But a Jape

“Oh, these kids – if only they knew how stupid they look.”

– a 30 year old man who thinks teenagers want to impress him

I always find it frustrating whenever I see full grown adults get legit angry every time young people do something differently from them. The most recent bewildering example I can think of is how a lot of people my age seem to be absolutely livid at the existence of the word, “rizz.”

Like, I know people always hate new slang, but I always see these guys scrambling for some loose justification for why this slang is worse than what we used to have. “It makes absolutely no sense! How the hell do these kids even come up with these nonsense words?” They ask. Then someone comes along and says that it’s just short for, “charisma,” and these guys still get mad, “That is the most ridiculous reason I’ve ever heard! Just say ‘charisma!'”

But that’s, like, the least ridiculous way slang develops – there’s no metaphors, no references to understand, no convoluted backstory – it’s just… one level above saying “it’s” instead of “it is.”

When I first heard, “rizz is short for charisma,” I just thought, “Oh, ok. Makes sense. Now I completely understand every usage of it.” and came away from the interaction a little less ignorant. Do these people get mad at every new word they hear? Or every new piece of information they learn? Maybe they do, I don’t know, wouldn’t put it past them.

– James