Short Wave
Are we cooked? How social media shapes your language w/ Adam Aleksic (from TED Tech)
15 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey, short wavers. Emily Kwong here. So every generation has its own set of slang. My generation does. Yours does. I'm sure words are coming to mind right now. And each word has its own interesting evolutionary story. But these days, there is a unique tool influencing language, and that is technology.
Gen Z has popularized the words unalive, skibbity, riz, and fueling these and other phrases are algorithms. That's what we're excited to explore today in a special episode from the podcast TED Tech. Linguist Adam Oleksik gets into the nitty gritty of how social media algorithms are reshaping the way we communicate and how we view ourselves. I hope you enjoy.
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Chapter 2: What unique slang words are being explored in this episode?
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Language is this organic, fluid thing, constantly shifting and growing alongside humanity. And in the 21st century, our language might now be shaped by the spaces we're using it in, namely the internet. Think about it.
What if the very way we communicate, the words we choose, and the nuances of our slang are being influenced subtly but significantly by the algorithms that power our favorite social media platforms? It's a curious thought, isn't it? That a word might exist not just because a community coined it, but because a digital system favored it, amplified it, and pushed it into our collective consciousness.
This is TED Tech, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective.
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Chapter 3: How is technology influencing the evolution of language?
I'm your host, Sherelle Dorsey. Our next speaker is a linguist who has had a front row seat to this evolution. Adam Aleksik has watched firsthand how the digital currents are shaping the very fabric of our communication.
Now he's here to share how words like unalive or riz go from niche slang to mainstream phenomena and the surprising, sometimes uncomfortable, implications of this algorithmic influence. Adam's talk is a reexamination of our own online habits, not to mention our relationship to our rapidly changing lexicon. And now, Adam Aleksik takes the TEDx stage.
How many of you are familiar with the word unalive as a synonym of kill? Show of hands. Okay, like 80% of you. Great. Now, follow-up question. How many of you have heard the word unalive being used in person? Okay, I'm getting like 40, 50%. Great. Those of you that said no clearly aren't middle school teachers.
If you spend enough time around seventh and eighth graders, you will hear them using the word. It'll mostly be in informal situations, but could show up in contexts like a student's essay on Hamlet's contemplation of unaliving himself, or a classroom discussion on the unaliving that happens in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And these aren't hypothetical situations.
These are actual examples drawn from the thousand plus middle school teachers I've surveyed about this word.
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Chapter 4: What role do social media algorithms play in shaping communication?
It's a weird hobby of mine, I don't know. Clearly, for such a recent word, unalive shows up in an impressive range of scenarios. But the main function appears to be euphemistic. Many kids use the word when they're uncomfortable talking about topics like death, since unalive sounds like a less scary word. And in many ways, this is nothing new.
We've been euphemizing death as long as we've had language. The word deceased, for example, comes from Latin , which was a euphemism for the previous Latin word for death, morse. Apparently even the stoic Romans were as queasy about death as today's middle schoolers. But there is a crucial difference between unalive and deceased.
And that's that we only got the word unalive because you can't say kill on TikTok. They have a mysterious algorithm that removes or suppresses any post that might violate their community guidelines. So people got around with that with the word onalive. The middle schoolers don't know this. They see the word online or hear it from friends and assume it's a word like any other.
And fair enough, you probably didn't know where the word deceased came from, unless you're some kind of etymology nerd. But decease didn't happen because it was impossible to carve the word morse into an ancient Roman tablet. We are entering an entirely new era of language change driven by social media algorithms.
As a linguist and content creator, I've been in a unique position to see this happen from the inside. It's almost paralyzing. I constantly feel how my own language is being affected and judging from the 40% of you who answered both of my questions, it's beginning to change your language too. And it's not just new words to avoid algorithmic censorship.
The very structure of social media is changing where words come from, how words get popular, and how quickly those words spread. I believe some of you might be familiar with this song. Sticking out your yacht for the Rizzler. You're so skibbity. You're so phantom tax. I just want to be your Sigma. Freaking come here. Give me your Ohio.
For those of you out of the loop, these are the lyrics to the Rizzler song, a meme that went massively viral last year. It's full of current middle school slang words like riz, gyot, and skibbity, and was instrumental in popularizing those words to a broader audience. This is because social media algorithms reward repetition.
If a song is funny or catchy and people interact with it, the algorithm will then push that song to more people since it's proven to drive engagement on the app. The same is true of memes, or words in general, since trending metadata like hashtags will also be pushed to people who previously shown interest in similar content.
Creators are very aware of this, and we actively use trending audios or hashtags to make our videos perform better. In the wake of the Rizzler song, for example, we saw an explosion of people making videos with the words Rizz, Gyot, and Skibbity, because they knew those videos would do well. And as a result, the word spread. Language has always been a little bit like a virus.
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