ENCORE: Algorithmic Social Media Is Driving New Slang

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• 00:07

  For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Peer-Lewis and for Rachel Feldman.

• 00:21

  Drum roll, please.

• 00:26

  2026 is here.

• 00:28

  Happy New Year to our listeners from the entire Science Quickly team.

• 00:31

  All this week, we've been doing something a little different.

• 00:34

  We've been bringing back some of our favorite episodes of 2025.

• 00:38

  Today,

• 00:38

  we revisit the often seemingly meaningless viral slang that social media has unleashed upon humanity.

• 00:44

  I can name at least six, seven examples off the top of my head.

• 00:48

  Our guest in this episode was Adam Alexek,

• 00:50

  a linguist and content creator known online as the etymology nerd.

• 00:54

  He's also the author of AlgoSpeak, how social media is transforming the future of language.

• 01:00

  It might feel like the rise of quote-unquote brain rot is literally rotting brains,

• 01:04

  but Adam argues that supposed internet gibberish actually follows the same patterns humans have used to create language for thousands of years.

• 01:12

  The difference is just a speed and scale.

• 01:15

  Scientific American associate editor and sometimes substitute science quickly host Allison Partial sat down with Adam earlier this year to chat about this brave new linguistic world.

• 01:24

  Here's their conversation.

• 01:25

  How would you describe your linguistic upbringing in the internet?

• 01:28

  What was your like formative experiences there?

• 01:31

  My first experience with the internet was really Reddit.

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