Endless Thread - This song wants you to stick out your what!?

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

If you know what "Sticking out your Gyat for the Rizzler" means you're likely a part of Gen Alpha or you're chronically online. And if, like us, you have no idea what that means when you first encounter it, then strap in and get ready to be schooled on what the internet is coining "Gen Alpha Lingo."

W-B-U-R podcast, Boston. Well, Jacob, it's your show. We're just living in it. Why are we here? What are we talking about? So I was scrolling on Instagram one day, and I saw this video. It's a clip of somebody playing Fortnite. Nothing too strange there.

But the really weird thing is you hear a song. And this song makes, like, no sense when you're listening to it. It's got a lot of this weird internet lingo that, I felt really, really confused by. And when you listen to it, I think you guys might be as lost as I was at the start of this. So I found out it's just a bunch of internet buzzwords wrapped up together into this song.

And I had to end up going down a rabbit hole to sort of understand what was happening in this song. We're going to get to the bottom of it. I want you guys to hear it first. So check it out. Sticking at your yacht for the Rizzler. You're so skibbitty. You're so phantom tax.

I just want to be your Sigma. Freaking come here. Give me your Ohio. So did you guys understand a single word that was said? Sigma. I heard Sigma in there somewhere. Yeah, Sigma. You also heard Rizzler.

You heard Phantom Tax. You heard Ohio. Which is a word we know, but maybe this meaning is a little different. You heard Giat. All in this weird song. I feel like some pitch training might be warranted for the singer. This singer, quote unquote, has like a three note, a three whole step range. They can't be inconvenience to change pitch too much.

So that's actually, it sounds like that on purpose. It's a cover of another song by this group called Suicidal Thoughts. Their song is called Ecstasy. So this person on the internet that goes by the name, Homestuck Lover, 398, was the first person to upload this video. So it's got all these, like, hot buzzwords that a lot of people, including, like, Gen Z, are feeling really confused by. So I thought it would make sense to try to break them down and figure out what is going on

here. What do all these buzzwords mean? And how can we sort of use them maybe even in our own vocabulary? So Sigma said something that that. that you guys are familiar with? Yeah. Sure. The Greek letter?

Yeah. Have you heard anybody refer to themselves as like an alpha male? Oh, yeah. Of course. So the Sigma male, they're in their own minds on par with alpha males. But the key difference that separates them from alphas is that they're like loners. So if you see a lot of like Sigma male memes and people will be like, yeah, I'm like, I'm a Sigma male. I'm a lone wolf.

I'm a lone ranger. And this is a gen whatever comes after Gen Z thing? I'd say it's more Gen Z and millennial, honestly, than Gen Alpha. Okay, Gen Alpha, this is all new to me. Gen Alpha is what we're calling the generation after Gen Z. That makes sense. Amory, catch up. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm busy.

I think the really interesting thing is, like, the way that it's really rounded around this, like, grind, set. It's this idea of like, you know, working hard and becoming rich. And Gen Alpha is thinking about this when they're, how old is Jen Alpha? Gen Alpha starts at 2012. So at the age of 11, these people are like rising and grinding. You weren't rising and grinding at 11 years old, Emery? I mean, I kind of was. I already was babysitting. I was teaching piano. I was a paper boy. I had my birthday party business, the balloon.

The balloonatics. Yeah. The balloonatics. Yeah. We can get, that's a separate story. We need it. Oh my God. Where does that thread go? Let's stay on this one because otherwise. So let's rewind a little bit back. Riz, you're familiar with that, right? I am, but only recently. Charisma. It's like you got Riz, you've got charisma. I thought it was a very minor Batman villain.

I thought it was like the Riddler's weird cousin, the Rizzler. Did I actually know something that Ben didn't know? Oh, man. You mean from the internet? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Excellent. Yeah. Okay.

One point, Amory. Okay, tell us the rest. So a lot of these terms were popularized by a streamer. So his name is Kai Sinat. Does that name stick out to you guys? I know of Kai Sanat, yeah. Okay, one point Ben. So Kai Sanat is a streamer on Twitch, right?

A way he really got big is he started this hosting a 24-hour sub-a-thon. There's like a camera set up in his bedroom. You're watching him sleep. This boring dystopia is running out of ideas, is what I have to say. That's exactly it. Yep. If that's how he gets paid, so be it. So Kai Sanat, he's another buzzword.

You're going to hear him in a lot of these other covers using the same sort of style of song. So this whole meme is just recreating another song that's already known and you're changing the lyrics to these buzzwords. You'll hear, like, people cover Hallelujah. It goes like this. So Kai Sanat, he popularized a few of these things here, like, Giat. Have you ever heard that term before, guys?

No. Giat. Certainly not. Certainly Giat. I hate to say this, but the last time Amory and I were connected with something like this, I'm pretty sure was Yeet. I think Yeet is the last time. Did you teach me about Yeat?

I think we like sort of taught each other maybe But we eated each other It was a co-eating So, Giot It's been around the vernacular for a while It's like shortened form of goddamn But the way that Kaisnaut popularized it Is more like as an exclamation

And it's something that he says Anytime he sees a curvy woman In particular Can I just say like on the one hand It's like to each their own, every new generation has some like silly things that they say. And I've made up silly words with my own friends, right? So like I support this as an idea.

And at the same time when I like I hear you describe it and I hear the song, Jacob, like basically what I think of is some weird combination of maybe like 1984 or something. It just, it feels something about it also feels like dark and terrible to me. But maybe I'm just getting old. We're not at the dark and terrible part yet. Oh, we didn't even get there yet. We were ready to be like, and in summary, every generation has its own vernacular. Yes.

And Jacob's like, no, no. It gets worse. It's getting worse. Perfect. Okay. So, just for a refresher, I'll just say all the lyrics again, right? So sticking out your guiat for the Rizzler. You're so skibbidi.

You're so phantom tax. So phantom. Phantom is a streamer who lives in the same house as Kaisanat. And every time Kaysanat is eating on stream, he gets a phantom tax. And so the phantom tax is literally him busting in and eating whatever Kaisanat is eating. I do this to my kids all the time. I'm always busting in and stealing their food. That's the dad tax.

That's the dad tax. It's the same thing. To me, again, this reminds me of like what I do with my own friends, right? You know, you come up with these little inside jokes and things that you do with each other and to each other. And it's like when you know someone for a long time or you have like an intensely close relationship with them, like that's what you do. But it also feels a little bit weird because it's getting mainstreamed via social platform. How big is this? Am I going to start hearing?

this on the street? Maybe. So Kaisenat, he's been watched for over 107.5 million hours. I mean, who has the time, really? That's the question I want to know. What are they doing? They're just watching this. What are they not doing when they're just watching this? You know? Well, yeah, I think that's normal. Like when you remember, Amory, I mean, sure, yes, you and balloon amaniacs or whatever were I'm sure very busy. The balloonatics. Sorry, the balloonatics were very busy, I'm sure. But at the same time, when you are a kid,

you have a lot of free time to just like, you know, waste on stupid stuff. For me, it was like playing video games. And for people who are younger than me, like a lot of it is watching other people play video games. And for other people, maybe it's, you know, levying a phantom tax. It's just the continuation of what we all do for amusement when we have all the time in the world before we understand all the other things that we have to do.

I was really amazed by a jackass as a kid. So me and my friends would just do stupid stunts. Yeah. Like putting ourselves in a bucket and then like dragging that down a hill on a bike, you know, stuff like that. You were out in the fresh air. You were, You were taking risks and you were, you know, making mischief and doing stunts. And that, that to me is like exciting and refreshing. But the phantom tax is mischief. That's mischievous. But it's, but it's watching a screen.

I guess for me, you know, I go back and forth on this stuff because again, it's like, yeah, there was stuff that I was doing that was like this. It was just like a different format. I was just like listening to tapes in which people prank called other. people. So I go back and forth between being like, yeah, it's all the same stuff. It's just like a new version of the same stuff. And then like my more, maybe my more, you know, old man thing is more like pearl clutching where I'm like, oh God, this is what the kids do now. Yeah. I worry for our society. You know, I just like dither back and forth between those two things. Yeah. Between the kids are all right and the kids are not all right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. All right. We're all right. All right.

Well, if you think all this is weird and hard to explain, things are about to get weirder. More on that, right after this break. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous. curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. All right, so skibbitty toilet. It's this amalgamation of two songs. Okay. The beat is from Timbalands, Give It to Me. And this Russian 3D artist, who goes by the YouTube handle, The Fuck Boom, they mix it with Biser. He's a Bulgarian singer

And this is his song Dom Dom Yes So here it is Skippity Toilet by DeFuq Boom Oh my god There's a head That poked out of a toilet And sang a song

That was terrifying Once the bit mojis came around Those really freaked me out and that was like a singing bit moji popping out of a toilet. And it had three million views and 46,000 comments. What does it mean? What does Skibbitty mean? You know, Skibbitty.

I mean Skibbity. So that's where Skibbity comes from. Okay. It's like a scatting. It doesn't hold any meaning on its own other than it's like, it's like scat. Yes. Wow. Ben, how do you think you'd react if your kid saw Skibbitty toilet or,

was a skibody toilet child. The skibety toilet generation. I mean, calling them a skibity toilet child makes me a little uncomfortable. However, however, I mean, you know, kids do the darndest things. That's cool with me if they're, you know, as long as it's not like, you know, hopefully they're, I think they're too young to be sticking out their guill out for the Rizzler. But if they want to, you know, if they like the skibety toilet song,

And they want to bump that? I'm cool with it. I don't know the amount of time that people are spending watching these streamers. But Ben, if your kid's hobby became watching streamers, how does that change things? If watching streamers becomes an activity for them? I would not be using my precious time to partake in that with them. But it is true. That is like one of the parenting things that you're supposed to do, right?

Like you're supposed to opt into this stuff with your kids and be like, all right, like, what are you into? I'll be into that with you, you know? Hello, fellow kids. Yeah, hello fellow kids. Exactly. Exactly. Skippity, pop, bum, do. Yeah, scutty, hey, I'll stick out my whatever for the Rizzler.

Sure. Like, ugh, dad. Yeah, exactly. So, again, like, I guess I go back to, like, it's cool. Like, kids got their own thing. Kids always have their own things. So you got to support them and, you know, hope that it's not rotting their brain too hard. And, you know, kick them out of the house every once in a while and take their phones and tell them to go, like, make a spear and throw it at a tree or something.

I don't know. Go get a grass stain, will you? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. So we've stuck out our guiat. We know who the Rizzler is. We know what it means to be skis.

skibbity or what skibbity is. No, we don't, but sure. Sometimes nonsense is like the thing that is a universal language, you know, like Skibbidi, Skibbidi could go around the world and back, you know? The last part of the song is, uh, freaking come here, give me your Ohio. Ohio. Ohio. Ohio is also very popular in mean culture.

Really? Yeah. I'm listening. This dates back to 2015. The Sugar Bowl, Floyd Johnson, aka Floyd from Ohio, is wearing a sweater that reads Ohio against the world. And people sort of just love that. My sister has a shirt that says that, yep. No way.

I'm from Ohio. I grew up there. We each have some Ohio-themed merch. Did you know that the internet is calling Ohio the meme state? Wow. No. Why? Well, there's just been a bunch of internet memes about Ohio.

Like how cool Ohio is or how amazing Ohio is. If you Google Ohio versus the world, you're going to see a bunch of great memes of Ohio, the state, literally taking over America. Yeah, so the northern half of the U.S. is Upper Ohio. The southern half is lower Ohio and Canada is soon to be Ohio. Amory, I'm sure we'll take umbrage to this, but it's still correct. Ohio is an incredibly boring state. So, like, some of this is, like, pretending that Ohio is not boring and that it's everything. It's not boring.

It's just it's very hard to, like, like, other than us being a swing state and having the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yeah. It's hard to know what to, like, Ohio? question mark? You know? Yeah. I think you just prove my point there. I feel like, you know.

No, no. I'm saying like I get it. It's hard to say like, Ohio. What is that? Like, yeah. Well, Amory, do you feel smarter? Do I feel smarter? Yeah.

No. No. In fact, what I was going to just say is like, I really do wonder sometimes if we were to lose the internet for, let's say, a month, would we come back to it and be like, wow, amazing? Or would we come back to it after spending a month not on the internet and go, how did we ever find this interesting?

I don't know the answer to that. I'm just saying, like, that's what makes me wonder, is if we have advanced to the point where we're creating new kinds of content to make the internet feel new and novel, or if we would come back to it and be like, what? What were we doing? What were we watching? What made that interesting?

Was that interesting because we were so saturated? I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. Well, you know, I think there's only one way to find out. We need to get off the internet for a month. No. We have to, you know, stick out our... Oh, God.

Giotz. For the Rizzler. We have to do it for the Rizzler. So, Jacob, what was the takeaway from you learning about Gen Alpha's new lingo as a Gen Z person? Like, what have you learned about? About us, about Internet culture. Why is this something that we should all kind of maybe be more aware of or open our eyes to? We're at a time right now where Gen Z years are getting older, right?

and they're starting to feel a bit more out of touch with the internet. And my generation was raised on the internet. Like I talked to my little brother. He's like, oh, yeah, that's this thing. This is that. Kaisana, he does all these things with his friends. I'm finally starting to get at that age where I'm feeling maybe a little older, maybe a little wiser, maybe less sucked into the internet.

But then stuff like this just pulls me right back in. Don't give in, Jacob. Don't give in. Welcome to my world. Come pick flowers with me. I think we all, as we age, we start to lose the vernacular that feels so natural to us as a young person. You know, for a long time, like you're saying, Jacob, we all just like automatically get this stuff and it feels, and it feels very easy to understand because we are sort of producing it and are the product of it. but as we get older we start to lose that sort of, I don't know, what you would call a pop culture vernacular or like understanding of what is happening, what the kids are up to, what's hip, what's cool.

Like we start losing all of that. And so there is like a normal thing that happens to every generation as they age, which is like, I don't know what these damn kids are talking about. But then there's also another thing happening, which is, again, that the internet is basically like splintering the way that we all communicate when it comes to communicating via pop culture or communicating with pieces of pop culture or culture. And so I think that is at play here too,

where it's like everything is speeding up more and more and more and more and more and more. And then also disappearing faster and faster and faster and faster to the point where Jacob, like you don't, you see this stuff and you're like, what the hell are they talking about? I think it's also meant to be confusing and meant to make you feel old. I mean, when you listen to the song, it's like a prepubescent boy, right, singing this. It's supposed to be like overwhelming. You know, you hear this for the first time.

It's like, what are all these words coming at me? And it's basically just a meme of us observing memes. Like, it's all just so meta and wrapped up into itself. And it's making fun of itself. It's like, the internet is fast. and you're not always going to understand what's going on. And this is just a brief moment in time. Damn Skippy.

Yeah, man. All right, are you going to play us some songs? No, you're going to sing me some songs. Oh, okay. All right. Amory, you're going to be covering Toxic. Hell yeah. By Britney Spears.

But it's called Sigma. Sure. Try it out. This song is so good. Baby Grongers me. Livy D. A yacht like yours should wear a warning. It's dangerous.

I'm risen. It's skibbidi. I can't wave. I need Ohio. Sigma give me it. You're Kaisenov. I'm loving it. With a taste of your paradise,

I'm a dear to do you. Don't you know that you're Sigma? And I love her. you do don't you know let you signal Wow I think it works yeah this is this is gonna be a hit it's gonna be a hit again all right then it's your turn all right and for you I've got one of your favorites Black Street and this one's a no-brainer instead of no diggedy you're gonna be doing no skibbitty okay dokey all right I'm ready take it away

East Ohio to West Ohio Pushing Kaysenap, it's no surprise She got phantom in the stash stacking up the tax Fast when it comes to the Giyadh By no means average She's sigma, she's got to have it Baby you're a perfect 10

I want to get in Can I get Gia so I can win I like the way you work it No scivity I got to riz it up I like the way you work Yeah, no scimity I got to riz it up

Yeah, I like the way you work Yeah, no skivety I got to riz it up I like the way you work it No scibity I got to riz it up Riz it up girl That is beautiful

That was great And deep And deep Well Jacob, thank you so much For keeping us young I think I'm gonna need a break From the internet Yeah, I mean you deserve one

Yeah, you did lose hours at the very least off your life. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Although I think they might have been restored by both the year singing. Oh, good. Yeah, whenever you're feeling old, just saying, you know what? Skibbitty.

And you're right back. You're right back to where you started. All right, folks. This episode was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson, and Amory Severson. The Riz was brought by WBUR Newsroom fellow extraordinaire Jacob Garcia, mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. We are going to be hitting you

with a few of our favorite Endless Thread episodes over the next few weeks where we all go into a hole and eat a bunch of Christmas cookies or something. So happy holidays from us at Endless Thread and WBUR.

And we'll hit you up with some new goods in the new year. Bye.