Something You Should Know - Why We Care What Other People Think & How Social Media is Shaping Language

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

UPGRADE TO SYSK PREMIUM! To unlock ad-free listening to over 1,000 episodes plus receive exclusive weekly bonus content, go to ⁠ https://SYSKPremium.com As people age, changes in the eyes require that some to get reading glasses to see things clearly close-up. What’s odd is that women seem to require reading glasses at an earlier age than men. Why? Listen as I reveal the interesting answer. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120623144946.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com We all want to get along and be liked but some people take it to the extreme. These are people pleasers. They worry about what other people think of them. If someone doesn’t return a phone call right away they fear that person is mad at them. If the boss offers criticism they worry they are going to be fired. You may be a people pleaser or know others who are. People pleasing is exhausting. Here with some insight and advice is Meg Josephson. She is a psychotherapist with a particular interest in this topic and she is the author of the book Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You (https://amzn.to/46dZjvR) Here is the link to Meg’s videos on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@megjosephson Social media and algorithms are impacting language in some ways you can’t imagine. While it is not unlike how other media (television, movies, books etc.) have altered language in the past, this is coming from a very different place for very different reasons. And the momentum seems to ramp up in middle schools. Here to explain this is Adam Aleksic, a linguist and content creator whose work has been mentioned in the New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. Adam is author a book called Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language (https://amzn.to/40Oc9gX) There are two theories on how to hang a roll of toilet paper. Some say the end should roll down the front while others say the end should roll down the back. Who is correct? Well, it depends. But I can tell you what the inventor of toilet paper had in mind. Listen and find out. https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/yes-there-is-a-correct-way-to-hang-toilet-paper/article/435790 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples from Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! HERS: Whether you want to lose weight, grow thicker, fuller hair, or find relief for anxiety, Hers has you covered. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forhers.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, why women usually need reading glasses sooner than men. Then great advice for people pleasers who are always worried about what others think. Rather than feeding into the urgency that people please saying, uh-oh, someone's mad at me so I'm going to text them, are we okay? Did I do something wrong? Putting the phone down, just slowing down that process is communicating to the body. I'm not in danger." Then, the right way to hang a roll of toilet paper, and how algorithms and social media are changing our language, and the change seems to start in middle school.

Children particularly like adopting new words because it's a way to build their own identity and differentiate themselves from adults. I don't need to adopt the word skibbity right now because I don't need to prove anything about who I am as a person but it might make a difference in a middle school. All this today on Something You Should Know. Hi, I'm Adam Gitwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times.

No. We tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny. They're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry. We rate every episode, Grim, Grimmer,, or grimist, so you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you.

Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimist, and our new season, available now. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today. As people get older, they lose the ability, we all lose the ability, to see things clearly close up. But there's an interesting difference here between men and women. Hi and welcome to something you should know.

Presbyopia. It's the condition of the eye that causes people to need reading glasses because we lose our ability to see things clearly that are close to our face. And women usually get presbyopia sooner than men. Why? Because women hold books and magazines and their phones and their iPads. They hold things closer to their face than men do. This causes a stiffening of the eyeballs lens which makes zooming in on close objects more difficult and that leads to blurred vision and the need for reading glasses. But it makes you wonder, well, why do women do this? Why do women hold reading material

closer to their face than men do? And the answer turns out to be amazingly simple. Because their arms are shorter. That's it, that's the reason. Since their arms are shorter, they hold the material closer, and that causes problems with focus and blurred vision

sooner. Researchers say there is no other reason they can find to cause the difference between the genders other than arm length. And that is something you should know. I want to take a moment to tell you about something very special. We have a new subscription offer for our listeners called SYSK Premium. You can access all the episodes ad free. All the new episodes, all the back episodes, ad free plus bonus content each week for only $3.99 a month, even less with an annual subscription. Go to syskpremium.com to learn more and sign up now. There's a link

to SYSK Premium in the show notes and signing up couldn't be easier. That's syskpremium.com for 100% ad-free listening and exclusive episodes each week. exclusive episodes each week. It's a very human thing to be concerned about what other people think of you. You know, people need people. We want to be part of the tribe, part of the community. And throughout much of human history, that was a matter of survival to be part of the group. Still today, it seems some people are way too concerned about what other people think. These are people pleasers.

They don't want anyone to be upset with them, so they bend over backwards to make sure that doesn't happen. And that's a pretty tough way to live when you're always worried about what everyone else is thinking of you. Meg Josephson is a psychotherapist who has her own history with people pleasing, and she works with people who wanna break free from it.

She posts some great videos on TikTok on this topic as well as others, and she is author of a book called, Are You Mad At Me? How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for you. Hi Meg, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for having me.

So while it seems like it is human nature to want to please people so that you are part of the group and you are well liked in the group, there are those people who are described not in a good way, oh she's such a people pleaser. Like, she goes too far with it. So maybe there's a people pleasing sliding scale. Absolutely. Well, we have this natural, innate craving for harmony in our relationships. And we're pro-social beings who want to belong

and who want our relationships to go smoothly. And that's natural. But it's certainly a scale in that people-pleasing can be for harmony, but can also be actually a threat response and a trauma response as well. So give me an example of that as people-pleasing being a threat response

or a trauma response? Yeah, when when people pleasing is a threat response it can manifest as these questions of are you mad at me or am I in trouble? It manifests as overthinking social interactions but what happens is the body's detecting some sort of threat and the body is reacting to appease the threat. It's trying to impress it or satisfy it and this is called the faun response. An example of this is if your boss is being a little cold or standoffish, your immediate reaction is to compliment your boss or to try to be helpful or agreeable. And so it's this instinct to, I detect something is wrong,

and so I'm going to abandon myself and overextend myself in order to feel safe. Who hasn't done that? Who has? Everybody's done that. Yeah. And you said something, it's the something response. I didn't hear what that was. It's called the fawn response. Oh, so fawn like the deer or like more appropriately, like you're fawning all over someone.

F-A-W-N. And fawn is moving toward the threat, trying to be liked by it, satisfying it, impressing it. Sometimes we need to do it. It's a useful, brilliant, unconscious protective mechanism. But when we're doing it as our default way of being, it is exhausting and can definitely lead to burnout.

So we all know people. In fact, these people are even described this way as, oh, I like him. He doesn't care what anybody thinks. Well, who's he? Why does he not do the fawn response? I like him, he doesn't care what anybody thinks. Well, who's he? Why does he not do the Fawn response? Or does he care what people think?

He just deals with it differently. Yeah, well, as a therapist, I work with a lot of people that have learned to fawn as a safety mechanism. And for a lot of people that started in childhood, if you grew up in a home that was volatile or tense, or you had a caregiver who is quite critical or emotionally neglectful, the fawn response is such a brilliant mechanism

because it is a way of maximizing love and safety. For example, if you had a caregiver who was really volatile or their moods were really unpredictable, being as perfect or as good or as easy as you could is such a brilliant way to keep the caregiver's moods at bay as best as you can. And so for a lot of people, or at least for what I see in the therapy office, this is where this behavior starts and is learned.

And so for a lot of people that struggle with caring a lot what people think and, oh, did I say the right thing? Do they like me? What do they think of me? For a lot of people, this pattern started in childhood as a safety mechanism and carries over into adulthood and isn't as useful anymore. And so it's really for that, for your example of someone who doesn't care what people think, who knows, maybe that person didn't have to learn how

to fawn as a child, but also maybe they became aware of that pattern and they moved through it because it certainly is something that we can unlearn. I have often heard it said that you know when people say you know that you worry too much about what other people think because what other people think is nothing. They don't think about you they think about them and how they're affecting other people that that you when you overthink what other people are thinking you're probably wrong because they're not thinking much of anything. You're exactly right. This is actually a term called the spotlight effect to where we tend to over exaggerate how

much people are thinking about us and we also tend to take those things quite personally. And the realization that we're all living in our own lives, and we're all very focused on our own relationships and thoughts and fears and worries. And people are really not noticing us as much as we think. But for people that have been conditioned to be stuck in the faun response, the tendency is to blame ourselves for everything, to assume we've done something wrong. And so we become hyper-focused on our faults and on the things we are doing, quote, wrong.

And it just becomes this cycle of self-blame. So is the goal when, for example, someone doesn't call you back and you start to think, oh what have I done wrong? They must be mad at me. Is the goal to stop those thoughts from entering your head? You know, we can't stop those thoughts. Those thoughts that come in of, oh they hate me or they're mad at me or I've done something wrong, that voice might still be there. But instead it's about soothing the emotion beneath that voice, soothing that anxiety, soothing that fear. We're not trying to shut that voice out, but instead trying to create a relationship to that voice. I still have a lot of those anxious thoughts. As someone who deeply, personally resonates with this topic,

I still have that anxious voice. I just don't believe those thoughts as much anymore. You gave an example earlier, and it's an experience everyone has had where you think your boss is mad at you. So you start to fawn. You start to please them, compliment them, try to unruffle their feathers

because you think they're upset. That seems like a pretty normal thing to do. Yeah? Well, you're speaking to a really good point, which is, sometimes we need to fawn. When our body is detecting a threat, whether that threat is real, like a lion chasing us, or perceived, like a boss being

maybe mad at us, it doesn't matter, the body's reacting the same way. Sometimes we need to fawn, we have to get a paycheck, we have to survive in society and within these systems that we're living in. So sometimes we need to, it's about really unlearning the fawn response when we don't need it. Like with your best friend, with your partner, if your partner has had a hard day and they're being kind of quiet in the kitchen,

and maybe your first instinct, because this has been familiar to you, is are they mad at me? Do they not love me anymore? Noticing that anxiety, is that necessary here? Is that necessary in the same way that it might genuinely be necessary for your boss that you need to please?

I see this exhibited in another way that I'd like you to comment on, and that is I know people like, they'll get a text from somebody, and the words on the screen are, that's okay, I'm fine. And they'll say, look, I got this text. And she says, that's OK, I'm fine.

Well, no, wait a minute. You're adding all kinds of interpretation into that to make it sound like they're mad. And that is such a real example of how the faun response can manifest, where the body is detecting some sort of threat, and so it's looking for information to prove that to be true. Okay, where are the ways in which I'm not appeasing them, and how can I appease them more. So that's the faun response manifesting. And a tangible tool that I always like to tell my clients is to trust what they're saying, to take it at face value. If they are upset with you, can you trust that they will tell you something, tell you? If they have, if they are secretly mad at you, can you trust

and allow them to come to you, if that's the case? So to practice not mind reading anymore, to drop the analysis of what they could have meant, can you let them communicate what they really mean and trust that they will? And if they don't, if they're not great communicators, there's nothing for you to fix. There's nothing for you to investigate. It's rather clarity about the relationship and how they can communicate. That's brilliant. I think everybody heard somebody in their life

or some situation in their life in what you just said. We're talking about people pleasing today. And my guest is psychotherapist Meg Josephson, author of the book, Are You Mad At Me? How to Stop F on what others think and start living for you. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy,

bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longestshortesttime.com. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes,

Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic check out Disney countdown wherever you get your podcasts So Meg, you know some people are better at dealing with this and accepting this than others But when it comes down to it, you know when someone's upset at you So what let them be upset It's not the end of the world just just because they'll get over it, move on. Absolutely. And you speak to another really great aspect of the faun response, which is, you know, especially if, and I bring it back to childhood, simply

because I'm a therapist, and that's often the lens that I'm looking through with clients to so that they can be anchored in the present. But if you grew up in a home where you were managing your parents' moods or you were in charge of keeping them happy, that's going, that familiar protective pattern is going to carry over into adulthood where you might feel this need if someone's in a bad mood,

your immediate instincts might be, oh, that's my fault. I need to fix it for them. And what the fauna response is really saying is I can't be okay, until I know you're okay. I can't be regulated until you're regulated. And so to be able to accept that their emotions and their reactions and their perceptions are out of your control. There's nothing you can't, no matter how perfect you are, you can't control and manage their moods. And that's such a hard truth to come to terms with, but it's

a really important one as well. So the symptom that you've mentioned and other people have mentioned, the symptom for people pleasing is when people wonder or ask the question, are you mad at me? They're worried that you're mad at, they're mad. But sometimes you are worried that someone's mad. And it seems like a legitimate question, a legitimate fear. Absolutely. Well, it's a good distinction of, are you fearing that the person is mad at you

because there is reason to? Did something happen? Great. That's an opening for a conversation. But many of us who are stuck in this are you mad at me framework, we're imagining that people are mad at us when it's not actually true. Or we're fearing that people are mad at us

simply because they didn't respond to our text for a few hours. Or because they were just in a bad mood. So we interpret that as, oh, I did something wrong. So sometimes people will be mad at us. Sometimes people will misunderstand us or misjudge us. And that is certainly true. And we can have the self-trust to navigate

those hard conversations. And sometimes they're not mad at us. And we then need to soothe ourselves. And sometimes people are mad at us, and too bad. Tough luck. That's life. Life goes on. Absolutely.

It goes back to we can't control how people are feeling. But I think a lot of people who resonate with this question have also been conditioned to fear conflict, to avoid conflict at all costs, because they learned when someone is mad at me or there's a conflict in some form, the relationship is ruined. It's over, there's no going back from it.

And so understanding that actually a little bit of friction in healthy, safe relationships is a really good thing because it means occasional friction, like, oh, we're disagreeing on this thing, or we see differently about this topic. What that means is there's enough space and safety in the relationship for differing opinions to exist. And what that means is both people can be themselves and that's actually a really healthy thing. Yeah, what you just said resonates with me that it tends to be this all or nothing thinking

that you're mad at me and now the world's going to end. Yeah. And it's not. That's right. It's really not. That's right. But it speaks to because are you mad at me, he's rooted in a survival response. Survival is black or white. I'm safe or I'm not.

You're good or I'm bad or you're bad and I'm good. And the mind wants to just simplify and categorize things as such. But I mean, whatever is so black or white, there's often nuance to a lot of things. But that survival part wants to just know what's safe and what's not. So to be able to slow down and allow room for nuances

is very healing. When you research, when you look at people who have this issue, when they're people pleasers and they're worried about how other people think of them and all this, does anybody research what the other people are thinking? The other people being who? The people I think are mad at me. What are they really thinking?

Ha ha ha. Well, I think it certainly depends. I think across the board, a good statement I would feel confident to say is they're not thinking about us as much as we think they are. But you know, it's interesting for people that are the opposite. They're not people pleasers at all.

Actually, this are you mad at me people pleasing behavior can put quite a strain on the relationships because someone who's a people pleaser might seek a lot of reassurance in the relationship. Are you mad at me? Do you still love me? Do you think I look pretty in this? There's a lot of reassurance seeking.

So the other person on the receiving end of it can feel quite tired and frustrated. And that's why I think it's so important to distinguish reassurance versus validation. Reassurance is about the content. Like I said, are you mad at me? Do you still love me? Do you think I'm pretty? Whereas validation is about, it's an opening into a deeper conversation.

And that could sound like instead of are you mad at me, hey, I've been feeling kind of distant from you lately, we haven't had any quality time in a while, and I feel far from you. I was hoping we could talk about that. So it, it's an opening into understanding the other person's emotion beneath the need to ask for reassurance. And that is a much more productive and regulating technique because reassurance seeking can become quite addictive. It's relieving for a second, but then the anxiety

comes right back, because the anxiety itself isn't being addressed. Right, so yeah, you've got reassurance, but when have you reassured me lately? Yes, and when have we talked about the emotion that's happening beneath the need to ask for reassurance? And you know, validation might include some reassurance. No, no, I'm not mad at you.

I've just been, I've been really busy at work and I've been feeling so in my head. And it's, it's an understanding. It's a, it's opening a conversation and an understanding so that both people can see and hear each other. Well, it would seem that people pleasers who need that kind of reassurance would not be drawn to people who are reluctant to give it. And that those people wouldn't be drawn to people

who need the constant reassurance. You know, you'd be surprised actually because a lot of people who grew up as people pleasers, they grew up with quite critical caregivers or people that they had to work really hard to impress. Unconsciously, people pleasers can be drawn to partners that mirror that dynamic. And that's called trauma reenactment, where they are drawn to a person who's critical or emotionally distant because it feels familiar. They're like, okay, I've, I've seen this before. I know how to act in this situation. This is familiar to me. And so that's an unconscious thing that happens. But when we can become conscious of this pattern, we can choose a different type of person

that we're drawn to because we're breaking, we're breaking the unconscious pattern by bringing it into the conscious mind. What about some kind of first aid approach here that you can prepare yourself? Because it's hard to think in the moment, but there ought to be like a way that you're prepared. The next time you start feeling that people-pleasing

inclination, what do you do? Rather than feeding into the urgency that people-pleasing conditions us to be in, where, you know, uh-oh, someone's mad at me, so I'm going to text them. Are we OK? Did I do something wrong? Putting the phone down, take know, uh-oh, someone's mad at me, so I'm gonna text them, are we okay? Did I do something wrong? Putting the phone down, take a second to regulate yourself or take a breath, notice what's happening internally,

just slowing down that process, is communicating to the body, okay, I'm not in danger. There's no threat here. I'm actually safe, so let me step back and see the situation a bit more clearly so that I can respond instead of react. Well, this has been a very illuminating look at something that I think affects everybody

because we're either a people pleaser ourselves or we live with someone or know someone and it's really good to get this understanding. Meg Josephson has been my guest, she is a psychotherapist and author of the book Are you mad at me how to stop focusing on what others think and start living for you? There's a link to her book in the show notes and there's also a link to her online videos as well Meg, thanks for being here Well, thank you mike. Thank you for having me. Thanks for your time, and I hope you're not mad at me

No, we're good. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa DeMonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong? which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally wrap up your week with Fisting Friday where we catch up and talk all

things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Technology has always affected language. We know that television, radio, movies, those forms of communication and entertainment have been so powerful and pervasive that they have influenced how we speak. And now the internet and social media are influencing and altering the way we speak.

How? That's what Adam Aleksic is here to explain. Adam is a linguist and content creator whose work has been mentioned in the New York Times, The Economist, and the Guardian. He's author of a book called Algo Speak, How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language. Hey, Adam, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike, happy to be here. So when you say algorithms and social media are transforming, changing the language, how

are they changing the language. How are they changing the language? First of all, when influencers talk on short form video, they found that there are compelling ways to speak by making your voice go up at the end of every sentence or stressing more words and these sort of like keep your attention throughout the video. And so we've seen the development of a full influencer accent and there are several different variations of this accent that are all sort of engineered to keep your attention online because at the end of the day these social media platforms are Made to reward attention because that's how they profit off of you

They keep your attention long enough to sell you ads So these influencers and I'm including myself here We've found ways to speak in ways that get your attention. And I think a lot of words are also evolving around simply what gets attention online. So this is deliberate? There's a handbook on this is how you speak so that we get your attention?

Oh, yeah. There are well-known tactics. And also, we can look at our video retention analytics. So that's like, after we post a video, we will see in the graph they give us exactly when people stop viewing. Then we can go back and ask ourselves, oh, why do people stop viewing here?

I guess I didn't stress this word enough, or I didn't say this in a compelling enough manner. And so over time, we get literally conditioned into speaking in a more viral manner. And these successful habits often replicate because there's a bit of a survivorship bias to the videos that do make it onto what's called the for you page where the videos ultimately show up. And so the successful speaking strategies replicate and then other people see these strategies and think oh that's the correct way to speak online so it's partially conscious and partially subconscious from imitating the successful habits of other content creators. And so what's the consequence of that. It does change the way we speak offline there are people who aren't influencers who naturally when they speak online are going to code switch into this different dialect. And the internet, like there's been some studies on how it's changing our accents.

The Guardian in 2020 found that British children are speaking more like American children in a YouTube accent. Meanwhile, some American children have been speaking more like Peppa Pig, because that's the media they consume. So it depends on the, you depends on what you're watching, but it will affect how you speak. And so when we see people speak in these accents, it will have downstream effects

to how we relate to each other regularly. But is this any different than, say, when kids in the 60s or 70s or 80s, they would watch television and they would mimic the speech of the characters that they watched on their television shows. Not that different, right. I would say that one theme I try to emphasize is that the language change that's happening

is not actually new, it's happening through a new medium. But the processes we've seen, we've seen words to avoid censorship before, we've seen memes and trends be popularized before, and we've seen different accents, like in TV broadcasting, the broadcaster accent was an authoritative way to speak to viewers. And influencers just found the new iteration of that depending on the new social context in which we're speaking. So normally, historically, when language changes, when new things come into the language,

there is pushback from people who don't want it. That's ruining our language. Are we seeing the pushback here as well? Absolutely. So last summer, for example, when I talk about the word unalive, there was an exhibit the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture put on for the 30th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide.

And in the exhibit, they didn't say that Kurt Cobain committed suicide or that he killed himself. No, they said that Kurt Cobain unalived himself at 27. And there was a huge backlash to this. And I don't think the backlash was because it's a euphemism because the only ways we have to talk about death are either euphemisms or they've descended from euphemisms because we're in this sort of cycle of making death sound more palatable.

And that's like what the Seattle Museum was trying to do, but there's a gigantic backlash on the internet and they had to take it down after just three days. But wait, wait, wait a minute. On Alive, why would you use the word on alive when there's nothing offensive or disturbing about saying that someone was dead. I mean, death is part of life. And I don't get this. I don't understand unalive. Well, so the TikTok algorithm has censorship policies. It comes from originally it was

developed by ByteDance, which runs a Chinese app called Douyin and they had to adhere to Chinese censorship standards. They then ported that model over to the US when they acquired the app musically in 2017. And since then that's evolved into the infrastructure of TikTok where some words depending on the political needs of the platform are suppressed. So words for like killing, that's why we have unalive. The word sex, people often say the word segs online because you can't say like, you don't wanna like plug inappropriate things according to their app.

There's a lot of political, you know, censorship. In China, for example, the word for censorship is censored. So many internet users started using the word 河舍, which means harmony, and they use that online because they can't say censorship, right? And so harmony is an allusion to the Chinese government's goal of creating a harmonious society. But then the Chinese government starts censoring the word harmony online. And so people start saying Horseshoe instead, which means river crab, but it just sounds similar to harmony. So we're in sort of this game of whack-a-mole

of like governments and companies trying to censor online language and then humans, because we are effervescent and we are tenacious in creating language, we always come up with new ways to express our ideas and concepts. So I don't think we're also like a word like on a live isn't an example of new speak either. It's just an example of humans finding ways to express ideas

that they otherwise can't. So as I understand it, Tik Tok is based in China and so they have to operate under the rules of the Chinese government and the rules that the government puts on them. But here in the U S I didn't know that TikTok or other platforms restrict language like that. Obviously the US government doesn't censor to the extent of China,

but we do have a law going back to 1996, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, where they said that internet providers are not responsible for the speech of their citizens, but at the same time they can regulate the speech of those users. So that kind of gave a free pass to all these platforms to impose whatever guidelines they want on social media.

Okay, so I understand then why people would use the word unalive if the word killing is not allowed on social media, on TikTok. But it is such an awkward way to describe what you're trying to say that why would you ever use it outside of that, like you were just talking about the Kurt Cobain thing? Why? Right. And that's part of why I think people reacted negatively against the word because it's seen as having this sort of it's kind of sounds goofy, or maybe like a little bit like double speak. So people like do have that initial gut reaction that

Oh, this belongs online, it doesn't belong offline. But I do want to emphasize again, that all the processes we're seeing are processes we have seen before. So when I mentioned the word SEGS, which people say instead of sex, so they spell it S-E-G-G-S, that's really no different than in 1948 the American author Norman Mailer tried to publish his book The Naked and the Dead and they said you use the F word way too many times. So Norman went through and he replaced every instance of the F word with the word fug with a G, which is really

no different than the word sex. So it's not like an algorithm only thing that humans need to reroute language. It's just always been a thing. And on a live, the way middle schoolers are using it, which they are using it in person in classrooms, the way they're using it is no different than a euphemism. And we've had euphemisms for death, like passed away

or deceased, which are not that new. But as an example, fug never caught on. It was never used much. And I don't think it's ever used anymore. Exactly. I think these terms are context dependent. I don't think we're going to start saying segs offline, because we can just say the other word.

And fug didn't go off the book. And that's the thing, that these words have perceived contexts in which they're being used. Very rarely they do bleed through when the context kind of gets broken. And there is a phenomenon called context collapse where people don't know why something was used or what the audience was initially of a video and they reinterpret what they think it means. So there are some instances now of people using Unalive offline. But most people still perceive certain words as belonging to certain contexts. Have there been any of these algorithmic words that have actually stuck and like, hey, you know, that's actually a pretty cool word and I like it better than the other one.

There are so many memes every single week that are being brought forth on apps like TikTok, that they've given us so many words. And if you talk to somebody who's Gen Z, we'll use words like, I don't know, side eye to look sideways at someone that's always it's been around since Shakespeare, but it was it was popularized in the 2021 meme. And now it's a very popular word among younger people, or the word function to mean like party. I mean, it always meant like formal event but like people in college are using as a synonym of like drunken frat rager and that happened because social media is popularizing these words through through memes so there's there's a few memes of like

me when there's something at the function and because these memes spread and are easily recombined with other words it spread the word function to mean a drunken party. And it spread the word side-eye to mean suspiciously look to the side. And these are sort of more obvious, like under-the-radar examples. There are also the quote unquote brain-wrought words that are, like, they stick out more.

They're memes. But there really are middle schoolers using the word Riz to mean, like, charisma. Well, I kind of like like that Riz. But I don't get brain rot. What's the controversy? What's the, I don't get it. There's always been that perception that the internet is somehow detrimental to our mental states. And it's accelerated, I think, this perception in the past few years, especially with the rise and dominance of algorithmic short form media. Brain rot can mean a lot of things, right? It can mean just like, oh, you're looking at some bad slop content on social media, that's brain rot. You could say it

that way. But you could also refer to this meme aesthetic, which has been around since 2022, of like nonsense words like I mentioned Riz and Skibbitty. These are like kind of made up words, but you know they have their own origin. Riz does come from the word charisma probably and Skibbitty is just a verbalization of scat singing. So they have their own origins, but they're seen as silly nonsensical words. And for that reason, we cast the associations we have of social media onto those words. And we see those words as brain rot as well. Is there any sense of who starts this?

Somebody had to have been the first person to use Delulu instead of Delusional. Who was that person? Or you can't really look at that So dilulu is probably around on kpop stand Twitter as far back as like the early 2010s And then it was brought on to tick tock and that's when it really got popularized to a broader audience And now I would say most Gen Z people know the word dilulu and have probably used it Another big group coming up with new slang is 4chan, which is this anonymous community on the internet.

It has a lot of misogyny and trolling, but they have been very prolific with coming up with new language and creating infectious memes that spread across different platforms. And now I would say most janzi slang, the rule of thumb is if it's not from African-American English, it's probably from 4chan.

Where slang used to come from, and I'm not sure where slang used to come from before the internet, but does it still come from there or has the old way disappeared? I would say it's still following the same conduits of popularity. I mean, obviously 4chan didn't exist before the internet, so I can't use that. But look at African American English, right? As far back as the 1880s, the word cool was a slang word only in African American English, and it was then popularized through the jazz scene, you know, Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool, and the cool blues. So there was cool jazz, this concept, and that was popularized by Black Americans. And then it was, because it was seen

as this counter-cultural thing, it originally had a connotation of subversion under oppression. And then it started to be used by other counter-cultural groups, like the beatniks and the hippies and the hipsters. And eventually cool becomes this fashion aesthetic and the high five, you know,

also from African-American communities. So like these basic things, which we now see, like we forget where the origins come from. Yeah. A lot of them come from, from black Americans. And we tend to borrow words when we see them as socially prestigious, or when we see them as funny. And those are like two main drivers for where words come from. Well, cool has always been to to me, such a great word because it's never gone away.

It's, you know, slang often comes and goes and there's so much slang that sounds so horribly dated today. Cool never does. Yeah, it's really hard to predict which words are definitely going to stick around. Cool has been, you know, the sort of this evergreen word and there have been other words that have come and gone to,

to kind of refer to the same context, like hip, which also came from African-American communities. But yeah, I think one factor in whether a word will stick around is how much it sticks out. So like the words that we refer to as brain rot now, probably because they stick out more, aren't going to be long term. But I do think people will keep using the words side eye

and function in the same exact way, because they don't stick out as much, but they were still popularized by the algorithm. How do emojis play into this? Emojis are words. There's like no difference. And they change meaning just like words do. The standard kind of dichotomy between

a boomer and a gen Z and I think these terms are also kind of made up but they're useful. So standard difference is that older boomers will use more literal emojis and gen Z emojis are constantly evolving. So for example, since 2016, the laughing crying emoji has become like the uncool way to express laughter. And people pivoted to use the crying emoji in Gen Z circles. So just using the crying emoji means you're laughing. But eventually that got overused. And then people move to the skull emoji. And now there's like the wilting rose emoji. And there's constantly new emojis to refer to the same concepts. And you have to be caught up on that.

And there's also more of a cycle. So I don't think a lot of emojis are going to stick around because they're also tied to memes. And that's the thing, these words and since emojis are words, emojis are tied to meme lifespans. If the meme dies out, then the word dies out. Well, it's interesting because I've always thought of emojis as something you use to reinforce your intent

or make sure people understand where you're coming from. You put a smiley face to kind of lighten things up so people don't take you too seriously. But if people are using the opposite, then the whole thing's out the window. Yeah, well, there's a few uses of what emojis are, right? You can use it to replace a word entirely. You can use it as sort of a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, like you said, signaling

tone, or you can use it for some ironic or aesthetic purpose. A lot of younger people will use emojis not quite as tone tags, which is this kind of modifying the sound of a sentence. But for an aesthetic purpose, you'll put a sparkly emoji just because you're trying to communicate a sparkly vibe to your sentence. And the people, the younger people, or any people who are using these alternate words like unalive, do they know why?

Do they understand the reason for it? Or it's just they think, well, OK, we'll just use that word now because everybody else is. Obviously it depends on the word. I think I've interviewed a lot of middle schoolers and middle school teachers about how because you got to start with the middle schoolers that's where the language change is really happening. I've interviewed a lot of these teachers and students about the word on a live and about half of the middle school students don't know where it comes from about half do but some of them just learn it from their friends or just replicate it

because they saw it online. In the case of other words like African American English words like slay, bet, serve, ate, these are all common slang words that Gen Z uses right now and pretty much nobody knows where they come from. Yeah, a very small minority, I would say, are aware of that. Well, it's interesting that what you said about that middle schoolers, that's where that language changes. Because I just wouldn't think that was true, that they would be that influential. Language is a social thing, right?

When we get older and when we get more crystallized in our educational institutions, we begin to see language as this static idea of what it should be. Children, particularly, like adopting new words because it's a way to build their own identity and differentiate themselves from adults. So it can be like literally an identity forming thing for them to use new words in a way that it's not for adults. I don't need to adopt the word skibbity right now because I don't need to prove anything about who I am as a person.

But you know, it actually might make a difference in a middle school. What I find so interesting about what you've been talking about these last few minutes is it sounds very different and very techie and it's social media and all and yet it's very much the same just as Television and movies and other media have affected language in the past We now have the internet social media the algorithms of social media Transforming the language it's different and yet it's also very much the same it's different and yet it's also very much the same. I've been speaking with Adam Aleksic. He is a linguist and author of the book, Algo Speak, How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language. There's a link to his book at Amazon in

the show notes and Adam, thanks for coming by and talking about this. Well, thank you very much. As far as I can tell, there are only two ways to hang a roll of toilet paper. And both ways have strong supporters. The unders believe that the end of the roll of the toilet paper should hang down in the back because it is more aesthetically pleasing, leaving the bathroom with a neater, cleaner look and making it harder for your puppy or cat to unravel the roll. The overs believe inserting the roll so the end sheet hangs down in front is the proper way.

Supposedly, there is less risk of germs getting on the paper. It looks good and most important, it's easier to find the end piece when you need to. So who's right? Well, technically, the overs are right, at least according to the inventor. Seth Wheeler, in his original toilet paper patent drawing submitted in 1891, shows the paper hanging over, not under, the. The focus and genius of the patent was actually on the tiny perforation holes that separate the sheets of paper. There's no actual written description of how the paper should hang. There are just those drawings. But, you know, if

over is the way the inventor visualized it, his vote should carry some weight. And that is something you should know. This podcast has some very smart people working on it to make it sound as good as it does. Jennifer Brennan and Jeffrey Haverson are our producers and Ken Williams is the executive producer. I'm Mike Carruthers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health.

There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health and we're covering it all. Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm, so many stories about sperm, and of course the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids' school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talk to plenty of non-parents, so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longestshortesttime.com.