A Whole Lotta Yapping but Are We Saying Anything?

"Broligarchs," "Manosphere," and "Inheritocracy"—buzzwords aren't just for social media anymore. Even heavyweights like The Financial Times and The Economist are leaning into these trendy terms, feeding algorithms and chasing viral moments.

From the pages of legacy publications to the chaos of TikTok, language is bending to whatever grabs attention fastest. Take “vibes”, “low key”, “rizz”, “slay” or the endless use of -core as a suffix (cottagecore, cabincore, grungecore). These words and others like “situationship” have been beaten to death over the last few years. They’ve become a marker of whether someone is terminally online, their vocabulary shaped by internet culture rather than organic conversation. For example, at my pilates class the other day I overheard two girls discussing what they were doing after. One said “I want to pop into this shop on the way home”, and the other responded “Lowkey, I need a shower”, there was nothing lowkey about it, we were all dripping in sweat. 

This linguistic shift raises bigger questions. Are we losing the ability to engage with ideas unless they come packaged in a buzzword? Or are we just desperately trying to fit in? More importantly, does this trend help us communicate better, or are we just diluting language into bite-sized trends?

Are we speaking to connect, or just to keep up?