Column | Chacos: Gen Z is helping rewrite the dictionary
I’m confident my command of the English language is well-rounded for someone my age, yet when I hear Gen Z talk, I’m often lost in translation. These are the kids born between 1997-2012 and I house three of them. Last week a headline in Variety caught my eye. It was titled, ‘Looksmaxxing’ Influencer Clavicular Walks Out of ’60 Minutes’ Interview After Being Asked If He’s an Incel: ‘The Worst Sequence of Questions,’ and it looked more like a bowl of alphabet soup than the telling of current events. I read it multiple times and finally gave up. What is a Clavicular? Surely it was a typo.
I’ll state for the record that it wasn’t Variety’s promise of investigative journalism that eventually drew me in to the article. I was intrigued by how many words I couldn’t define. Gen Z generates enough slang that some of their more popular words eventually make it into the Merriam-Webster dictionary. By 2020, kids were using rizz, no cap, and sus (i.e. charm, no lie and suspicious) in everyday conversation; yet you’d be hard-pressed to find someone over the age of thirty-five using any of those words in a sentence. Still, to sound relevant and build street cred with my own kids, I try to drop Gen Z lingo every now and again. “Dayum… your ‘fit looks lit,” and “Yum… this meal is bussin.” I’m a disgrace, my teen says, and maybe I take things too far, yet learning 2026 slang may help me get my mojo back.
After reading the largely bizarre and disturbing article, I asked my children if they’ve ever heard of ‘Clavicle.’ They gave me dramatic eye rolling and a bit of howling for effect, and they let me know I incorrectly used the 20-year-old influencer’s name. I had to tread lightly — I was playing in their generation’s territory. Clavicular is a looksmaxxer, a male who focuses on boosting looks and image to achieve world dominance and who is also purportedly part of the subculture of incels, involuntarily celibate men that resent women for their lack of romantic partners and ability to connect with others. Clavicular’s brand and online persona reek of racist undertones and misogyny, although, when asked about that directly, he becomes defensive and denies representing any group as a whole. Even though Clavicular recently chanted a Nazi slogan in a Miami nightclub with the likes of Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes, controversial men in their own right, I doubt Clavicular really cares how he’s being misrepresented. He only wants push other people’s buttons and provoke the norm. Personally, that lines up with the young adults I interact with and know.
I didn’t want to give the article or Clavicular any more space to breathe, yet I still wanted to learn new terms he helped popularize so I could continue eavesdropping on youthful, spirited conversations. To be mog, you outclass, outshine or appear significantly superior to someone else, predominantly regarding physical attractiveness, style or presence. The internet slang term jestermaxxer is someone who has to use extreme humor and over-the-top antics to get a girl’s attention. They are forced to use humor to make up for not being a Chad, a person that is extremely good-looking, entitled and usually sexually active.
To make things murkier and even more about one’s physical attributes, there’s aura-farming, having a face card, and shreking (i.e. doing something to look cool, a woman’s stunning face that grants her access to everything, and dating someone below your physical standards so they’d be less likely to cheat). I became despondent thinking this generation of young adults believes their primary currency is their online persona. They have grown up glued to reels of someone else’s idealism and primarily see the world through physical beauty. Their slang gets more intense the more they live online and I wonder what tomorrow’s terminology will represent.
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Gen Z words that define this non-stop cyber habit are fueled by doomscrolling and bed rotting, the ability to sit for hours online comparing without connecting. I’ll admit — some of my Sunday mornings are spent like that, too. I don’t know if young adults have come up with words that fully explain their ironic ability to have a deep digital connection without first developing face-to-face, human connections with their peers. That makes me have compassion for influencers like Clavicular. He only knows how to walk out of a 60 Minutes interview when conversation gets difficult and hasn’t learned how to sit through the silence and awkwardness. That would take grit and resilience, two words foreign to influencers in the ‘manosphere,’ an online place that began discussing issues men face but morphed into a vacuum where violence against women is normalized, all men are victims and the belief that gender equality has come at the cost of a man’s rights. Mastering self-confidence and authenticity comes from lots of trial and error — and you have to be present to practice it. I imagine some of Clavicular’s loneliness fuels his extreme behavior to be seen and loved. I hope he eventually gets the vibe check he needs.
Without going into even more detail than needed or she-laborating (that’s mansplaining in reverse), as I often like to do with these things, Gen Z has all the inherent traits to have a glow up and make something epic of themselves. They’re not afraid to put their fears, flaws, worries and emotions out for all to see and judge. I give them props. Some just haven’t figured out how to share themselves in a more responsible and authentic way yet. I’m confident it will happen long before I can identify their latest slang though.
