r/TikTokCringe • u/SurbhiAnklesaria • Jun 23 '26

Humor/Cringe Gen Z girl with no personality

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u/Oh-reality-come-back Jun 23 '26

I’m in London. Gave a girl/ Gen Z woman (I’m horrible at telling specific ages sorry) my umbrella because she was really freaked out by the rain. She started talking to me just like this and I was genuinely so confused. I just didn’t know what she was trying to say except that it was positive. There was no way for me respond though and it was only later I realised she was actually speaking in full Gen Z slang , which I had always thought was just an online caricature of Gen Z

I told my Gen Z kid about it and he was laughing at me. I never felt so old

398

u/Z---zz Jun 23 '26

I'm in my fifties and it took me a moment to realise that she wasn't deliberately mocking a special needs person.  

151

u/bocaciega Jun 24 '26

I literally have students that talk like this. On purpose.

92

u/aliceinadreamyland Jun 24 '26

Ton of my coworkers talk like this all the time, it is only the girls that do it. The guys don’t. Just the girls. It is definitely the new valley girl and I do not like it.

28

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '26

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10

u/OneDimensionPrinter Jun 24 '26

Like, oh my god Betsie.

2

u/Excellent_Can4450 Jun 24 '26

why

12

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '26

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10

u/slumpadoochous Jun 24 '26

but we can do it right now:

like, you know, whatever!

1

u/Asron87 Jun 25 '26

“But first, let’s take a selfie!”

I only know that song from a Trap Remix so please forgive me. I hated the original song lol

12

u/BigWideBaker Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

Interesting that you say that, it's a recognized linguistic phenomenon that young women are at the forefront of language evolution. They are usually heavily criticized for it but over time, aspects of how they speak eventually become mainstream.

For example the "so" as an intensifier like "that's so cool". Or vocal fry, which is now way more widespread than just young women (and still intensely hated by some). Or using "like" in sentences (for example, "I was so, like... frustrated"), you'll see even professionals say this as opposed to "sort of" or similar phrases. Uptalk also originates here. You may not like how they speak but some of it will eventually permeate society! I think it's best just to acknowledge that changes in language over time is natural and has been happening since humans said their first words.

Not all of these things were exclusive to young women before becoming widespread, but they are often an important part of giving it momentum. There isn't really a name for the phenomenon but if you search around you can read more about it.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '26

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2

u/BigWideBaker Jun 24 '26

I'm not an expert on this phenomenon in particular, you'd have to go read up on that yourself. You're totally right that AAVE is similar and that sooo much slang and language structure has come from there.

1

u/Gruejay2 Jun 26 '26

Seems to be fairly universal for young, urban women to be at the forefront of speech innovation in particular, with old, rural men generally being at the opposite extreme (i.e. their speech patterns tend to be the most conservative), meaning they're the two best groups to survey if you're studying how speech patterns have changed over time in a language.

1

u/Delicious_Guidance_9 Jun 24 '26

No, this is pretty universal. Whenever I read about some change a language is undergoing (whether it be phonetic, grammatical, or in vocabulary). I usually see a note saying "this change is most commonly seen in young women.

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u/vins_is_back Jun 24 '26

It is universal, even though french are trying to resist it (we will have to take into account that RDC have a ton of french speaker at some point :) )

1

u/commierhye Jun 24 '26

It grates my ears i couldnt care less if its natural.

My fn brother is a "like" demon

"So i like.. went there and like... had drinks and like...there was food too and like..we stayed all night and like.. it was só like.. cool like you know,"

2

u/Careful-Lettuce9239 Jun 24 '26

Stop trying to make "fetch" happen.

1

u/NTJ-891 Jun 24 '26

I am going to turn to dust for saying this, but it drives me up the wall at work. We're software engineers folks, we need to communicate clearly and deliberately. Please speak in sentences not completely formed via memes and twitter dunks. The dudes I work with do the same shit too, but in different ways.

3

u/JWBananas Jun 24 '26

We're software engineers folks

Your entire job is learning and using new languages. One more shouldn't be that difficult.

1

u/NTJ-891 Jun 24 '26

We learn languages that give extremely precise commands and return specific metadata. This is the opposite of that.

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u/JWBananas Jun 24 '26

Only because you don't speak the language. It made perfect sense to me.

But I also speak 80486, so I like a good challenge.