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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2921 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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GenZ neologisms. Every passing day I slowly find myself using more and more of them. The latest addition to my arsenal is "rizz", and its variation of "w rizz" and "l rizz". To those unaware rizz is what the millenials called "game", the ability to swoon the other gender. I dont think any such proper phrase exists that succintly sums up the concept of win rizz and lose rizz. New phrases for new things.

In my headcannon, neologisms dont replace old words/ideas, they come into existence to describe a subtle variation of a situation/experience that the old phrase didnt demarcate well enough. Rizz is not the same thing as game or even charisma, its a superset of those concepts. Bussing isnt delicious, it means delicious and addicting. These specialized neologisms might just dilute over time into their old vague versions. And the day I cant keep up, ill look like an old man using old language.

I am far beyond the age where I should even understand it, but I love no cap as a synonym for the honest truth.

Huh, so that's what it means.

The likely etymology of that is interesting, as "no cap" might come from a bit of Twitch-"speak." On the website Twitch.tv, one of the global chat emotes (i.e. free for literally everyone to use) is "Kappa," which is a greyscale, low-resolution image of a headshot of one of Twitch's founding members (specifically Justin Kan himself, I believe). The Kappa emote is generally used to represent sarcasm, likely due to the monochrome smirk (or, at least, at that level of detail, it sure looks like a smirk) conveying a feeling of smugness and irony suited to Internet-dweller sensibilities.

So "no cap" probably started as "no Kap(pa)" and mutated from there.

Know Your Meme suggests a different etymology, dating from as far back as the 80s in a rap context, and much more recently popularized via the Atlanta hip-hop scene. Wiktionary points specifically to the 2017 rap track "No Cap" by Future and Young Thug.

That's a lot more plausible, yeah.

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