NYT
It goes without saying, but part of me died a little bit while taking the New York Times modern slang quiz. If you wanted to “keep it 100,” New York Times, you should have just called this the ‘How Black Are You, Doe?’ quiz and called a spade a spade. Instead you claim to be testing me to see if I’m “linguistically en vogue.” Alright, I’ll bite. I’ll take your little high risk, low reward quiz that will ultimately determine my blackness and whether or not I will be disowned by my family.
And, for the record, “linguistically en vogue” is the whitest shit I’ve ever heard in my life.
Word #1: “YOLO”
NYT
If I got YOLO wrong I probably would have jumped feet-first into a wood chipper. With that said, YOLO is the worst. How a throwaway line by Aubrey “Drake” Graham became the “eh, I’ll give him a blowjob” anthem for college-girls nationwide is beyond comprehension. But here we are.
Word #2: “Bae”
NYT
Oh fuck, “bae” already? If I didn’t gallivant on “get off my lawn” Twitter all day, this one would have given me some significant problems. It does have its uses, though. For instance, the best thing about people using ‘bae’ seriously in conversation is that you don’t ever have to talk to them again. Great crowd control word.
Word #3: “Unbothered”
NYT
I’m pretty sure “unbothered” is just a regular word. Like “been in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary for 400 years” type regular. Get this shit off the quiz.
Word #4: “Joggers”
NYT
I kind of MacGuyver’d my way to this answer, but what in the shit are joggers, yo?! Sweatpants hybrids? Jean killers? Why don’t I own pairs in the ROYGBIV color spectrum at this very moment? I’ve never felt older than I do right now.
Word #5: “Rekt”
NYT
Wait, we got rid of pwned? Oh god no. Pwned was the perfect asshole word to use in multiplayer shooting games. To be honest, I had no idea what pwned meant the first 10 times I used it, but when various 7-15 year olds decided to call me that instead of “n****r”, I figured it had some force to it. Rekt sucks, man. We had a good thing going and you ruined it.
Word #6: “TFW”
NYT
Really had to do some intellectual backflips on this one. Honestly, I just used context clues and realized that two choices were stupider than the other. If “Twerk for what” was actually “Turn-down for what,” I would have 100% picked that, but what idiot/nerd would ever question a woman twerking? The New York Times, a bastion a journalistic excellence.
Word #7: “Xans”
NYT
Getting extreme with the pharmaceuticals, eh? You crazy kids and your… *Googles Xanax*…anxiety disorder medication. Perhaps I’m too washed to know why “Xans” are so hot in the streets right now, but isn’t crippling anxiety the most exciting part about being drunk/high? Why remove that element? Takes away the adventure of frantically piecing your life back together. Kids these days.
Word #8: “Boolin”
NYT
Hey, New York Times, I’m about to pull that black card out on y’all and revamp your lame ass definition. We all know the two street gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, right? Well, the Bloods do their best not to use the letter “C” in any of their words, so to best say “coolin,” they just got rid of the “C” and replaced it with a “B” for the sake of efficiency. Shit’s brazy.
Word #9: “Lordt”
nYT
This isn’t as much “new” slang as it is a major part of the fat black woman lexicon. If you’re black, a woman, and over 250 pounds, you have probably said “Lordt” at least 50 times today. It’s basically the “roll out of bed” anthem for an entire demographic of women.
Word #10: “Celfie”
NYT
Never saw this before and, frankly, I wish I hadn’t. Why did we need to edit a fake word, you guys? Whoever decided it was time for the dinosaurs to go will look at tweets with the word “celfie” in them and decide that we’ve overstayed our welcome, too.
Word #11: “(on) Fleek”
NYT
Once I saw IHOP use “on fleek” in a tweet, I a) wanted to die and b) promised myself that I would never learn the definition of fucking fleek. Well, New York Times, you assholes forced my hand and forced me to learn this asinine term that these Instagram models keep using. This quiz is making me hate myself.
Word #12: “Bruh”
NYT
Probably my favorite word on the list. I, for one, have been using bruh forever. For example, when BroBible first appeared, I was like, “it’d be dope if there was a spinoff site called BruhBible”, but apparently I hate billion dollar ideas. They are starting “black” Grantland, so I don’t know, think about it?
NYT
Yikes. I have officially defended my family’s honor as well as my blackness before an audience of bros. Despite all of the cringing, the internal screaming, and the overall sense of defeat, I got it done. But at what cost?
If “Slang game on fleek” doesn’t represent winning while simultaneously losing respect for yourself, I don’t know what does.