Adam Aleksik

On the other hand, some of the linguistic communities created by the algorithm can be actively harmful.

Many younger people have started using the suffix pilled to mean convinced into a lifestyle.

If I recently discovered that I really like eating burritos, for example, I can say, I'm so burrito-pilled.

But that word was formed through analogy with black-pilled, a term meaning convinced into incel ideology.

Now, incels are a dangerous, misogynistic group.

They've perpetrated multiple terrorist attacks that have killed dozens of people, and yet somehow the vocabulary is filtering into Gen Z slang because the algorithm gave these hate groups a space.

I like to consume videos about urban design.

And a few months back, I got a video about how great it is to be a parking lot-pilled pavement princess.

Admittedly, I found the video pretty funny, and I liked it, which ended up giving me more urban design incel-themed meme videos, like one about being fossil fuel-pilled and bad to the bone, and another about being a wok-pilled cardiomaxer.

And a lot of people similarly encounter these words as they spread in ironic or meme contexts.

Let's take another look at the Rizzler song.

The lyric, I just want to be your sigma, refers to the concept of a sigma male, which incels use to describe their desired position outside of the social hierarchy.

And again, on the surface level, it's a funny meme.

It's innocent.

Many people don't even know where it came from.

But for the few people who might be interested in the underlying idea, it's now more accessible to them because of the way that slang spreads on the internet.

It starts in some corner of social media, becomes a viral meme, and along the way, the etymology is lost to a lot of people.

And this doesn't only allow communities to harm us, it allows us to harm communities.

Two of the main demographics that come up with modern slang are the gay and black communities, since marginalized groups consistently use language as a way to reclaim power.

All of our most popular internet slang words, slay, serve, bustin, queen, cooked, ate, got, many, many others, all come from queer or black culture.