While attending Atlanta’s pop culture and sci-fi convention Dragon Con, my younger brother’s friend looked at me and said, “Hey, I’m going aura farming,” before sprinting off into the crowd. By the time my brother explained what that meant, another phrase (6-7) had already taken over my TikTok feed.
If it feels like kids are speaking in riddles, that’s because they are. But they always have. Boomers had “groovy.” Gen X said “whatever.” Millennials had “YOLO.” Gen Z gave us “slay.”
Now, Gen Alpha — the first generation raised entirely online — is speaking a language shaped by memes, irony and speed. As linguist Adam Aleksic told CBS Mornings, algorithms have become “a new inflection point for language,” influencing which words stick and how they spread.
At Beacon Middle School in Decatur, Jonah Goode, who teaches seventh grade biology, says the slang shows up in daily conversation more than you might think, and he’s noticed how fast meanings change.
“The repurposing of ‘green’ surprised me,” he said. “When I was a kid, if someone was green, they were inexperienced, didn’t have any street smarts. But now if someone is green, essentially they’re a bop.” More on bop below.
When it comes to figuring slang out, he doesn’t rely on Google.
“I don’t look it up,” he said. “I have two daughters and a son, but my two daughters, they use slang, and I just use context clues. If I’m not sure, I’ll ask, but context clues are key.” Still, he thinks it’s important for teachers to understand what students are saying.
“I think there’s a value in it, especially if somebody’s using something pejoratively,” he said. “You don’t want to be unaware that a person is being insulted because you don’t know the slang.”
So if you’re struggling to keep up with the ever-evolving slang cycle, here’s a guide to what’s trending — and what it all sort of means.
6-7 (six, seven)
In a TikTok video posted last month, Reidsville teacher Destini Anthony filmed a football-themed celebration with her colleagues at North Tattnall Middle School. “Look what’s behind you — a six. What do the kids say?” Blount asks before she and her colleague shout “6-7!” The clip then cuts to a montage of teachers breaking into touchdown dances, all set to the Fox NFL theme.
So what does it mean? According to the internet, not much. It’s pure vibe, a way to say “I get it” without having to explain what “it” is.
The phrase started as a throwaway lyric in rapper Skrilla’s 2024 track “Doot Doot (6 7)” and quickly evolved into a viral rallying cry. The sound spread through highlight edits of basketball star LaMelo Ball, who stands 6-foot-7, and Taylen “TK” Kinney, an Overtime Elite player credited with pushing the meme into mainstream youth culture (Kinney, who’s from Kentucky, joined the Atlanta-based league in 2024). He even launched “6 7 Water,” a canned water brand created in partnership with Overtime Elite, according to Prep Network.
Aura farming
Borrowed from gaming — where “farming” means grinding for rewards — “aura farming” is all about curating a vibe. The term went viral after 11-year-old Rayyan Arkan Dikha was filmed standing still on the bow of a speeding boat during Indonesia’s Pacu Jalur festival. The clip, viewed millions of times, became shorthand for effortless cool.
As The Guardian explains, it’s about “cultivating the coolest version of yourself.” On Reddit, users say it’s doing something purely to “give off presence” — not trying to be an influencer, just trying to look like someone who could be one.
Goode says he’s even seen it show up in his school cafeteria.
“I saw this kid in the cafeteria. He had on shades, just standing against a wall with his leg up, one leg down, hands crossed in the front,” he said. “A teacher went over and said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m aura farming.’ I thought that was silly.”
Bop
Like many Gen Alpha expressions, bop has drifted far from its original meaning. Once a Gen Z term for a catchy song or vibe (“That’s a bop”), it’s now used in some circles as a way to police or judge young women’s behavior or appearance.
Goode says the word’s current use goes deeper than slang.
“It’s a misogynistic term to insult mainly girls or women on the quantity of sexual experiences,” he later clarified. “It’s basically slut-shaming.”
Linguists say that kind of semantic flip — when a neutral or positive word takes on a negative or gendered meaning — happens frequently online, where humor, irony and algorithms drive how language evolves.
Brain rot
If you spend a lot of time online, chances are you’ve fallen victim to a little brain rot. Chosen as Oxford’s Word of the Year in 2024, the term describes consuming excessive, low-quality content on social media and the resulting mental fog that accompanies it.
“‘Brain rot’ is when internet trends and jokes are going through your mind constantly. It’s the inability to form sentences without internet slang,” Tess Coward, account executive at ASTRSK, told Parents. “It infiltrates your life and you don’t even know you’re doing it at some point.”
Just put my fries in the bag, bro
The term dates back to 2022, according to The Daily Dot, and has become the younger generation’s way of saying “please stop talking.” If you hear it, it’s definitely not a compliment.
The phrase can be used to shut down rambling or simply dismiss a conversation that may be uninteresting, implying the person speaking or the topic itself is inferior to another.
Rizz
Slang for charisma, “rizz” technically belongs to Gen Z, but Gen Alpha has since adopted it as their go-to word for effortless confidence.
The term gained popularity on TikTok in 2022 and quickly worked its way into everyday slang, showing up everywhere from classrooms to this year’s “Survivor Season 49,″ where contestant Rizo Velovic proudly declares himself “Rizgod.” The Oxford English Dictionary named it the 2023 Word of the Year, defining it as “style, charm or attractiveness.”
If someone has rizz, they’ve got loads of natural magnetism. And if they’ve “lost their rizz,” then it just might be time for Jeff Probst to snuff their torch.
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