wack slacks and fanum tax

we're out here shareholdervaluemaxxing

•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•

Buddies, is the slang getting dumber and more ubiquitous or am I just old and deeply, deeply uncool?

I hesitate to even wade in here because I could not be farther from the white hot center of cutting edge language innovation. My generation, millennial, is responsible for some of the most horrifying slang to ever be uttered. Doggo, totes, smol, adulting. Ugh. Barf. I’m sorry. Ugh.

Writing about another generation’s slang is perilous. Everyone remembers the great “Grunge Speak” incident of 1992, when a New York Times reporter called an indie record label worker in Seattle named Megan Jasper and asked her which slang all the grunge kids were saying. Annoyed with the packaging of her music scene into a brand, she made up a bunch of silly terms that actually ran in the paper, like “swinging on the flippity-flop,” which means hanging out (obviously).

Of course I would never advocate fabricating things to the media. (We are just trying our best to share accurate information with people!) But! But! We can agree that, in this case, convincing NYT to tell its readers that everyone in Seattle is calling their old, ripped jeans “wack slacks,” among other absurdities, is pretty hilarious. The Ringer did a great look back at this entire incident in 2017.

All of that is to say that authoritatively reporting on young person language trends is a fraught endeavor. This week the Wall Street Journal bravely printed the following pieces of slang:

Beta maxing, Gyat, Gigachad, Baddie, Sigma, Skibidi, Mewing, Rizz, Omega, Deeve, Preesh, Sus, Glazing, Fanum tax, purr, Homie hopping

If you know what more than five of these mean you are either much cooler or much younger than me. If you can do five *EXCLUDING* rizz, baddie and sus, you are a teenager, why are you reading this newsletter?? I don’t feel safe looking up half of these terms on my work laptop.

And yet! Some adults are still trying to make their own slang. This week I got pitched on the term “luckpilled.” A little googling convinced me that “luckpilled” appears to be one guy’s attempt to make fetch happen, but reading it felt like proof that “-pilled” as a suffix is becoming a bit (slang alert!) washed.

Redpilled and bluepilled have been had dictionary entries for many years now, and there are also apparently green, white, pink, purple, gray, and bread pills. I recently heard a VC talking about being clearpilled. But even readers of the NYT, WSJ or Atlantic know by now that “pilled” can also just mean you like something, like Rihanna’s makeup or fish oil. So what does luckpilled even mean? A form of nihilism that believes only luck can lead to success? An obsession with playing the lottery? I don’t really care.

Point being: The LinkedIn thought leaders have discovered “pilled.” They’ve been pilled-pilled. They’re quickly turning pilled into another “-gate” or “-ghazi,” and soon enough, they’ll discover “-cel” and “-maxxing.” I for one can’t wait to hop on an earnings call and hear a Business Hero™ CEO discuss his strategy for shareholdervaluemaxxing.

In other news

I wrote a couple stories this week:

🤑 Money for Anduril. 🤑

An obituary for Dick Kramlich.

Important Business Matters

Startup everyone’s into: 5 startups are running Super Bowl ads this year, including OpenAI.

Startup everyone’s over: Robinhood asked forgiveness, not permission, on its Super Bowl betting product.

Reason to go on living: The spoon emoji.

Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: A few people got very rich on the Trump crypto coin, but many more didn’t.

Latest crush: lol.

Latest heartbreak: That Prince doc is officially never coming out.

Latest feud: Sam vs Elon, DC edition.

Latest thing the kids are into: Sideloading Tiktok

Latest thing the olds are into: Fighting to control the word slime

Latest thing Kanye is into: Full on Nazi. Not even hyperbole! On Friday he: “took back the apology he made in 2023 for his past antisemitic statements, declared that he was a Nazi and professed his love for Adolf Hitler.” So.

Latest thing the Winklevii are into: Refusing to hire MIT grads at their crypto exchange company unless the university fires Gary Gensler.

a dall-e summary of this newsletter:

i hope chatgpt never, ever gets good at drawing words

*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•

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