies things.