We sometimes LOL when watching a funny movie, ask for questions with AMA (Ask Me Anything), DM when talking to someone on Twitter, and so on.
So, are you ready for some new jargon? Here are several social media terms from Jennifer Beese, writing for Sprout Social:
- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A shrug expression often referred to “whatever,” “who knows,” “doesn’t matter” or “why not.”
- Clickbait: Using a provocative title in order to generate clicks.
- Cray: Another term for crazy.
- Crush it: Used to express when someone is doing particularly well or exceeding goals.
- Fam: Describes someone or a group of people you trust or consider family.
- Fire: When something is exceptionally good or on point.
- I can’t even: Indicates the speaker’s inability to speak as a result of being overjoyed or frustrated.
- Lit: Describes a person, place or thing as awesome or “happening.”
- On fleek: On point.
- Savage: Describes someone or something that is exceptionally brutal or harsh.
- Slay: Similar to “crush it,” it’s an act of doing something exceptionally well.
- Slide into your DMs: Describes someone randomly messaging another on Twitter Direct Message.
Squad goals: An aspirational term for what you’d like your group to be or accomplish. - Thirsty: Describes someone who is too eager or desperate.
- Throwing shade: To publicly denounce or disrespect someone.
- TFW: Stands for “that feeling when,” which is commonly used for memes or expressions around a certain event.
- Trendjacking: Describes when a trending topic is taken over with irrelevant content from other users.
- Yaaaaaas: When a simple “yes” won’t do to express excitement. Pro tip: Use as many A’s as necessary.
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Social media jargon like these and many more are the current trend when communicating with other people. So for companies that are trying to market their products, these words are very useful as it gets the idea clear and direct to the potential consumers, allowing the them to promote their products and establish their brand image easily. Furthermore, marketers who are creative enough could make use of these words as puns to create a sense of humor for customers to recognize the products.
To be honestly, most of them I cannot understand if I did not see this article. Individuals are more and more trend to use social media to connect to each other, however, I think too much social medias are bad for people. Friends will use telephone to contact to others even they are doing things with friends that make dating meaningless. Those kind of Jargons can stand for young people’s taste. I am not a big fan of this, but I will use it sometimes just for fun.
Social media has grown tremendously within the past couple of years due to technology continuing to improve and become more advanced. With technology growing, it has allowed individuals to always be connecting which is why social media is so popular because it can always be accessed. In my personal opinion I do not understand most of the jargon used on these social media websites. I feel they constantly change and it is hard to keep up with if you are not someone who spends a lot of their time on these platforms. As a result of these trends always changing, I feel they are bad for people because they are more focused on what jargon to use then actually paying attention to the conversation.
I am very up to date with all of my social media jargon. Though I may not use all of them, I have an awareness of what they are/mean. I think as a professional, you should be aware of these terms because it’s possible to market products to younger audiences using these terms. I also say “lit” a lot but generally I use it in satire. I never use it literally. For example, “I just finished my paper. I’m so lit.” Or, “This sandwich is super lit.”
This article reminds me of one scene in the “Big Bang theory”, when Sheldon was playing online game with his friends online, he said “AFK” to his friends, means away from keyboard. He was so addicted to the game, and when his friend Penny talked to him about something else and she said Oh I see, Sheldon asked her what does ‘O I C ‘ mean. Isn’t it funny? 🙂 I love jargons, because they are one of the current culture and popular ways that people communicate with others. People are creating some interesting ways to express their personal style and characteristics, especially teenagers and young people. However there is one opposite effect, some young people use the jargons even in some formal writings losing the focus on the serious and formal language writing.
There are so many social medias we use in daily life are changing our ways to express ourselves. Even emoji can be used to make a film. I am not a big fan of using jargon, but I try to learn the actual meanings of these words. It is fun. I google every new word when I am not sure what it means. I like this article because it summarizes so many words I do not know before. To be frankly, even my mom knows some social media jargon and uses emoji to text me. Language is developing while we use it. I just need to make sure I understand what people say when they use some kinds of new language.
With these words I feel like that this is the current trend that is going on throughout social media. I feel like this is a phase that people feel that they need to use to fit in with the “cool kids”. I never felt the need to use these terms but that is the way I feel about it. I just hope the people that use these terms are ready for the real world when they go and get a job and have to talk like adults.
In what time I feel like I am already an old man? When I couldn’t understand some newly emerging social media jargons. Some social media jargons are easy to understand like those anthropopathic signs while some are not, such as TFW, fam and so on. If others don’t tell me the exact meaning, I may consider them as some kind of misspelling.
To be honest, I don’t know lots of these Social Media Jargon as a Chinese. But I know this social media jargon also is popular in Chinese internet. To me, it feels a bit inconsiderate to assume that people will understand all the acronyms in conversation or while reading. My brain spends so much time trying to decipher the message I lose the importance of the message.
With the new social media networks and innovative software cropping up almost daily, even seasoned social media users are bound to run into a term or acronym that leaves them thinking, but in fact, I did not know some of these social media jargon in this article. Some of them are abbreviations, and some pre-existing words that are combined of given entirely new meanings. In my point of view, it is a good trend in social media, because it simpifly the “traditional mode” in communication and make it easy to understand.
There are variety of social media jargon took place on the internet, and there will be more coming. These jarsons can serve as an iconic image of the company if used wisely and appropriately, so the company’s brand and products will be recognizable by the public consumers. Furthermore, marketers can set a deeper impression by playing with the words such as creating a form of humor that influence the public’s perception of the product or even the position of the company in the market.
I think those jargons arose in traditional text message at the beginning. When I came to the U.S. and first time connected with local friends, it was hard for me to understand what they texted, even can’t solved by translator. Later, I know most of them are jargons. I think the phenomenon of jargon is reflections of social culture that people live fast-paced and prefer communicate with others in a simple way. And marketers should catch this trend and use minimalism in product innovation. Promotions with directly expression would be more easily for customers to accept.
Social media jargon is sadly becoming an entire new form of communication. I am strongly against most social media jargon, because I have noticed that this jargon is often leaving only online websites and making its way into casual conversation and personally I think that this is detrimental to society as a whole
Being able to communicate over the Internet is extremely important in our lives. If you are not communicating using the internet, whether it be socially or for business, you are at a disadvantage. Although the terms listen would not be used in a business setting, being able to interact socially online with people you know (or even strangers) is very important. Most of the time if I don’t know what something means, whether it be a term like “MFW” or an image macro or video, I turn to http://www.knowyourmeme.com and http://www.urbandictionary.com for my answers. Although these aren’t the most academic sources, I find them extremely useful.
Most people you encounter would say that words like “fam” and “on fleek” are annoying, but they still say it in passing or when they are with friends. Most of this jargon comes and goes over time, so I am sure that by this time next year there will be a dozen new terms that non-Internet goers will have to learn. Maybe some day these words will end up in a history book about the English language.
I think for the most part I am up-to-date on my social media lingo. There have been a couple of times where I had to look up a word/ abbreviation on urban dictionary in order to know the meaning of it, but for the most part, I know the basic meanings of all of the ones listed above. Needless to say, when talking on social media, it is like speaking a completely different language, and I believe this is why older generations have such a difficult time following along with the ever-so-changing technology.
This post made me laugh so hard to read it because its sad to think how many of these words I use on an every day basis. Social media jargon has become so popular especially with these acronyms as people might think they’re easier to use since you can say the word quicker? Another huge part to these words becoming popular is due to social media. A saying such as “on fleek” wouldn’t have been popular without the help of a vine that went viral. Celebrities and funny viral videos are much to blame for the popularity of these words and sayings.
It’s interesting and shocking how much jargon and slang takes up our communication these days, especially due to the increase in use of social media. It’s very important to know these words and phrases to be in the loop and know what is going on. It’s also important for marketers and businesses to know these words in order to understand the type of audience they are trying to attract. But what people don’t realize is that how every different place can even have their own jargon or a different meaning for a word. Like, I’ve actually never heard of clickbait being used before here on Long Island…but who knows maybe I’ll start using it.
Social media jargon’s like these are fun and all while conversing with your friends, but i do not believe they should be used in a professional setting. Many of these words are highly unprofessional and I have noticed that they are being more commonly used in a professional setting. Im sorry, but if i ever heard someone say “that was lit” or my presentation was “on fleck,” in a work environment, i would begin to go crazy. Lets keep the slang away from the desk chair people.
Jargon is this generation’s new way of speaking through text. its the new “wave”. A good amount of people i know use all of these on the daily. People constantly using social media is the reason all of these acronyms are known by everybody. Music is another way people use different meaning words. Though we use it all the time on social media and texting, we can’t forget to not use them while writing formal emails to our boss.
I absolutely love this post/article for many reasons. It shows how young people are currently changing the english language. Not that I don’t use these terms, because I do use a few of them, I just think that it is incredible, at the same time very sad, that young people are making up words to describe something that already has a word.
This article actually made me laugh because I hear these things on regular basis between all my friends. But knowing social media jargon i think is super important to companies because when there is trend of these words its a great opportunity to create the trend into a hot selling item on the market. For instance putting it on a t-shirt. People would see the t- shirt in the store and be able to connect with the t-shirt and want to buy it.
Being familiar in social media jargon is like speaking another language. A lot of words are existing words that have an extended meaning that is dependent on the content surrounding it. While it is good to know what some of these words since creativity is a growing aspect in communication methods some of them would not reach all target markets because not everyone is familiar with new lingo that is constantly being made up. To effectively use these words we must know the audience and use it carefully to not be offensive or misleading in the ad.
In my opinion, the manner of speaking online has changed a lot. Overtime it began to abbreviate and not it is up to the point where people are using jargons. These jargons are expressed for various locations on different social media posts, like Instagram, Facebook, twitter, tumblr, and etc. Jargons are also slowly used during texting, to make them shorter, and to be able to type and respond fast without having to explain long words or paragraphs. The emojis included with some of the jargons also explain what they mean and for what they are used. In my opinion, having so many jargons is not good because it is slowly changing the language and the manner in which people are speaking, and I don’t think it’s changing to the good. It’s changing ti the worst, where the english language is lost and people are becoming lazier and lazier.
I feel as though social media is a consistently growing market that not only consumers, but large firms and companies are beginning to utilize as well. These social media jargons are inevitably important to understand so that businesses can communicate with consumers and not feel a total disconnect. Although used in a much younger audience, if you have social media account holders describing your brand with jargon its important to know what they are really saying. Social media without a doubt is a growing platform to communicate and jargon is considerably a language of its own.
I actually found this to be quite amusing, mostly because I know all the terms or have used in some way. I think Social Media Jargon is a good way for companies to advertise. On twitter you can see some companies even use some of these sayings because it’s what is trending at that time. They can take advantage by jumping on the new fad. So yes it’s important to keep up with all the new sayings, but should definitely be kept away from a professional setting.
This was a extremely amusing article. It surprised me how accurate this model is, when I first read that it was a post about definitions of social media terms I was skeptical this post was filed with depth and accuracy. The practical implication of this is obviously for parents but this type of list could be invaluable to a non native speaker who is just arriving in this country.
This type of jargon is becoming more and more common, at least among the younger generations. I feel like there are unspoken guidelines on how to use this jargon. For example, you may use this type of jargon on social media or while talking to friends, but when doing anything professional, it is better to stick to proper english.
The majority of these terms I have heard and do understand. A lot of these terms begin online and are used on the internet and are then integrated into actual language and people begin to use it on a regular day basis. However a lot of these terms begin to be over used and only a few actually stay in our language for a few years.