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You guys are idiots
— PattyIce (@patty_fi) May 1, 2024
I took profits two months ago, put an order in on this bad boy
Was on back order and just came in
While you bag hold I’m living my dream rn pic.twitter.com/3Kv5G1stjH
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Like, I know Redditors like to be smug and pretend to not understand that headlines have different gramatical rules to enable them to be short, concise, and alluring, so that they can complain about the headline being misleading because they want to comment without reading the article and without getting all the facts wrong.
But is this guy just applying the circlejerk to clear headlines like this (that are actually written like a full sentence) for updoots or are they just a genuine moron?
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The internet has transformed how Gen Z communicates. Our language is built on memes and a collective sense of wry existentialism, with our humor often turning dark or potentially dangerous, as it has when borrowing from the online community of men called “involuntary celibates.”
Incels (as they're known) are infamous for sharing misogynistic attitudes and bitter hostility toward the romantically successful. Their ideology has even turned deadly: The 2014 Isla Vista and 2018 Toronto incel terrorist attacks killed a collective 17 people and injured another 29. Yet, somehow, incels' hateful rhetoric has bizarrely become popularized via Gen Z slang.
In certain circles, for instance, it's common to hear the suffix “pilled” as a funny way to say “convinced into a lifestyle.” Instead of “I now love eating burritos,” for instance, one might say, “I'm so burritopilled.” “Pilled” as a suffix comes from a scene in 1999's “The Matrix” where Neo (Keanu Reeves) had to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, to experiencing only that illusion., but the modern sense is formed through analogy with “blackpilled,” an online slang term meaning “accepting incel ideology.” Similarly, the popular suffix “maxxing” for “maximizing” (e.g., “I'm burritomaxxing” instead of “I'm eating a lot of burritos”) is drawn from the incel idea of “looksmaxxing,” or “maximizing attractiveness” through surgical or cosmetic techniques.
Then there's the word “cucked” for “weakened” or “emasculated.” If the taqueria is out of burritos, you might be “tacocucked,” drawing on the incel idea of being sexually emasculated by more attractive “chads.” And, finally, we have the word “sigma” for “assertive male,” which comes from an incel's desired position outside the social hierarchy.
So how did we get here? How did these words travel from a fringe, misanthropic internet subculture to relatively widespread use?