What is a brat summer? Once you know, it's probably not cool anymore

You've probably heard it before. 

"No one says that anymore."

It can be a jarring realization, but also your own fault for using terms like cheugy and YOLO, which are long past their prime. The truth is, slang goes in and out of style, sometimes before people even know they are popular terms. And they can come from anywhere. 

"A lot of internet slang is, for example, African-American English," while other slang might come from the darker corners of the web, linguist Adam Aleksic told The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay. 

If anyone knows what words are hip and cool, it's Aleksic. He's a linguistics influencer based in Albany, N.Y., with millions of views on TikTok and Instagram.

Where do they come from?

New slang words can come from places such as popular albums, TikTok guidelines, and even incel groups. 

Tiktokers began using "unalived" to talk about someone who had died because the social media app restricted use of words like "kill" or "suicide." Now "unalive" is ubiquitous among young people.

"I've talked to middle school teachers, where the kids are submitting essays on Hamlet unaliving himself," said Aleksic.

And take a look at the suffix "-pilled." The term started as a popular meme from the 1999 movie The Matrix, when the main character Neo had to choose between a blue and red pill, which would shape the rest of his life. 

People subscribing to misogynist ideologies, including men's rights activists or incels (short for involuntary celibates), adopted the term "black pill", which meant you agreed with their ideology. Now, the term "pilled" has been taken in a new direction and has become mainstream to mean you like or support something.

"If I really liked eating burritos, and I just recently discovered that, I can say I'm burrito-pilled," said Aleksic. 

He says it's not surprising to see a popular term come from a dark corner of the web. And he doesn't see a problem with using those terms. 

"They spread because they were funny when they were applied outside of those contexts. And now we [have] largely forgotten those original contexts," said Aleksic.

"As we increasingly dissociate these words from the original incel context, we're actually taking power out of their hands and reclaiming the word for the broader public."

Brat Summer

The floodgates of memes were opened when U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee in the upcoming 2024 election.

And with her, the word "brat" entered the chat. The word typically describes a spoiled or disobedient child, but that meaning has changed and the word has instead become an adjective.

The word was already popular this summer, thanks to British artist Charli XCX's album brat. She used it to describe a girl who is messy, likes to party, and says dumb things sometimes. But Aleksic says its meaning is now ambiguous and can be used wherever someone feels it fits.

"That turned into a kind of a more empowered, reclaimed term for a strong-headed, disobedient woman. And that's kind of like the vibe that Charli XCX was going for," said Aleksic. 

"But over this summer, brat has continued to be dissociated from even that context and is now used just as an essence of this summer."

People on the internet started using the word to describe Harris, using all sorts of videos and memes — some coming from Harris's campaign team.

Even Charli XCX posted on social media that Harris is brat. 

Aleksic says brat became popular organically— and that if Harris's campaign team had been the ones generating the memes and videos in the first place, it wouldn't have taken off. 

And he believes these kinds of memes will have an increased impact on politics.  

"It's the way that all political campaigns from now on are going to be run through memes. It's the most effective way to target younger audiences," said Aleksic.

Where do they go?

But when is a word no longer copacetic? Well, potentially when the general public is all aware of the word, the younger generation loses interest, and finds something else to say. 

So a good rule of thumb is that if you see a slang term used in a CBC article, chances are it's no longer cool.

"By the time boomers are saying things like rizz [meaning charismatic], you no longer want to say rizz because it seems a little bit forced," said Aleksic.

"That's how slang works."

But here's a new word for you, so that for a moment, you can be in the know. Aleksic says look for the word "slop" when scrolling online.

"It's kind of emerging to describe generated AI [artificial intelligence] content that kind of, like, is trashy," said Aleksic. 

And how would you use it in a sentence?

"'I just got another slop video on my feed,' something like that."