Emerging / Viral
The slang born in the last two years that's still fighting for legitimacy — clanker, demure, canon event, AI slop, aura farming. Half of these will stick; half will fade by next summer.
Emerging and viral slang is the holding pen for terms born in the last two years and still negotiating mainstream legitimacy. Roughly half will stabilise into general usage; half will be cringe by next summer. Lifecycle here is unusually fast — a term like demure went from emergence to over-saturation in eight weeks — because TikTok's algorithm rewards novel vocabulary and then punishes its overuse. Signature exemplars: clanker, brat, canon event, aura farming, 6-7, ai slop. The category leans US Gen Z and Gen Alpha, platform TikTok and X, with K-pop fandoms and crypto Twitter as secondary engines. Edge cases (Gen Alpha brainrot like skibidi, AI-era coinages like vibe coding) live here until they earn a permanent home.
40 terms