Talking to the algorithm

Memes function as the new carriers of linguistic evolution, flexible templates into which new cultural content can be inserted with near-instant global recognition.

If you’ve spent any amount of time online, scrolling through Instagram reels or TikTok videos, you’ve probably stumbled upon a strange, ever-changing vocabulary. Words that didn’t exist a few months ago are suddenly dominating captions, memes, and conversations. Some vanish as quickly as they appear; others form a part of everyday vocabulary.

Until recently, I was quite out of touch with this world. I joined Instagram only this year to understand how these platforms and their algorithms continue to shape our language. What kind of environment do they create? That’s when I stumbled upon the work of “Etymology Nerd” and his book, Algospeak.

Anyone who spends enough time on the internet will know that we’ve reached a point where short-form video content (personally recommended) has accelerated the creation of new words, accents, and grammatical quirks. Consider the phenomenon of “algospeak”, a growing lexicon of coded words designed to bypass automated moderation systems.

Nothing reminds you of your own obsolescence quite like being blindsided by the new form of language people speak these days. When Aleksic surveyed teachers, he discovered that many of these algorithmic euphemisms have already affected offline interaction. “Unalive” has entered the classroom vocabulary of children who sometimes learn it before they learn the word “suicide.” For someone like me, this sounds both amusing and a bit funnily bleak.

The central thesis of Algospeak is that language produced within these systems does not remain confined to the digital sphere. Rather, it seeps into offline, mainstream discourse. The book’s tone is one of fascination rather than despair. Aleksic acknowledges the absurdities of digital speech, its overblown irony, its compulsive performativity, yet he also recognises its inventiveness.

A new evolution

Memes, he notes, function as the new carriers of linguistic evolution, flexible templates into which new cultural content can be inserted with near-instant global recognition. An amusing part of the book is when he describes the particularly ingenious (and often absurd) tactics influencers and content creators have developed to appease the algorithms. His livelihood, after all, depends on his ability to capture attention without triggering the algorithm’s obscurity.

His example of a video about the etymology of “pen”, which traces the word back to the Latin penis, meaning “tail”, is both comical and telling. It ran afoul of content filters and was flagged as sexually explicit, a reminder, if we needed one, that the algorithm is not a discerning reader of context.

Aleksic also admits that he plays the game when it suits him. He knows how to manipulate the system. Take his exploration of the words that are growing in reach, which he knowingly uses to ride the wave of online interest and expand his reach.

One of the sections of Algospeak is on the now-infamous “Rizzler” song, although I must admit I was unaware of its existence before reading his book. He devotes similar attention to other words that have captured the internet’s imagination, words like “skibidi” and “gyat”.

When I first picked up Algospeak, I expected a different kind of book. I wanted to learn how online slang arises, how it mutates, and how it might reshape communication in the decades to come. And, to an extent, that’s there. But what it delivers instead is a study of the influencer era.

By the end, Algospeak reads less like a study and more like a manual on how to thrive within the influencer industry. Aleksic spends considerable time recounting which of his videos performed well and why: anecdotes that might have been illuminating had they been tied to deeper analysis. He returns, again and again, to the same handful of examples without much effort to explore them beyond their virality. We are told where these terms likely came from, but not why they caught on, what this pattern reveals, etc.

Cursory treatment

For someone so fascinated by origins, he seems oddly reluctant to mention it. There is, to be fair, a kernel of insight buried somewhere in his attempt to connect the mechanics of influencer culture with the ways we now speak and think.. Yet Aleksic does not so much analyse this phenomenon as inhabit it. The supposed framework collapses under the weight of shallow examples and a relentless preoccupation with online trends.

Even when he gestures toward origins, the treatment is cursory, devoid of the care one might expect from a serious study.

Aleksic is right to mention the ingenuity with which people repurpose and reimagine language under the pressures of moderation and virality. And yet, I cannot help but feel uneasy. If language is not merely a reflection of thought but one of its primary instruments, then the environment in which language now evolves matters profoundly. What concerns me is not the change itself but the conditions of that change, the fact that the primary space of experimentation is also a space of surveillance, commercial extraction, and algorithmic manipulation.

The danger is not that we are losing language, but that we are learning to think only in ways the algorithm can register. And if our expressive habits are increasingly shaped by the logics of computation, then our intellectual habits may soon follow. Algospeak left me torn between admiration and unease. Language will, of course, survive, but the question is what kind of thinking will accompany it.