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2021 slang
2021 was the year Among Us made sus mainstream, the year vibe shift entered the discourse, the year NFTs and crypto vocabulary briefly took over Twitter, and the year Wordle quietly launched.
It was also when main-character energy stabilized as a critical / aspirational frame, when simping became gendered shorthand, and when the early algospeak workarounds emerged on TikTok.
The 2021 lexicon · 7 terms
Bottom line
2021 vocabulary divides cleanly: the gaming/crypto-derived terms (sus, NFT) survived; the early TikTok confessionals (vibe shift, main character) flattened by 2024.
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