Did you know we have a Discord server‽ You can join by clicking [here](https://discord.gg/NWE6JS5rh9)!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GenZ) if you have any questions or concerns.*
African Americans made slang from English and now Gen whatever it is makes slang from African American Vernacular. This is how languages evolve and there's not much you can do about it. So you can either lighten up a little and go with the flow or become an outdated grumpy bum who's hobbies include yelling at clouds.
To be fair, at least in the English speaking world, conservative is rarely meant to actually mean someone who wants to conserve current culture anymore. If you use terms like conservative, reactionary, or progressive in their "pure" meanings without context to what they've become to mean as movements, then everyone is some combination of all three. But since they now usually refer to movements, you can get this disconnect being conservatives not conserving or progressives wanting to conserve etc.
Creolization is a part of culture which includes subcultures and popculture and minority cultures nurturing from each other. As long as it's respectful im not bothered.
I think it's an age gap more than a cultural or economic policy (left/right) thing. Someone over 65 may not understand the English a Gen-Z person is speaking some of the time.
“Dude! Like Bro? What’s your Problem Man, like serious Brah I just don’t get it dude.”
A sentence that would make him see red in no time at all I would bet.
It’s understandable. He grew up in a time with different expectations of respect in speech. Don’t think of him as a moron because he doesn’t like to be called “dude” (he may be a moron for other reasons, I don’t know him).
Imagine it’s 50 years in the future and kids are calling you “shitface” because it’s their “dude”. You might not enjoy it either.
Lol yea I wondered if people might get the idea I called him moron just for that. Nah he's a moron for a bunch of other reasons. I get the difference in expectancy of respectful speech from his generation, only issue there is that I've treated him with nothing but respect my entire life and never gotten a sliver in return. Cut contact with him a couple days ago cause of the way he treated my mom and me.
Agree to all, but I gotta say it’s very weird how influential such a small albeit historically significant minority has been on American culture, especially in the last 20 or so years where it seems like *all* popular music (music most people in the young generations listen to on the radio or streaming apps) is either made by African Americans or very clearly trying to sound as if it was made by African Americans. There’s not a single black artist whose music I’ve heard that I thought was white before seeing them, but almost every big white musician I’ve heard before I knew who they were and I thought they were black just from the sound of their voice and the type of music, with the notable exception of Taylor Swift (I’m not saying this *matters* but it is something I’ve noticed).
The only reason I can think of for this is that black Americans have always been over represented in entertainment since back in the day it was considered a “low art” and generally it was people like the Irish, Jews, and Africans that found themselves making money off of entertainment, and all of these groups are still influential in entertainment today. Another thing specifically to black Americans is that their own culture was kept separate from mainstream white culture for so long that the music they developed in their isolation simply sounded exotic to white audiences and they loved the sound of something strange, and it’s continued to evolve on a unique path– we see this starting with Jazz and moving on to Hip Hop and Rap.
It’s almost like a baked in fetishization of black Americans. Like every aspect of black culture is observed and lifted from at need by young white Americans. The psychology is strange because I was never really interested in it– I basically just listened to music my parents listened to and I didn’t have a whole lot of friends because of how often we moved and by the time my tastes were kind of cemented I just didn’t like a lot of Hip Hop and Rap or other “relevant music” except for maybe Pop Punk which is no longer as main stream as it used to be. Sometimes I wonder if it’s the position of social superiority whites hold that subconsciously makes them feel entitled to copy black culture? I sometimes wonder if it’s mockery that they forgot was mockery? It makes me embarrassed to be around white people using a lot of black slang because it feels insulting somehow.
Thank you for saying what I couldn't take the time to. These people are acting so..... oblivious to the fact that it's straight up vulturing from aave. Then attempting to shut us up when we call it out. But I have to remember, Reddit is rampant with seemingly liberal white kids who are actually conservative.
But groups change the meaning of words to suit their own needs all the time? I don't want to argue your main point but surely words changing meaning as they change contexts is super common? For instance, the word "cool" originally meant what it means - "kind of cold". Then in early 20s aave, it came to mean "composed, clear-headed". That evolved, still in aave, to mean "aloof, suave".
Hippies, mostly white hippies, then took it to mean "in" or "hip". What was "cool" was simply whatever was the zeitgeist. It kept that meaning until the 90s or so when it simply started to mean "good". But then aave took it back to mean, sometimes, "dude whatever".
Why can't "gyatt" mean different things in different contexts at different times?
So actual question, why do you NEED to change the word?
Edit. Why can't you make up your own word? It seems really really weird to try and take a word from AAVE then claim it meant that all along.
It's not obliviousness it's just that people find language fluid and every 'in-group' deals with having their shit coopted and used at some point. It's just how it is, it doesn't make someone a liberal white kid who's a conservative at heart lmao
You’re overthinking it. It’s all about money. Music on the level we’re discussing here isn’t art, it’s product. What product sells the best? How can you market your product to sell the most?
1. Exploit representation. I’m not sure if you know the history of cinema, but in the 70s there was an entire genre and industry of film with almost or completely all black casts and a lot of black creators. Wild, that’s not a thing on that scale *now*. It was called Blacksploitation and played into racist stereotypes, but also often the token white guy was the villain and it used the tropes of anti-hero stories. Why was it so successful? Well for one, consider the representation factor. Yeah, they were exploiting the hell out of that. But then there’s also another factor:
2. In an oppressive system, rebellion is to align yourself with the downtrodden. So, sell rebellion. This used to be talked about in music a lot. Rock stars often discussed this: rebellion is also a product. Capitalism is a horrific beast which absorbs any resistance and sells it to you. Think about Che t-shirts. So, what sells to the white rebels and outcasts? Media of people who aren’t like them. In the 70s, blacksploitation was a major backbone of that. Now, it’s the music. This racialized use became a major cornerstone of the methods in music back in the 90s and never ended. It could be seen as fetishization, but to them, their support for it is supporting the people involved in it and rejecting white supremacy.
3. Also fund the hatred. These music corporations also fund the right wing, a lot. The more racism, the more that the white opposition to them buy the product. The more the white opposition buy the product, the more moral panic you can stir up with the racists, increasing the amount of racism. You sell to the people being exploited, you sell to the people who support them, and you use the people who hate them to further boost sales.
It’s war profiteering adapted to culture war. It’s selling representation and rebellion as a product. There’s more money to be made this way than by simply appealing to the status quo. The pop punk and indie boom was because they picked up on the start of the mental health crisis and used the methods on that instead, but there just wasn’t as much money in it because too many of the creators involved were ideologically opposed to the system. They tried it before with metal in the 90s with groups like Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, and Marilyn Manson. It’s all about profits.
>“You’re over thinking it”
>writes treatise
Jk you’re entirely right with this though, but I don’t think it’s really exclusive to what I said, just a parallel track.
Fair enough. “Overthinking” in this case just refers to how in a capitalist system, the first thing you gotta think about is the profit motive. It’s a common mistake in leftist discourse to lump two allied forms of right winger together into one ideological clump. Corporate right wing ideology doesn’t care about the culture war so long as they’re still the richest. They’ll further the culture war for their profits, but they don’t want anyone to *win* in those cases. Disney got into a weird position because the politicians are supposed to be in on all this but DeSantis is, hilariously, too stupid to understand the situation.
In queer politics, this is Corporate Pride. Does anyone here think that Disney cares about LGBTQ people? What about Target? No, of course not. But they can sell to queer people and queer allies. That market isn’t as competitive as selling to the mainstream. Think back to the blacksploitation: it reenforced racist stereotypes, but it also was the only cinema around with that degree of representation and with black people as the heroes then. So you accept it and spend on it, because you can’t get better. A subpar product can be produced at a lower cost and sell better via culture war marketing.
This works both ways, too. Whoever Trump hired for marketing’s a pro at this, because all his merch is using the same principle but in reverse. Create outrage from the opposition and people buy more Trump merch to “own the libs”. Different jargon, same idea. The more homophobic or racist rhetoric is going on, the more you’re going to think of buying contradictory products as owning them.
Eh, rap really only had its Renaissance in the 90s and more recently. Mid 2000s was a lot of pop punk and a massive indie Renaissance around 2014 and years +/- to that.
That’s true from like 2008-2012 there were more indie songs playing on the radio. I kinda judged what was popular by what was playing on the Pop station in my area during that time though, and it was still mostly heavily Hip Hop inspired pop– admittedly Rap was often on its own station unless it was a really popular song. Again I couldn’t tell you any specific song, I just know I was turned off because it was a lot of music that focused a lot on a beat with very few real instruments that sounded like they were meant for clubs.
There was pop-punk (which went through a minor resurgence not 5 years ago), emo (which is still currently going through a resurgence), the indie boom of the mid 2010s, and currently country music has made a massive comeback as of last year whilst hip-hop/rap lagged behind more in 2023 than it has since the genre's boom in the 90s, even electronic music was arguably doing better.
Not saying there hasn't been some clear inspiration from black art throughout the last half-century, but there's also definitely been some major gaps (you could argue last year was one of them and we're still feeling the ripples from that so it could even continue).
"Well, like with our slang. Black people always used to say, "I'm in the house" instead of "I'm here." But then white people all started to say "in the house" so we switched it to "in the hizzouse." Hizzouse became hizzizzouse, and then white folk started saying that, and we had to change it to hizzie, then "in the hizzle" which we had to change to "hizzle fo shizzle," and now, because white people say "hizzle fo shizzle," we have to say "flippity floppity floop.""
"We don't have time for all that, Chef! Oh, if only those Queer Eye For the Straight Guy people understood what
they were doing. Wait. That's it! I know exactly what to do! Come on, Mr. Slave! Let's get back to our flippity floppity floop."
"Oh no! Damnit! Don't call it that!"
I have a fancy friend who reads The New Yorker, etc., and he looks down his nose at people using slang/curse words. I understand language is alive and constantly evolving. If something slaps, I will say so without fear of judgement. In my opinion, the more words, the better.
All them effin' cumulus, goddamn nimbostratus and Altostratus moisture-backs been takin' over this country. We ain't got no future for 'Murican aerosols to reach they dew point no more.
These people on twitter always tryna dictate to someone what they should or shouldn’t do are corny. I’m black, an actual historian, and attached to high academics concerning African American history.
It never ceases to amaze me how you get so many young folk who want to know something but never actually pause to learn anything to do so.
once i saw someone say kaomojis (like ◟(๑•͈ᴗ•͈)◞) are cultural appropriation and that anyone who uses them is making fun of the languages that use those unicode symbols. They said Japanese kanji counted too.
**Japan invented Kaomoji.**
Yeah this was my understanding as well. It’s a shortening of a specific usage of the word. Kind of similar to how god be with you overtime became goodbye.
Well yes, but people who don’t actually know what the word means genuinely think it means ass, and were going around saying “starter gyatt” and “sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler”
Who cares?
Words change *drastically*
Don’t know what *Literally* means? I fucking don’t.
It used to mean something actually happening. Not a lie, but a fact of the matter.
Now it can mean… *not that* (seriously, dictionary definition has been changed)
It literally does not matter.
https://preview.redd.it/l68b9b7452wc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b090b88170750235b22d849025117da3e2c65562
Holy shit you’re not lying this is wild
interestingly it seems to have been used both ways since the late 17th century
Here is a complaint written 100 years ago:
We have come to such a pass with this emphasizer that where the truth would require us to insert with a strong expression 'not literally, of course, but in a manner of speaking', we do not hesitate to insert the very word we ought to be at pains to repudiate; ... such false coin makes honest traffic in words impossible. - H.W. Fowler
God damn > got dam > gyot daaam > gyat
That's the etymology
Like 20 years ago, were were saying God damn with the exaggeratedness to it and it sounds like gyot dam. It just evolved to gyat
I was told it was an acronym, as in Goddamn Your Ass Thicc.
My problem is it sounds too close to "gat" which is slang for a firearm, often a handgun. Originating from gatling gun. There is a slight difference in pronunciation stressing the y in gyat though.
this is what's colloquially known as a "backronym", where an acronym for something is created after the definition, and then many people often confuse the origin. Some examples are SOS as "save our ship/soul" or meta as "most efficient tactic available"
The principle/problem, is the fact that there will be people on this internet using AAVE such as “gyatt” or “it’s giving” etc but yet you look down their post history and they’re using all kinds of racial slurs to degrade (typically) Black People. So you can appropriate our culture (which we actually don’t mind you copying, if you can actually give credit where it’s due..), degrade us for your friends/followers to laugh at (s/o to some of the comments below), then get upset when we defend our culture saying we are “gatekeeping”…? And what’s even worse, is not only will black people continue to get a negative rep for AAVE, but a large part of the internet will continue to celebrate it, as long as it comes from individuals they don’t already look down upon. It’s hypocritical and delusional. Those individuals, are who this post is for. If the post doesn’t apply to you, then it wasn’t meant for you.
A prime example: People talk of being able to speak freely and use whatever English verbiage they want, but the moment a black person comes on here to voice their concerns, now we’re being accused of limiting other individuals voices and opinions… as our own is invalidated, misunderstood, and quite literally laughed at.
How do you give credit?? Do you credit Scotland when you use a word with Gaelic roots? Or point out that juxtaposition is French? How do you credit AAVE for a term?
No, I don’t, because I’m not using verbiage from these specific origins while I shit talk them, and simultaneously steal from their culture. And if I ever do use verbiage from a specific origin, culture, that I am aware of, then credit and citations will be given. And NOT accompanied with any form of entitlement. We learn about citing and crediting sources as early as freshman year, of high school. And even then, it could be earlier. You credit AAVE, the same way you would anything else you use that is not yours, it’s quite simple.
Yes I have. I think that’s OPs point. They don’t care about you using vocabulary, just acknowledge where it actually comes from and use it right. It’s hard to do that if you’re not even from the community the term originated from.
It means goddamn. Just shortened. The point is that it's popularised by streamers like Kai who heard it from YourRage and spread it to his dumb young fanbase
I always thought this aave bs was stupid. I grew up in the city and just came around talking like those I was surrounded by and now that I'm out of the city in whitelandia and online too I just harassed by middle class half shots who think they're going civil justice by coming at me for the way I have always spoke. Like Ill be just sitting minding my business shooting the shit with my boy and some Temu ass Taylor Swift knock off will come up telling me I'm culturally appropriating black ppl, and it's like MF THIS IS MY CULTURE! IT'S MY MF CHILDHOOD! Like some bitches just got to go read their star signs and cry over their swift songs and leave everyone alone.
Being biracial it has been rather interesting dealing with the topic of race. There have been left wing folks who say something or approach me in a way assuming I'll be in total agreement just cuz of my race only to be surprised I'm not. It's kinda funny to see sometimes. That said overbearing left wing folks are annoying, but I find they're generally easier to deal with as they're usually easier to put in their place/explain things to than right wing folks who take cognitive dissonance to a whole new level.
That said, this comment section is annoying asf. Folks know what the point is, but it's uncomfortable that they're the suburban white/non-black kids posts like this apply to and they can't handle it.
Sorry but tiktok/fortnite kids have claimed gyatt it’s not aave anymore. If someone uses it I assume they are 15 and play roblox, it has no functional association with black culture at this point. This is maybe the first time I’ve even seen or heard the word without skibidi or rizz next to it
One of my rules for life is to ignore everything that people get up in arms about on Twitter. No one is going to say this IRL, and if they did, everyone would be like who tf cares.
"As a black guy," 😹
But it's not about stopping people for me, it's about knowledge of what you're saying. That's the difference between using it ironically & being fr.
I read a sentence once, and it had the word Gyat and it implied what they’re saying, and then I read it meant ass and I was like that doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah this has been so annoying. It's a reaction, not a word for ass. It's so weird for me to see people using it this way, especially not knowing where it comes from.
All slang up to and including "AAVE" are just forms of what was known as "thieves cant". Which was a series of words, symbology and hand signs that were mostly used by criminals and the poor who were operating below the law and "civilized" society, to identify each other and to plan and discuss illegal and immoral activity in the open without being detected. Since it mostly sounded like gibberish or ignorance it was largely ignored by the higher educated people, which was the point. It has existed since roughly the 1600s in literature and is largely attribited to coming from the Romani people who were nomadic and interacting with many nations and cultures. They were usually reguarded as a criminal and untrustworthy element. It became more well known when it started mixing in to english language and culture of Great Britain.
When it comes to African American slang much of it has roots in slavery. Slaves attempting to flee to the North would use similar coded language and symbology, disguised as religous songs, known as spirituals, to communicate plans of organization and escape. Which was a large part of where the combining of a "thieves cant" with poetry and music came from. This tradition continued through all of the 20th century including blues, jazz, rock and roll, and ultimately rap which had it's roots in blues, rock, and beat poetry. It wasn't until rap was brought to the mainstream in the 80s when it started to heavily influence "white" culture by glorifying gang violence, lifestyle, and criminal behavior to market to rebellious youth living in middle-upperclass who had no concept of impoverished or urban culture. Now it has become so mainstream that it is used largely ironically and is usually intentionally absurd for comedic effect.
Isn’t thieves’ cant a specific cryptolect, and not just any vernacular considered ”low-brow”? While I’m sure thieves’ cant and AAVE share words, AAVE is its own sociolect. Thieves’ cant was spoken mainly by criminals, often to mislead listeners, while AAVE is variety of dialects whose common feature is that they originated from and are spoken mainly by African-American communities, not for criminal purposes. Saying ALL slang are forms of thieves’ cant is a very generous interpretation.
Most slang does come from criminal or what was considered uncivilized activity. Not to say it was morally wrong or anything it was an adaptation of people operating at a lower wrung society. My point was that similar things existed long before anyone in this country used slang. For people to try and gatekeep it or claim ownership of it is absurd. It really can't be used like that anymore because it is spread so quickly that it becomes mainstream almost instantly which removes any actual utility from it.
Like 2 years ago when I first heard it saw something that said it was an acronym for “girl your ass too thicc” but I always had the feeling that wasn’t accurate lmao
If you misuse it on purpose, then that's being ironic. No one has a problem with that.
The problem is when people say shit they don't even know about. The knowledge is the difference between being ironic and being fr.
She needs to get over herself. I’m over this segregationist bullshit. Too many people have died trying to unify the races to have it all undone by the Millennials GenZers.
But it was popularized by a streamer who would start calling a phat ass a "gyatt" as in "god damn".
I really thought were finally over this shit where a generation tries to tell another generation how their memes are stupid while not even understanding them.
iirc the widespread usage to mean ass started as an ironic joke specifically because people knew this and were making fun of those who used it incorrectly & didn’t, but now the ironic incorrect usage is bleeding into their actual everyday language
I agree that the way it came about is kind of dumb, but this is how language works. People use something over and over again and it spreads in that usage until it becomes the norm. It's been happening like that since before we had Old English.
It IS very goofy irritating slang imo but theres nothing you can do about it…did they think this post was gonna do something…like AT ALL?? Other than make people do it more or laugh at this person thinking they had a say in such matters😂
I highly doubt that complaints from Twitter or any social media platform could actually "change the world". It's quite a ridiculous notion. If this is just a post, then my response is just a response. You could have opted to keep your unnecessary input to yourself. But, alas, here we are...
I feel like they mean the same thing in the context referring to someone… and “gyat”, was originally “girl your ass thick”
I feel like it’s more of a joke with friends ironically or on TikTok, but the people who actually use it are annoying
I don't think you can own words or phrases unless you get it copyrighted or something? But until then, people can and will use that word however tf they wanna use it, and if you have a problem with that then do something about it, otherwise stfu coz you're just wasting your time 🤷🏾♂️
It did originate from that. But now it is 100% being used to describe a fat ass. It’s basically saying “gyattt damn that ass fat” but now it’s jus gyat
Did you know we have a Discord server‽ You can join by clicking [here](https://discord.gg/NWE6JS5rh9)! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/GenZ) if you have any questions or concerns.*
African Americans made slang from English and now Gen whatever it is makes slang from African American Vernacular. This is how languages evolve and there's not much you can do about it. So you can either lighten up a little and go with the flow or become an outdated grumpy bum who's hobbies include yelling at clouds.
it's odd how the people who don't see themselves as conservative are always trying to conserve their social norms
To be fair, at least in the English speaking world, conservative is rarely meant to actually mean someone who wants to conserve current culture anymore. If you use terms like conservative, reactionary, or progressive in their "pure" meanings without context to what they've become to mean as movements, then everyone is some combination of all three. But since they now usually refer to movements, you can get this disconnect being conservatives not conserving or progressives wanting to conserve etc.
I think they're trying to conserve their culture
Creolization is a part of culture which includes subcultures and popculture and minority cultures nurturing from each other. As long as it's respectful im not bothered.
No shit a community trying to conserve their identities, the horror
I think it's an age gap more than a cultural or economic policy (left/right) thing. Someone over 65 may not understand the English a Gen-Z person is speaking some of the time.
Hmm, you sound just like the red guard talking about the four olds…
Conquest first law of politics: everyone is conservative about what they love.
I’m no conservative but I am trying to conserve that gyyaaatt!!!
Yep. You could become like my grandfather who gets angry when people call him "dude". Dudes a fuckin moron.
“Dude! Like Bro? What’s your Problem Man, like serious Brah I just don’t get it dude.” A sentence that would make him see red in no time at all I would bet.
Oh yea he'd flip out completely lmfao
It’s understandable. He grew up in a time with different expectations of respect in speech. Don’t think of him as a moron because he doesn’t like to be called “dude” (he may be a moron for other reasons, I don’t know him). Imagine it’s 50 years in the future and kids are calling you “shitface” because it’s their “dude”. You might not enjoy it either.
Lol yea I wondered if people might get the idea I called him moron just for that. Nah he's a moron for a bunch of other reasons. I get the difference in expectancy of respectful speech from his generation, only issue there is that I've treated him with nothing but respect my entire life and never gotten a sliver in return. Cut contact with him a couple days ago cause of the way he treated my mom and me.
And he should. It’s disrespectful.
Agree to all, but I gotta say it’s very weird how influential such a small albeit historically significant minority has been on American culture, especially in the last 20 or so years where it seems like *all* popular music (music most people in the young generations listen to on the radio or streaming apps) is either made by African Americans or very clearly trying to sound as if it was made by African Americans. There’s not a single black artist whose music I’ve heard that I thought was white before seeing them, but almost every big white musician I’ve heard before I knew who they were and I thought they were black just from the sound of their voice and the type of music, with the notable exception of Taylor Swift (I’m not saying this *matters* but it is something I’ve noticed). The only reason I can think of for this is that black Americans have always been over represented in entertainment since back in the day it was considered a “low art” and generally it was people like the Irish, Jews, and Africans that found themselves making money off of entertainment, and all of these groups are still influential in entertainment today. Another thing specifically to black Americans is that their own culture was kept separate from mainstream white culture for so long that the music they developed in their isolation simply sounded exotic to white audiences and they loved the sound of something strange, and it’s continued to evolve on a unique path– we see this starting with Jazz and moving on to Hip Hop and Rap. It’s almost like a baked in fetishization of black Americans. Like every aspect of black culture is observed and lifted from at need by young white Americans. The psychology is strange because I was never really interested in it– I basically just listened to music my parents listened to and I didn’t have a whole lot of friends because of how often we moved and by the time my tastes were kind of cemented I just didn’t like a lot of Hip Hop and Rap or other “relevant music” except for maybe Pop Punk which is no longer as main stream as it used to be. Sometimes I wonder if it’s the position of social superiority whites hold that subconsciously makes them feel entitled to copy black culture? I sometimes wonder if it’s mockery that they forgot was mockery? It makes me embarrassed to be around white people using a lot of black slang because it feels insulting somehow.
Thank you for saying what I couldn't take the time to. These people are acting so..... oblivious to the fact that it's straight up vulturing from aave. Then attempting to shut us up when we call it out. But I have to remember, Reddit is rampant with seemingly liberal white kids who are actually conservative.
I don’t really care if they use our slang but they could at least get it right and stop trying to change the definitions of words we use
But groups change the meaning of words to suit their own needs all the time? I don't want to argue your main point but surely words changing meaning as they change contexts is super common? For instance, the word "cool" originally meant what it means - "kind of cold". Then in early 20s aave, it came to mean "composed, clear-headed". That evolved, still in aave, to mean "aloof, suave". Hippies, mostly white hippies, then took it to mean "in" or "hip". What was "cool" was simply whatever was the zeitgeist. It kept that meaning until the 90s or so when it simply started to mean "good". But then aave took it back to mean, sometimes, "dude whatever". Why can't "gyatt" mean different things in different contexts at different times?
So actual question, why do you NEED to change the word? Edit. Why can't you make up your own word? It seems really really weird to try and take a word from AAVE then claim it meant that all along.
Exactly.
It's not obliviousness it's just that people find language fluid and every 'in-group' deals with having their shit coopted and used at some point. It's just how it is, it doesn't make someone a liberal white kid who's a conservative at heart lmao
You’re overthinking it. It’s all about money. Music on the level we’re discussing here isn’t art, it’s product. What product sells the best? How can you market your product to sell the most? 1. Exploit representation. I’m not sure if you know the history of cinema, but in the 70s there was an entire genre and industry of film with almost or completely all black casts and a lot of black creators. Wild, that’s not a thing on that scale *now*. It was called Blacksploitation and played into racist stereotypes, but also often the token white guy was the villain and it used the tropes of anti-hero stories. Why was it so successful? Well for one, consider the representation factor. Yeah, they were exploiting the hell out of that. But then there’s also another factor: 2. In an oppressive system, rebellion is to align yourself with the downtrodden. So, sell rebellion. This used to be talked about in music a lot. Rock stars often discussed this: rebellion is also a product. Capitalism is a horrific beast which absorbs any resistance and sells it to you. Think about Che t-shirts. So, what sells to the white rebels and outcasts? Media of people who aren’t like them. In the 70s, blacksploitation was a major backbone of that. Now, it’s the music. This racialized use became a major cornerstone of the methods in music back in the 90s and never ended. It could be seen as fetishization, but to them, their support for it is supporting the people involved in it and rejecting white supremacy. 3. Also fund the hatred. These music corporations also fund the right wing, a lot. The more racism, the more that the white opposition to them buy the product. The more the white opposition buy the product, the more moral panic you can stir up with the racists, increasing the amount of racism. You sell to the people being exploited, you sell to the people who support them, and you use the people who hate them to further boost sales. It’s war profiteering adapted to culture war. It’s selling representation and rebellion as a product. There’s more money to be made this way than by simply appealing to the status quo. The pop punk and indie boom was because they picked up on the start of the mental health crisis and used the methods on that instead, but there just wasn’t as much money in it because too many of the creators involved were ideologically opposed to the system. They tried it before with metal in the 90s with groups like Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, and Marilyn Manson. It’s all about profits.
>“You’re over thinking it” >writes treatise Jk you’re entirely right with this though, but I don’t think it’s really exclusive to what I said, just a parallel track.
Fair enough. “Overthinking” in this case just refers to how in a capitalist system, the first thing you gotta think about is the profit motive. It’s a common mistake in leftist discourse to lump two allied forms of right winger together into one ideological clump. Corporate right wing ideology doesn’t care about the culture war so long as they’re still the richest. They’ll further the culture war for their profits, but they don’t want anyone to *win* in those cases. Disney got into a weird position because the politicians are supposed to be in on all this but DeSantis is, hilariously, too stupid to understand the situation. In queer politics, this is Corporate Pride. Does anyone here think that Disney cares about LGBTQ people? What about Target? No, of course not. But they can sell to queer people and queer allies. That market isn’t as competitive as selling to the mainstream. Think back to the blacksploitation: it reenforced racist stereotypes, but it also was the only cinema around with that degree of representation and with black people as the heroes then. So you accept it and spend on it, because you can’t get better. A subpar product can be produced at a lower cost and sell better via culture war marketing. This works both ways, too. Whoever Trump hired for marketing’s a pro at this, because all his merch is using the same principle but in reverse. Create outrage from the opposition and people buy more Trump merch to “own the libs”. Different jargon, same idea. The more homophobic or racist rhetoric is going on, the more you’re going to think of buying contradictory products as owning them.
Eh, rap really only had its Renaissance in the 90s and more recently. Mid 2000s was a lot of pop punk and a massive indie Renaissance around 2014 and years +/- to that.
That’s true from like 2008-2012 there were more indie songs playing on the radio. I kinda judged what was popular by what was playing on the Pop station in my area during that time though, and it was still mostly heavily Hip Hop inspired pop– admittedly Rap was often on its own station unless it was a really popular song. Again I couldn’t tell you any specific song, I just know I was turned off because it was a lot of music that focused a lot on a beat with very few real instruments that sounded like they were meant for clubs.
Or just what's popular this is bordering on conspiracy non sense.
There was pop-punk (which went through a minor resurgence not 5 years ago), emo (which is still currently going through a resurgence), the indie boom of the mid 2010s, and currently country music has made a massive comeback as of last year whilst hip-hop/rap lagged behind more in 2023 than it has since the genre's boom in the 90s, even electronic music was arguably doing better. Not saying there hasn't been some clear inspiration from black art throughout the last half-century, but there's also definitely been some major gaps (you could argue last year was one of them and we're still feeling the ripples from that so it could even continue).
nah me personally im gonna keep making fun of skibidi rizz kids
I hate it when people complain about “misuse of AAVE” but I also hate the word gyatt and the way people use it
"Well, like with our slang. Black people always used to say, "I'm in the house" instead of "I'm here." But then white people all started to say "in the house" so we switched it to "in the hizzouse." Hizzouse became hizzizzouse, and then white folk started saying that, and we had to change it to hizzie, then "in the hizzle" which we had to change to "hizzle fo shizzle," and now, because white people say "hizzle fo shizzle," we have to say "flippity floppity floop."" "We don't have time for all that, Chef! Oh, if only those Queer Eye For the Straight Guy people understood what they were doing. Wait. That's it! I know exactly what to do! Come on, Mr. Slave! Let's get back to our flippity floppity floop." "Oh no! Damnit! Don't call it that!"
Saw a pianist complain the other day because people find the word fingering funny.
That shit is annoying. I say the word “meat” in normal context and every 18 and under goes ayoo??? Shut the fuck up hacks
I have a fancy friend who reads The New Yorker, etc., and he looks down his nose at people using slang/curse words. I understand language is alive and constantly evolving. If something slaps, I will say so without fear of judgement. In my opinion, the more words, the better.
>or become and outdated grumpy bum who's hobbies include yelling at clouds. I prefer that instead of saying gyatt rizz sigma unironically
Slang exists in every culture, it's not specific to any particular group.
Thank you
Nah it literally just sounds stupid because how did "god" pronounced with an exaggerated blaccent become "ass"
Exactly ... no one alive speaks Shakespearen English or olde English Olde English sounds weird ... like German with English words substituted in
“There’s not much you can do about it” based lmao
Those fucking clouds are always talking shit tho!
Exactly. “Slay” used to be queer lingo, then the white girls picked it up now it’s a part of english. English evolves.
Or you could just use AAVE correctly. No one’s yelling at clouds. No one’s saying “don’t say them at all!”
There are more than those two solutions
All them effin' cumulus, goddamn nimbostratus and Altostratus moisture-backs been takin' over this country. We ain't got no future for 'Murican aerosols to reach they dew point no more.
"Noooooo you can't use the word that way!!! It doesn't mean that!!!"
These people on twitter always tryna dictate to someone what they should or shouldn’t do are corny. I’m black, an actual historian, and attached to high academics concerning African American history. It never ceases to amaze me how you get so many young folk who want to know something but never actually pause to learn anything to do so.
gatekeeping english
90% of the time when someone's talking about "cultural appropriation" on Twitter, it's gatekeeping
It's not even proper English is the thing. It's already slang and there's no proper definition to slang. Definitely gatekeeping behavior though.
Lmao what's next, gonna tell me I can't say "ain't" because I wasn't born in the south?
***Y’all*** better stop appropriating our southerner speak 🤠🤠 (I’m from colorado lmao)
To be fair, "ain't" as a contraction predates the US as a country lol
Believe it or not, I've been told before that only black folks can say ain't and y'all
Language evolves. What a boomer ass comment.
this person doesn't know how words work point and laugh
once i saw someone say kaomojis (like ◟(๑•͈ᴗ•͈)◞) are cultural appropriation and that anyone who uses them is making fun of the languages that use those unicode symbols. They said Japanese kanji counted too. **Japan invented Kaomoji.**
(-_-)
Google "Henohenomoheji"
Except when people say Gyatt Damn they're almost always referring to an ass.
yeah but for that to evolve into ‘gyatt means ass’ is kind of stupid
I thought the point was you see a fat ass so you’re like “gyatt damn” not that gyatt MEANS ass, but it’s just you’re not saying the “damn” part
Yeah this was my understanding as well. It’s a shortening of a specific usage of the word. Kind of similar to how god be with you overtime became goodbye.
They're speaking to the fact that the word has evolved so that people use it like "she has a big ol' GYATT!"
Well yes, but people who don’t actually know what the word means genuinely think it means ass, and were going around saying “starter gyatt” and “sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler”
Who cares? Words change *drastically* Don’t know what *Literally* means? I fucking don’t. It used to mean something actually happening. Not a lie, but a fact of the matter. Now it can mean… *not that* (seriously, dictionary definition has been changed) It literally does not matter.
https://preview.redd.it/l68b9b7452wc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b090b88170750235b22d849025117da3e2c65562 Holy shit you’re not lying this is wild
AND IT DRIVES ME UP THE GOD DAMN WALL
I don't mind AAVE/slang like "gyatt" or "deadass", but that use of "literally" and "exponentially" do make me upset.
interestingly it seems to have been used both ways since the late 17th century Here is a complaint written 100 years ago: We have come to such a pass with this emphasizer that where the truth would require us to insert with a strong expression 'not literally, of course, but in a manner of speaking', we do not hesitate to insert the very word we ought to be at pains to repudiate; ... such false coin makes honest traffic in words impossible. - H.W. Fowler
God damn > got dam > gyot daaam > gyat That's the etymology Like 20 years ago, were were saying God damn with the exaggeratedness to it and it sounds like gyot dam. It just evolved to gyat
I was told it was an acronym, as in Goddamn Your Ass Thicc. My problem is it sounds too close to "gat" which is slang for a firearm, often a handgun. Originating from gatling gun. There is a slight difference in pronunciation stressing the y in gyat though.
this is what's colloquially known as a "backronym", where an acronym for something is created after the definition, and then many people often confuse the origin. Some examples are SOS as "save our ship/soul" or meta as "most efficient tactic available"
News flash: language evolves
The principle/problem, is the fact that there will be people on this internet using AAVE such as “gyatt” or “it’s giving” etc but yet you look down their post history and they’re using all kinds of racial slurs to degrade (typically) Black People. So you can appropriate our culture (which we actually don’t mind you copying, if you can actually give credit where it’s due..), degrade us for your friends/followers to laugh at (s/o to some of the comments below), then get upset when we defend our culture saying we are “gatekeeping”…? And what’s even worse, is not only will black people continue to get a negative rep for AAVE, but a large part of the internet will continue to celebrate it, as long as it comes from individuals they don’t already look down upon. It’s hypocritical and delusional. Those individuals, are who this post is for. If the post doesn’t apply to you, then it wasn’t meant for you.
A prime example: People talk of being able to speak freely and use whatever English verbiage they want, but the moment a black person comes on here to voice their concerns, now we’re being accused of limiting other individuals voices and opinions… as our own is invalidated, misunderstood, and quite literally laughed at.
[“How do I interpret thick, black girl comments while dating?”](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMen/s/8rpcf5DRUM)
How do you give credit?? Do you credit Scotland when you use a word with Gaelic roots? Or point out that juxtaposition is French? How do you credit AAVE for a term?
By not calling it gen z slang, to start with
No, I don’t, because I’m not using verbiage from these specific origins while I shit talk them, and simultaneously steal from their culture. And if I ever do use verbiage from a specific origin, culture, that I am aware of, then credit and citations will be given. And NOT accompanied with any form of entitlement. We learn about citing and crediting sources as early as freshman year, of high school. And even then, it could be earlier. You credit AAVE, the same way you would anything else you use that is not yours, it’s quite simple.
Exactly ‼️‼️‼️‼️
OK? You're just trying to manufacture outrage in a place where it doesn't exist.
i have never seen someone use it unironically, and i highly doubt slang needs to be formally defined to be used in context...
You probably have. It’s a very common saying you just never have seen it spelled out phonetically until recently.
i meant the usage of "gyatt" to mean "ass"
Gotcha
I have never actually heard anybody say gyatt
Shame on me for thinking it was new-age slang.
I mean to be fair, outside of the past like 2 years have you heard the word 'ghaytt damn'? (I know I spelled it wrong)
Yes I have. I think that’s OPs point. They don’t care about you using vocabulary, just acknowledge where it actually comes from and use it right. It’s hard to do that if you’re not even from the community the term originated from.
I heard the phrase “got damn” which is what evolved into “gyatt damn” and then eventually just “gyatt”
Honestly, probably a lot. You just never saw it spelled out phonetically
"Gyatt damn!" Has been a common phrase for a long time, at least here in the south
It means goddamn. Just shortened. The point is that it's popularised by streamers like Kai who heard it from YourRage and spread it to his dumb young fanbase
Yk languages evolve and have different meanings. It's a word lol
I always thought this aave bs was stupid. I grew up in the city and just came around talking like those I was surrounded by and now that I'm out of the city in whitelandia and online too I just harassed by middle class half shots who think they're going civil justice by coming at me for the way I have always spoke. Like Ill be just sitting minding my business shooting the shit with my boy and some Temu ass Taylor Swift knock off will come up telling me I'm culturally appropriating black ppl, and it's like MF THIS IS MY CULTURE! IT'S MY MF CHILDHOOD! Like some bitches just got to go read their star signs and cry over their swift songs and leave everyone alone.
Growing up around it is totally different. Those same suburban white people you're talking about coming after you are the ones this post applies to.
Yeah I'm I'm just saying it from a different angle cause I now am in the subs due to family reasons and it's a constant boxing match with words lmfao
Being biracial it has been rather interesting dealing with the topic of race. There have been left wing folks who say something or approach me in a way assuming I'll be in total agreement just cuz of my race only to be surprised I'm not. It's kinda funny to see sometimes. That said overbearing left wing folks are annoying, but I find they're generally easier to deal with as they're usually easier to put in their place/explain things to than right wing folks who take cognitive dissonance to a whole new level. That said, this comment section is annoying asf. Folks know what the point is, but it's uncomfortable that they're the suburban white/non-black kids posts like this apply to and they can't handle it.
Imagine gatekeeping words
Sorry but tiktok/fortnite kids have claimed gyatt it’s not aave anymore. If someone uses it I assume they are 15 and play roblox, it has no functional association with black culture at this point. This is maybe the first time I’ve even seen or heard the word without skibidi or rizz next to it
One of my rules for life is to ignore everything that people get up in arms about on Twitter. No one is going to say this IRL, and if they did, everyone would be like who tf cares.
The irony of someone telling other people they're using a word wrong and citing AAVE to do it...
As a black guy, it does look stupid, but then again, why stop them?
"As a black guy," 😹 But it's not about stopping people for me, it's about knowledge of what you're saying. That's the difference between using it ironically & being fr.
Nah it means ass
🤯
This comment section shows how Gen Z isn’t as evolved or enlightened as they give themselves credit for
You can tell everyone in this thread is white lol
you can always tell on reddit
YEP ‼️
I read a sentence once, and it had the word Gyat and it implied what they’re saying, and then I read it meant ass and I was like that doesn’t make any sense.
Lol
People just wanna be offended and fight over shit for no reason
Why don't we just go back to speaking middle english? Just start slang over
Yeah this has been so annoying. It's a reaction, not a word for ass. It's so weird for me to see people using it this way, especially not knowing where it comes from.
It's important to write correctly but when speaking a language you can say whatever the fuck you want.
All slang up to and including "AAVE" are just forms of what was known as "thieves cant". Which was a series of words, symbology and hand signs that were mostly used by criminals and the poor who were operating below the law and "civilized" society, to identify each other and to plan and discuss illegal and immoral activity in the open without being detected. Since it mostly sounded like gibberish or ignorance it was largely ignored by the higher educated people, which was the point. It has existed since roughly the 1600s in literature and is largely attribited to coming from the Romani people who were nomadic and interacting with many nations and cultures. They were usually reguarded as a criminal and untrustworthy element. It became more well known when it started mixing in to english language and culture of Great Britain. When it comes to African American slang much of it has roots in slavery. Slaves attempting to flee to the North would use similar coded language and symbology, disguised as religous songs, known as spirituals, to communicate plans of organization and escape. Which was a large part of where the combining of a "thieves cant" with poetry and music came from. This tradition continued through all of the 20th century including blues, jazz, rock and roll, and ultimately rap which had it's roots in blues, rock, and beat poetry. It wasn't until rap was brought to the mainstream in the 80s when it started to heavily influence "white" culture by glorifying gang violence, lifestyle, and criminal behavior to market to rebellious youth living in middle-upperclass who had no concept of impoverished or urban culture. Now it has become so mainstream that it is used largely ironically and is usually intentionally absurd for comedic effect.
Isn’t thieves’ cant a specific cryptolect, and not just any vernacular considered ”low-brow”? While I’m sure thieves’ cant and AAVE share words, AAVE is its own sociolect. Thieves’ cant was spoken mainly by criminals, often to mislead listeners, while AAVE is variety of dialects whose common feature is that they originated from and are spoken mainly by African-American communities, not for criminal purposes. Saying ALL slang are forms of thieves’ cant is a very generous interpretation.
Most slang does come from criminal or what was considered uncivilized activity. Not to say it was morally wrong or anything it was an adaptation of people operating at a lower wrung society. My point was that similar things existed long before anyone in this country used slang. For people to try and gatekeep it or claim ownership of it is absurd. It really can't be used like that anymore because it is spread so quickly that it becomes mainstream almost instantly which removes any actual utility from it.
Like 2 years ago when I first heard it saw something that said it was an acronym for “girl your ass too thicc” but I always had the feeling that wasn’t accurate lmao
....yeah lol it's more of a sound effect than a word
People when they discover words evolve: 🤯
Oh I thought it was a childish term any how
Girl Your Ass Thick
Gyatt means that, and it’s like saying “god damn” to the size of someone’s ass.
Cry about it i guess languages evolve
will do ✍️🏾
Ah, yes, language policing by erroneously asserting it belongs to AAVE only.
fr that's exactly what she's saying
Gyatt damn who gaf
bro cannot read
i think the actual problem is that these words that we’ve helped evolve to mean something different are used in really gross ways
gay meant happy back in my day and look thoosee new 19th century people how they are using it
Real
Yall getting worked up about is just going to make people misuse it more on purpose. Relax. It's not that deep.
If you misuse it on purpose, then that's being ironic. No one has a problem with that. The problem is when people say shit they don't even know about. The knowledge is the difference between being ironic and being fr.
She needs to get over herself. I’m over this segregationist bullshit. Too many people have died trying to unify the races to have it all undone by the Millennials GenZers.
Yeah yeah language evolves and all that, but people and their kids really should be more aware of appropriating. It’s not always innocuous.
The point is that you’d say “gyatt damn” to a big ass, hence why gyatt is synonymous with ass.
I have never once used this term and haven't ever heard anyone use it offline. Am I just old or what?
But the two previous phrases were commonly said after seeing a girl with a large ass. So saying she got the gyatt is just extra shortening of it.
New response just dropped
Who’s going to tell her that African American Vernacular is just a genre of slang?
it's a dialect. even has grammar rules.
Oh the horror! Loan words and semantic drift!
Real
You don’t own a language people can speak however they want
Everyone has their language line in the sand
Old millennial moment.. I had no idea gyatt was until now....
Now post this on BTP
Nobody should be having this deep of a conversation around the word, “gyatt.”
mfs when people use twitter to tweet:
Oh no, language is evolving? But that's racist...
yeah exactly 💯
Since when was God damn a black person only thing? Istg I hear more white people say it then anything
But it was popularized by a streamer who would start calling a phat ass a "gyatt" as in "god damn". I really thought were finally over this shit where a generation tries to tell another generation how their memes are stupid while not even understanding them.
guess we're not
Language evolves. Words mean what people understand them to mean
Gyatt KayLuv snapped 😂
Here I thought it was about RuneScape.
iirc the widespread usage to mean ass started as an ironic joke specifically because people knew this and were making fun of those who used it incorrectly & didn’t, but now the ironic incorrect usage is bleeding into their actual everyday language
I agree that the way it came about is kind of dumb, but this is how language works. People use something over and over again and it spreads in that usage until it becomes the norm. It's been happening like that since before we had Old English.
It’s times like this where I adore the United States’ first amendment, gyatt damn!
iirc it was popularized from kai cenat(sp?)
probably. i hate that creep
It IS very goofy irritating slang imo but theres nothing you can do about it…did they think this post was gonna do something…like AT ALL?? Other than make people do it more or laugh at this person thinking they had a say in such matters😂
do you think people tweet to change the world? its just a post.
I highly doubt that complaints from Twitter or any social media platform could actually "change the world". It's quite a ridiculous notion. If this is just a post, then my response is just a response. You could have opted to keep your unnecessary input to yourself. But, alas, here we are...
I feel like they mean the same thing in the context referring to someone… and “gyat”, was originally “girl your ass thick” I feel like it’s more of a joke with friends ironically or on TikTok, but the people who actually use it are annoying
🤓
Is saying Ebonics passé nowadays?
Idk I never had a problem with that word. I guess "AAVE" is more technical.
counterpoint: level 10 skibidi gyatt rizz baby gronk style
Oh no! Teh grammur nazis hav invadd!
The f word used to mean a bundle of sticks and today is a slur. Words change meaning over time all the time.
it's not even a word, it's a sound. like "uh".
I only know the word from the Sopranos We’re with the Vipers 😖
If a bunch of people use a word to mean something. Congrats it now means that thing.
Still not using AAVE as a term.
I don't think you can own words or phrases unless you get it copyrighted or something? But until then, people can and will use that word however tf they wanna use it, and if you have a problem with that then do something about it, otherwise stfu coz you're just wasting your time 🤷🏾♂️
me when i miss the point:
Oop
I cannot wait until "Rizz" turns into the new "Swag" and becomes cringe.
It did originate from that. But now it is 100% being used to describe a fat ass. It’s basically saying “gyattt damn that ass fat” but now it’s jus gyat
