Internetspeak: Who Decides What Words Mean?

InContent

Do you remember the last time a word or phrase stopped you mid-scroll because it was so perfectly expressive and impossibly specific that you felt the language had finally caught up?

Now, ask yourself what that speed of shaping new linguistic concoctions means for you as a writer, editor or localization professional.

Is your writing ephemeral or doomed? And should you care?

I often push back on modifications that turn into grammatically incorrect internet-speak, like “should of” or deliberately dropping the third-person “s” from verbs to match a specific meme template. It took me a while to become fluent in English (my third of five languages). I am not compromising that for the sake of a quick, lazy fix.

But I am tilting at windmills.

Language on social media is evolving faster than at any previous moment in recorded history, and the vocabulary we use to describe our digital selves and the speed at which it becomes mainstream is unique.

“Because we remake language at every generation, because we learn it from our peers, not just our elders, because we can make ourselves understood even though we all speak subtly different personal varieties, language is flexible and strong,” writes Gretchen McCulloch in her book Because Internet.

Research by the founder of modern sociolinguistics, William Labov, found that women account for most linguistic change through their social networks. They are typically the first to adopt new sounds and slang, pushing language forward by as much as a full generation compared to men.

The acceleration of the everyday

At that pace, how we speak and write today could be ridiculed tomorrow. That has never stopped visual artists, writers or actors before, but it’s still worth asking whether speed should matter to creatives now.

Social media didn’t invent language change, but it collapsed the timeline. Terms like “selfie,” “hashtag” and “viral” originated from social media contexts and have since become integrated into everyday language.

The slow absorption of a neologism into a dictionary, which once took decades, now takes months or weeks.

According to Oxford Languages, many of the “Word of the Year” selections in the past decade originated from online culture. For better or worse, the gatekeeping function once performed by editors and lexicographers has been partially redistributed to ordinary users and “influencers” with an internet connection, huge egos, persistence and millions of followers.

Internetspeak as a new language

New language choices reflect cultural sensitivities or an urge to come across as young, hip and unbound by rules. This is not new, but more prevalent and mainstream now.

Many of us are accelerating this trend by adding “like” randomly or as a substitute for “said”; writing “their” in the plural as a singular possessive to sound gender-neutral; addressing everyone as “you guys”; using “because” grammatically incorrectly, as in “I am doomscrolling because procrastination”, or starting with “that [awkward] time/feel/moment when…” to describe painful or uncomfortable moments.

And the latest, as of this writing (and outdated soon): “I low key don’t really want to do this” and “that outfit is giving boss energy”.

I gotchu, sigma.

English is becoming the lingua franca of youth speak, pouring new stuff into the way everybody talks.

Platforms with character limits and fast-paced content encourage brevity, and SMS and messaging apps lead to creative shortcuts and are designed for this trend. Common abbreviations, such as LOL, BRB, FOMO, DM and TL;DR, have not only entered mainstream written English but are now used in spoken conversation as well.

That crossover is linguistically significant. It suggests that the boundary between online register and spoken register is permeable in ways it wasn’t before.

By the way, when you flag something TL;DR, why do you think it’s worth sharing? I’m asking for a Boomer friend.

Semantic shifts repurpose words

New vocabulary is tangible. Subtler, and arguably more consequential, is semantic drift, the way existing words acquire new meanings without warning.

Words change when used online: “viral” refers to online popularity rather than solely to disease; “thread” denotes a series of linked posts, and “troll” refers to an online provocateur rather than a mythical creature.

When it comes to going viral, “we’re now at a new inflection point, characterized by personally recommended, short-form video content,” writes linguist Adam Aleksic in his 2025 book Algospeak. “If you want to go viral, you must make short-form video, and that means that you must mold your language to the constraints of short-form video platforms.”

For translators, writers and editors, this is precisely where things get complicated. A word can shift meaning within demographics, platform communities or across platforms.

We are always working against a morphing target, whether the content goes viral or is a dud.

Along the way, linguistic complexity is sacrificed. Catchwords and phrases, memes and simple stories perform better.

Enter kidspeak.

Adults are adulting

One of the more unexpected linguistic developments is the spread of deliberately childlike language among adults online, so-called kidspeak.

American linguist John McWhorter argued in his 2013 TED Talk that childish internet speak is not destroying language but rather a vibrant form of ‘fingered speech’, a rapid, informal mode of communication that follows the structural rules of spoken language rather than formal written prose.

Critics have gone further, noting that platforms structurally reward a certain affective register, one coded as warm, non-threatening and emotionally accessible, and that infantilized language fits that register precisely.

Speedy approachability is algorithmically advantaged.

This connects directly to algospeak. When moderation filters penalize direct or explicit language, users migrate toward softer, often childlike substitutes.

“Unalive” replaces words associated with death. “Seggs” replaces a flagged term.

Sometimes we try too hard not to say what we mean.

Silicon Valley talks “Zuck”

If kidspeak represents one pole of online language, the communication style The New York Times has described as “Zuck Talk” represents the other.

This is the flattened register associated with Silicon Valley leadership: everyone is addressed as “you guys”; sentences are crafted for maximum clarity and minimum accountability; passive constructions avoid assigning blame; phrases like “I want to be clear” serve as verbal armor.

And consequently, we, too, start sentences with “So,…” (when answering direct questions), mimicking someone who thinks without slowing down, in perpetual mid-sentence, ready to pounce.

Or it simply implies that we like to talk more than to listen.

Both kidspeak and Zuck Talk are platform-conditioned registers. One is rewarded by social media’s appetite for warmth and relatability; the other by the corporate internet’s appetite for precision without vulnerability or accountability.

What looks like playful creativity and originality is often just a rational response to platform constraints.

The challenge is that algospeak is invisible unless you are already part of the community that uses it.

Do you doomscroll?

Some of the most expressive vocabulary to emerge from social media culture combines a feeling with a behavior or outcome, compressing an entire psychological state into a single compound.

For example, “doomscrolling” is compulsively consuming distressing news online. The word gained momentum during COVID and was officially added to Merriam-Webster in September 2023.

Another example is (En)Shittification, coined by author Cory Doctorow to describe a digital platform that is made worse for users to increase profits (Merriam-Webster added the word in 2024).

And yet, in print, the word’s first “i” is often replaced by an asterisk, so as not to offend fragile readers. Really.

That trajectory—viral usage, platform amplification and dictionary entry—is now the standard path for social media vocabulary. Speed is the defining characteristic. And for anyone responsible for content in multiple languages, speed creates a permanent lag.

Algorithms and the curated self

The New Yorker’s Nausicaa Renner has written about how social media platforms do not simply reflect identity but actively shape it. The platforms we use are not neutral tools. They are environments that curate the self, selecting which images and memories we preserve, which we perform and which we discard.

Algorithms rule here.

Tagging, memory features, and endlessly scrolled news feeds determine which version of a person is amplified and which is suppressed.

The same logic applies to language. Social media platforms curate which words spread and which die, based on algorithmic reward structures that have nothing to do with linguistic merit or communicative precision.

The vocabulary most rewarded online is not necessarily the most accurate or the most culturally resonant. It is the vocabulary most legible to an algorithm: brief, affectively charged and easy to share.

As Renner’s piece makes clear, this is not a superficial concern. When the platforms that mediate our self-expression also select which expressions survive, the effect on language is structural, not incidental.

The language your audience uses online is not noise; it is data. Kidspeak, Zuck Talk, algospeak and semantic drifts carry meaning that formal language will not catch in time. Watch for those signals, adapt where it serves you, and hold your ground where it does not. The algorithm selects for brevity and emotional legibility; you select for precision, cultural nuance and intent. Both count.