Their slang game includes Rizun To new heights.
Generation Z and Alpha are incorporating old technology from the 1990s into their already obscure slang.
But their latest phrase, “No fax, no printer” (which one TikToker went viral for in 2021) has little to do with the antiquated office equipment that preceded many of them.
“'No fax, no printer' is more of a play on words than a recognition of older media technology,” Benjamin Burrows, associate professor of emerging media at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Today.
“A lot of kids don't understand what a fax is.”
Instead, children lean toward “fax” sounding phonetically like “fact.” Even millennials use this term as a synonym for the word “truth.”
“This is very similar to 'no cap,' which means 'don't lie,'” Burrows added.
Another expert pointed out that the phrase could be linked to the 2014 song “Post to Be” by Omarion and Chris Brown, whose lyrics include “It's a fax machine, the printer is It included the slang phrase “No.”
Baby boomers, do you still feel old?
Other modern slang words have also received academic validation.
Oxford University Press has chosen “Liz”, which means charisma, as the word of the year for the end of 2023.
Dictionary.com has also added a series of Gen Z's favorite terms to its archive.
These include “the ick,” which is used to describe being raked by something, and “mid,” which is used to describe something mundane.
It also included Bussin', which means feeling great.
Gen Alpha's phrases, many of which are derived from online content streamers, are even stranger.
These pre-teens, among other stages of seeming age-inappropriate, are accustomed to the acronym “Gat,” which stands for “Girl Your Chic.”
One is a long 72-part YouTube series about the war between toilets.
They also enjoy creating memes that satirically depict Ohio as a bizarre epicenter of “the ravaged culture of capitalism.”
