If you understand little or nothing about the title of this page, don’t worry: you are in good company. In recent years, social networks have filled with terms that people over 40 (but also many over 30) have a hard time understanding and that, on the other hand, young and very young people, including Italians, use as if they were their second language.
Here we try to explain some of them, assuming that it is only a small selection of words that make up a parallel dictionary which is constantly updated and which concerns different aspects of modern life, from social networks to video games, to music.
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Dropper
It is the term that all the Italian online press fell in love with on March 16, after noting that it was trending on Google Trends, that is, it was one of the 10 most searched terms online in Italyprecisely at position number 7. Dropperfrom English to drop (drop, release), referring to Instagram means nothing more than posting a photo: dropping an image means sharing it on social media network.
The explanation is easier to understand though one thinks of the drag and drop that is done on computers: take a file from a folder and drag it (drag) inside another, where it is left (drop). That’s all.
Flopper
Another term that has to do with social networks and another that (like almost everyone on this list) derives from English, only it is not a verb: flop it means fiasco, failure. On Instagram, Facebook or on TikTok, a post or video that flops it is a post or a video that does not reach the desired audience, does not collect enough likes, comments and reactions. In short, it is a disappointment.
Cringe
When a content flops on social media, it is possible that it is because it is cringe (but it is not certain: it can also work very well precisely because it is cringe). In English it means embarrassing, and in the slang of the Net it identifies just this: embarrassing situations that somehow become public, like an uncoordinated ballet, an out of tune song, a declaration of love that leads to ridicule. And becomes a cringiata.
Crush
Often in situations cringe is involved crush, the person for whom you have feelings or attraction physics. Again: in English, crush it means crush or infatuation, and crush is precisely the him or her you try it for. Say or write crush instead of this person’s name it has a couple of advantages from the point of view of discretion: it allows not to reveal who he is and also to do not disclose their sex, because in English there are no indications of gender. So you can avoid revealing your own indications.
youtube: announcement and Anna’s video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ7XGDnkwS0
Announcement
Widespread online in the summer of 2020, thanks to the homonymous song by young rapper from La Spezia Annathe term is the contraction of the English word abandoned and it indicates the degraded areas of the cities, the poorest and most infamous neighborhoods. The ghetto or the banlieueto put it another way.
Pov
The abbreviation stands for point-of-view (in Italian, the point of view) and the first uses can be traced back to the red light sites: in a Pov video, the action can be seen from the eyes of one or one of the participants. From there, the use spread to the world of video games and then a lot to that of social, where you simulate being other people: in a Pov video of a teacher, you will see the class framed by the chair; a lawyer’s POV is inside the court; that of a taxi driver concerns the relationship with customers and so on.
Stitch
Among the most well-known functions of TikTok is the one that allows you to stretch the videos of other creators, that is, to take a piece of it (no more than 5 seconds) and use it as a starting point for your own video. Of stitch the two videos togetherWhy stitch in English it means just that.
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Trend
This is (perhaps) the easiest and most well-known word among those on this page: trends are social trends, the things that work best online. The term somehow comes from Trending Topic on Twitter, which indicate the Trends (and in fact this is what they are called today) and are divided country by country. A very useful tool to grasp them is the aforementioned Google Trends.
Out (everywhere)
This term generally refers to music, cinema and video games and the arrival of novelties and has followed the opposite path compared to the others: from English out now Italian out (everywhere). For at least a couple of years now, it is no longer said that a record is out or will be released, but that it is out. Out, precisely. Usually accompanied by everywhere, indicating that the album (song, movie, etc.) is available everywhere, both in stores and on streaming platforms. It’s out everywhere, well,
Millennial
Those are the people most comfortable with this language born between 1981 and 1996that is, those who have completed their first and last year as a teenager (in English, from thirteen a nineteeni.e. from 13 to 19) during the 2000s.
Boomer
On the contrary, the boomers are the ones who struggle the most with these terms, that is who was born between 1946 and 1964, the period of the so-called baby boom after the end of the Second World War (in 2022, the youngest boomers are 58 years old). From here it was born the expression ok, boomer: It’s a way to agree with boomers in online discussions and silence them, telling them they understand. Even if it is clear that they have not understood.