Teacher Quizzes Gen Z Kids On 90s Slang & It’s Da Bomb
It’s their extra credit, but it’s my entire high school experience.
One of my favorite things to do as the mom of a teen and a tween is, when they start acting a little too cool or grown, to start using Gen-Z slang in the most cringe, wrong way possible. “Bet, son. That’s sus. Because of the rizz and dip. Because I lowkey understood the assignment. Bussin.” My children die a little bit on the inside and I fulfill my role as “uncool and embarrassing mom.” But in a recent TikTok, educator Austin Martinez (@austinmartinez113) turned the tables by sharing Millennial throwback slang with his students and how dare he.
Martinez’s video takes place in what appears to be a high school classroom. While the camera is fixed on him, you can hear students (and what sounds like a fellow teacher) in the background.
“So a little chance for extra credit,” he begins. “We are going to give you slang from when we were in middle school and high school. ... Define it. ...We will give you a word of a phrase. We will also use it in a sentence. All you need to do is write a two or three word definition for what you think that means.”
And, honestly, a part of me temporarily forgot/dissociated entirely from some of these terms. Hearing them again awakened something in me, Manchurian candidate style, and now I’m wearing a pair of JNCO jeans and a baby doll tee.
The slang Martinez shared with his (baffled) students was...
“Tool”
“Home skillet”
“Deets”
“Phat”
“Swag”
“Da bomb”
“411”
“Talk to the hand”
“Holla”
“Haterade”
“As if”
*hands held in the shape of the letter W*
“Totes”
“Bling”
“Noob”
“All that”
“On fleek”
“Boo-yah”
“Sike”
“Scrub”
When one student expressed bafflement, another teacher off-screen countered “I mean... you guys use skibidi.”
“I mean, ‘No cap, on God, for real, for real.’ That’s what it sounds like to me,” Martinez shrugged. (You tell ’em, Mr. Martinez!)
It must be said, however: our slang was ridiculous. As ridiculous, in many ways, as Gen-Z slang. That’s OK: being cringe as a teenager is the way of things. But I think it bears mentioning that the sentence Martinez used for “scrub” was “I don’t want no scrub. A scrub is a guy who can’t get no love from me. Hanging out the passenger’s side of his best friend’s ride trying to holla at me.”
And. The. Children. Sang. Along.
They also enthusiastically finished the sentence “Welcome to Good Burger...” (IYKYK)
So you might say that we old people have staying power. That we have contributed to The Discourse in ways that stand the test of time from one generation to the next. That’s something to be proud of.
