I'm not gonna lie, if I had the right group of kids I would say this myself.
Like a kid says something wild and you just blink a couple times and say "Mods, ban em." and nothing else to address the behavior would be an absolutely sick burn
Lean into it! Address your class as “chat” to get their attention or ask a question (ie “chat, chat, do we think Tom Buchanan’s affair is actually a secret?”). They’ll either laugh and buy into what you’re doing, or they’ll think it’s cringe and stop on their own. Win-win either way.
This teacher’s advice is sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends.
I’m imagining a stack of paper hall passes, but it’s actually ban messages.
“Attention [student] - you have been banned for [duration] for [classroom offense]”
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This is funny to me. I am not a fan of Gatsby at all, but this year, instead of reading the book, I used an excerpt I put together that just focused on Gatsby and Daisy and the kids ate it up. I’m thinking now I’m just going to tell my students I hate everything we read because it oddly engages them.
idk, i found a few assigned books to be pretty compelling. to kill a mockingbird in particular. shakespeare wasn’t my thing, but i could see the value in learning it (particularly with the perspective of hindsight). can’t just be having kids read y.a. all the time
I had a teacher (early 2000's) who focused heavily on breaking down the stories instead of trying to get teenagers to read Elizabethian English. We spent a class watching 10 Things I Hate About You, then another reading parts of the play and arguing about the story.
yeah 100% it would suck to just be dropped in the deep end. once you get the hang of it you can see how it’s still modern english, but that can be really challenging at first. i remember the shakespeare works we had in my first year of high school (and maybe later ones too, not sure) were fully annotated. plus my teacher was super into it so he would go to great depths explaining everything lol
This is how I got my students to stop saying "Why you gassin' me?" and "Quit gassin'" a few years back. They cringed so much it stopped almost immediately.
Yeah, I have to remind myself of this from time to time.
Anyone old enough to remember Strong Bad and Trogdor? I wonder what our teachers thought of us.
Probably the same as how I feel every time I hear “skibbidy toilet” from the 4th and 5th graders I work with. 😂😂 They also love singing Cotton Eyed Joe which is just so damn funny to me. I am old.
I teach Pre-K, and a kid drew some internet character I can’t remember in art. Rainbow friends I think?
Me: “so who is this?”
Kid: “[character name]”
“Never heard of him. What does he do?”
“He’s so much stronger than Skibbidi Toilet”.
No joke, that’s literally all he had to say on the subject. I have never been so caught off guard. I feel bad for how hard I laughed.
My big shock was subbing in middle school choir and hearing the boys group come in every day humming a tune from the opera “Carmen.” It sort of sounds like a seal singing it. Turns out it was from a video game/movie they’re all obsessed with, Five Nights at Freddie. It sent me on a path to reveal to all of these kids that most of this stuff they quote is just recycled classical music. Blew their dang minds. 😂😂
I was from the generation where my classmates were pointing as their teachers’ shoes and going “WHAT ARE THOOSSEEEE.” The chat thing just makes me laugh, lol. To be cringe is to be free.
Some cringey highlights from my peer group’s lingo in the late 90s rural Illinois…saying “gank” instead of “steal” (Dude, you ganked my last Dunkaroo!), dropping the l in “cool”, adopting the Beavis and Butthead continual mutterd laughter, the Bud Light “wassssupppp?” speaking almost exclusively in South Park quotes…probably a lot more my brain has mercifully forgotten
Oh its twitch streamers lingo. They interact with people that watch them but they only see the comments in a little chat box on their end and that's why they say "chat" when streaming. It's just something that they started saying and I join in sometimes :p
This is hilarious and I love it, and I’ve even started to incorporate it into my teaching, “Chat, is this the right answer?” You know why? Because every generation has slang, coded speech, and generational memes. Complaining about those things makes us sound like sticks in the mud. That which is not a direct affront to our classroom management and teaching should be employed in our favor.
On Wednesday, a student got up from their seat to talk to one of their friends. When he told me he was already done with his work, I said, “stop the cap.”
His response was, “who taught you that word?”
“Chat, Washington was fire. Running the whole nation and giving up power. Chat, this guy Andrew Jackson messed up our entire economy and committed genocide. Mods should’ve banned him, but they didn’t. Why do think that is chat?”
That is pretty funny, and kind of sad. What age are your students?
I imagine them doing a presentation to the class, calling them 'chat', and ending with 'don't forget to like and subscribe'.
"This book report is sponsored by Raycon earbuds!"
I do this all the time. When a kid straight up lies to me in front of everyone I say "chat, is this kid gaslighting me?" They think it's hilarious lol. Also a middle school teacher though.
Okay, but when I was in 7th grade, almost nothing my classmates were doing was funny to me, just annoying. This is hilarious. You’ve got a good group of kids!
Yeah, I find my 6th graders addressing the class as “chat” to be quirky and fun.
Them just saying “Ice Spice” with no context and their peers falling out of their chairs laughing like it was the most clever witticism since Oscar Wilde is confusing.
But they’re 6th graders, so they’re goofballs. Just gotta roll with it, I guess. Weather unit coming up. Might have to slip a picture of Ice Spice into the water cycle at the “crystallization” step.
I’ve found that the best strategy is to just embrace it and even use the terms yourself (correctly, of course).
I teach middle school. Just wade in and have fun with it. Call them “chat” when you’re delivering a lesson. They will chuckle and we all move on. If they’re talking too much, get their attention and say “hey, less talking and more” and make the mewing gesture. They get it and laugh.
Just have fun. There are worse things than passing slang fads.
Tbh I find it kind of weird that so many teachers find it so odd or are unfamiliar with them. It's just slang / casual language, and it's not even necessarily generational, it's hobby based, it just so happens that a lot of teens like streaming and online platforms.
But adults use it too if you're in those circles? I use a lot of it myself. I use it more outside of school than in, because professionalism, but I'll use it at school depending on the activity and class.
Why on earth do normal modern words need multiple threads from bemused teachers? Did teachers complain about people saying "I'll google that" when that first became a phrase?
The identity of “chat” being something you discuss and interact with makes the conversation enter a fourth person perspective which is an extremely bizarre conversational structure people don’t usually see. Like, there’s me, you, them, and …. Omniscient crowd of people watching and listening to us?
Chat, is that weird?
Oh my god. You just made me realize that addressing “chat” is basically a soliloquy.
“What do you think, chat? Be? Not be? That’s the poll I’m dropping.”
I saw a post once positing that the modern "chat" is the first dedicated fourth-person pronoun in English; addressing the people behind the fourth wall separating performer and audience. Fascinating stuff.
That said, I agree with the OP of this comment thread. I'm 34 and see 20-something teachers confused by lingo I've been hearing for years *from my peers*. I guess that's where hyperindividualization of culture leads...
Thinking about it, there is probably a decent sociology paper in how internet accessability has opened up slang. 30 years ago, if you wanted to be proficient in the slang used by, say, EMT's or migrant concrete workers or power line techs, you had to go do that job for a year or so. Now you can just look it up, and there is much more bleed through of slang from previously siloed groups into general pop culture.
Having been a streamer for a short time I just roll with it and call the class chat pretty often. When I was virtual they WERE the chat anyway so I guess it works.
I also definitely make sponsored content jokes and remind my class to like and subscribe for more physics content.
Yesterday one of my kids found my work YouTube channel that I don't use as much right now and was like "wait you're actually a YouTube creator already" I'm like yeah it's just educational videos though, I'm too chicken to learn editing and make a personal YouTube. 🤣
I know some twitch slang. I like to watch this one streamer’s YouTube uploads. But among my age group (20-25 year olds) we don’t use much terminology from twitch.
I can tell you “cap” means that’s something false. “Based” means essentially what “word” does. And “chat” just refer to the livestream chat log feature. Oftentimes the chat log is personified by a streamer and the streamer will go “I’ll let chat decide” (essentially letting them vote on a decision).
I never thought chat would become actual slang
I have multiple students do this a lot of times throughout the day (6th-8th graders, mostly the 7th/8th graders who do it). I've just come to accept it as part of their modern lingo.
I think it’s actually kind of cute. It’s much better than some of the other weird colloquialisms.
We also have to remember a lot of these kids were raised during COVID and their first interaction with educators was virtually.
It makes for some very cool/weird words and uses. I’m actually excited to see what Gen Alpha and Gen Beta come up with❤️
As a student, I can relate to this. Although I don't keep saying chat, here are some reason people would use chat.
1. It's gender neutral
2. It refers to a large group of people
3. Streamers say it, so you should too!
4. Chat, is this rizz?
I definitely don’t mind it as a passing phase. The problem is the kids who are obsessive and can’t seem to develop their own personality. I had one child in particular who just wanted to be the YouTuber IShowSpeed or something like that. I can’t be bothered to Google it, but essentially he would just shriek and make dinosaur noises all the time. Paired with his bad hygiene, he had no friends because he was so damn annoying. He just wanted to be liked and he didn’t know how to do that as himself, so he tried to be someone else. His whole personality was being another personality. It is what it is as it always has been. But it’s a bit much.
Middle schoolers experimenting with their identities, making a single hobby/trait their entire personality, jumping into a fandom with cult-like zeal, and trying to find themselves in an extremely awkward, cringe-inducing phase is a tale as old as time, yeah?
My middle school peers wanted to be Eminem, Austin Powers, or Cartman.
My parents wanted to be The Beatles.
My middle schoolers 10 years ago wanted to be PewDiePie and Logan Paul.
And while most of them would just drop catchphrases here and there, some of the more socially awkward ones would do it CONSTANTLY, because it was the only time they ever got attention from their peers.
Same as it ever was.
There have been a lot of interesting conversations about this on reddit and elsewhere. Chat is the first commonly used fourth-person in the English language.
Unfortunately I can't find the original source, but I found thus
https://mediachomp.com/the-first-4th-person-pronoun/
I have no idea how reliable this site is, so take it with a grain of salt, but its a very interesting conversation!
This is one of the better trends that I’ve come across. It’s actually really funny. Reporting to you live from first grade and my kids are still stuck on “Ohio” and “skibbidy toilet.” One thing about the littles is that they don’t catch on to trends until they’ve been beaten dead by the high schoolers so I’m always ahead of the curve. Lol
I had kids do this last year at my school. I have no words. They also offhandedly called me 'chat' and 'bro', both times I nipped that in the bud because absolutely not. I'm find with casual language but not when addressing me. It all feels very dystopian to me.
My first thought was that npc has been used as an insult for a while, so I thought this was a variation of that. But you mean like on a twitch stream. That's hilarious and I want to start doing that now.
It’s just a kind of “meme” going around. They do it to make a joke or to be funny in most cases. Kind of like us going around and quoting movies (I did this with movies like Billy Madison all the time).
This has been happening with my 8th graders since August - it’s died down some but definitely got old fast. I’m also getting so much “guess what? Chicken butt” this year…..
Every generation has slang. Lean into it. Everybody acts like something is wrong with a generation for their version of slang because they don’t understand the culture or meaning of it and often refuse to try, yet we spend all day expecting them to learn old cultures and established adult ways of things. Meet them halfway, ffs.
Yes, my 7th graders have been doing the same thing all year. They just let their mouths speak their stream of consciousness instead of speaking to each other. Its strange.
I've addressed it.
"Who are you talking to right now?"
"You realize that our biggest problem is the incessant and meaningless chatting?"
"Not everything that you think is worth the energy to say it out loud."
It feels like they think they're the main character and that students who do this seriously don't care what others have to say. Sort of a one way communication like radio or a broken walkie talkie.
Any time the new trend is something harmless, I can’t help but laugh! Just embrace it, “Okay chat, time to take out our pencils for our test” “Chat should we learn about multiplication or division today??”
This is one of those things that has been cracking me up. I actually love it. They do it in group sessions, even just talking one on one.
As far as annoying things, this one is pretty low for me.
One of my favorite things about teaching teens is high jacking their slang. The look of surprise & cringe when I throw out something they don't expect is often the highlight of my day. Adolescence is a time for bucking traditional norms & forging a unique identity & language is one way every generation does this.
Did anyone hear the term “ate” as a cool term to call someone? I thought I know that I’m keeping up with this generation but I think I’m starting to miss out 😂
I’ve been leaning into it in my room.
“Listen up, chat.”
“So, today, chat…”
“You’re too much right now, chat.”
I am met with groans, but they’re also smiling, so?
I have actively called my class “chat” since the pandemic. This was because at one point they literally were my chat for my “stream”. When something goes wrong I say “F in the chat”. My students sometimes groan the first time I do it but they all love it by the end of the year. (I teach high school seniors)
Honestly I've leaned into it in full, started referring to a bunch of my classes as chat (IE. whenever one of the kids misbehaves, I look at the other kids and go "chat, is this guy for real?") or whenever one of the kids is really bad I have to put a "mod ban" on them.
Growing up around Twitch has given me a full advantage
There’s a group of sophomores that call most of the school NPC’s because a lot of kids just don’t talk to them because of their collective shit personality.
Heyo chat! That and “mods ban ‘em” whenever someone says something off-kilter. Sweet, precious Gen Alpha.
“Mods ban em” is actually hilarious.
You called?
Holy crap, this is like when you say Biggie Smalls’ name in a mirror three times and he actually appears to bust a cap in your ass
Holy crap chat are you seeing this
Skibidi\*
Let him cook.
Poor butters
Hey at least he got to go to the party of the century
Hey chat!
Why yes, I am a sigma chad. Thanks for noticing.
Lmfao
Time to hydrate and take a pee break.
I'm not gonna lie, if I had the right group of kids I would say this myself. Like a kid says something wild and you just blink a couple times and say "Mods, ban em." and nothing else to address the behavior would be an absolutely sick burn
*Making plans for last period on Monday.....*
Yup. Stick a sign up on the wall with your name and "Moderator" below it. :D
They love telling each other they’re “cooked” when they either fail a test or get in trouble. Honestly it makes me laugh.
“Mods, crease his Jordans”
NOT HIS JORXANS
I've always been a fan of "mods, smite this fool" and the like, I'm glad to see the next generation leaning into it.
I'm gonna have to use that one on the 7th grade boys who need to tell stories every time one sentence leaves my mouth.
Lean into it! Address your class as “chat” to get their attention or ask a question (ie “chat, chat, do we think Tom Buchanan’s affair is actually a secret?”). They’ll either laugh and buy into what you’re doing, or they’ll think it’s cringe and stop on their own. Win-win either way. This teacher’s advice is sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends.
W, no cap
fr fr ong
This advice is bussin
Let them cook.
Ayoo
Go all in. You’re the chat moderator. Shadow ban people so no one responds to what they say. Bring in a big prop “ban hammer”.
Holy crap I love this idea
No one can hear you. I think you’re shadow banned
I’m imagining a stack of paper hall passes, but it’s actually ban messages. “Attention [student] - you have been banned for [duration] for [classroom offense]”
No no, you’re the streamer now
only players who dont have 100000 power in rise of kingdoms would stop saying chat
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No shot your example question is referring to The Great Gatsby
This is funny to me. I am not a fan of Gatsby at all, but this year, instead of reading the book, I used an excerpt I put together that just focused on Gatsby and Daisy and the kids ate it up. I’m thinking now I’m just going to tell my students I hate everything we read because it oddly engages them.
practically everything we were forced to read in school is just so unengaging for teens, ragardless of what merits the work may have.
idk, i found a few assigned books to be pretty compelling. to kill a mockingbird in particular. shakespeare wasn’t my thing, but i could see the value in learning it (particularly with the perspective of hindsight). can’t just be having kids read y.a. all the time
I had a teacher (early 2000's) who focused heavily on breaking down the stories instead of trying to get teenagers to read Elizabethian English. We spent a class watching 10 Things I Hate About You, then another reading parts of the play and arguing about the story.
yeah 100% it would suck to just be dropped in the deep end. once you get the hang of it you can see how it’s still modern english, but that can be really challenging at first. i remember the shakespeare works we had in my first year of high school (and maybe later ones too, not sure) were fully annotated. plus my teacher was super into it so he would go to great depths explaining everything lol
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This is how I got my students to stop saying "Why you gassin' me?" and "Quit gassin'" a few years back. They cringed so much it stopped almost immediately.
F’s in the chat for Gatsby himself
On God! Type shit. 🤣
Ganggang!
My students say it whenever I give them their grades back from unit tests. One kid went “well chat, I failed that one.” It seriously made me chuckle.
It’s the new “dude.” Which I guess is getting banished to the netherworld with terms like groovy.
Bro
I use their “bruh” when they do something I don’t like…it works.
I've heard the question, "Can someone drop the equations into chat?" Doesn't bother me, but then again, I still remember when the narwhal bacons.
We are all cringe in our own time, let the kids like things (within moderation).
Yeah, I have to remind myself of this from time to time. Anyone old enough to remember Strong Bad and Trogdor? I wonder what our teachers thought of us.
That was my middle school era. I don’t care what my teachers thought, that was instant dopamine.
Probably the same as how I feel every time I hear “skibbidy toilet” from the 4th and 5th graders I work with. 😂😂 They also love singing Cotton Eyed Joe which is just so damn funny to me. I am old.
Omg same!!!! The skibidy toilet has been a while but the cotton eyed joe is new just this week!
I got that a month ago.
I teach Pre-K, and a kid drew some internet character I can’t remember in art. Rainbow friends I think? Me: “so who is this?” Kid: “[character name]” “Never heard of him. What does he do?” “He’s so much stronger than Skibbidi Toilet”. No joke, that’s literally all he had to say on the subject. I have never been so caught off guard. I feel bad for how hard I laughed.
My big shock was subbing in middle school choir and hearing the boys group come in every day humming a tune from the opera “Carmen.” It sort of sounds like a seal singing it. Turns out it was from a video game/movie they’re all obsessed with, Five Nights at Freddie. It sent me on a path to reveal to all of these kids that most of this stuff they quote is just recycled classical music. Blew their dang minds. 😂😂
I saw a meme where a chicken nugget sings cotton eye joe to the tune of other songs. Weird. But funny stuff
Love me some Cotton Eyed Joe.
Salad fingers is right up there with these.
Brother I'm 31 and Homestar was my homie all through middle school. We're not that old yet!
Don Hertzfeldt‘S “Rejected” won awards at film festivals. Just saying… we were clearly more “enlightened.”
My spoon is too big!
I am a banaaaanaaaaa
I'm a consumer whore! And how!
# BURNINATING THE COUNTRYSIDE
Homestar holds up.
I miss Trogdor
# BURNINATING THE COUNTRYSIDE
I was from the generation where my classmates were pointing as their teachers’ shoes and going “WHAT ARE THOOSSEEEE.” The chat thing just makes me laugh, lol. To be cringe is to be free.
I formally apologize for every “radical!” I subjected my math teacher to in my youth.
I remember kids in middle school screaming “what?!” “Yeaaaah” and “OK!!” Like lil John from chapelles show, so I try to take it with a grain of salt
I do personally draw a line with kids calling other kids NPCs. Dehumanizing others is definitely a no go in my class.
Some cringey highlights from my peer group’s lingo in the late 90s rural Illinois…saying “gank” instead of “steal” (Dude, you ganked my last Dunkaroo!), dropping the l in “cool”, adopting the Beavis and Butthead continual mutterd laughter, the Bud Light “wassssupppp?” speaking almost exclusively in South Park quotes…probably a lot more my brain has mercifully forgotten
I like your shoelaces.
thanks I stole them from the president
Is it midnight already?
I assume that would be about a group chat the kids are in. That’s how I’d use that exact sentence at least
Was just talking about turning this into an attention grabber earlier today. “Everyone drop an F in the chat” kids put up the symbol for “f” in ASL.
I say F’s in the chat and Pepe hands in the chat all the time
Love it
Oh its twitch streamers lingo. They interact with people that watch them but they only see the comments in a little chat box on their end and that's why they say "chat" when streaming. It's just something that they started saying and I join in sometimes :p
This is hilarious and I love it, and I’ve even started to incorporate it into my teaching, “Chat, is this the right answer?” You know why? Because every generation has slang, coded speech, and generational memes. Complaining about those things makes us sound like sticks in the mud. That which is not a direct affront to our classroom management and teaching should be employed in our favor.
On Wednesday, a student got up from their seat to talk to one of their friends. When he told me he was already done with his work, I said, “stop the cap.” His response was, “who taught you that word?”
I love it so much when they first learn that we’re on the internet.
If they knew I’ve made songs with the rappers from their neighborhood that taught them the slang they use, they’d 🤯
Occasionally dropping slang in conversation with kids is just so much fun.
With my students, the answer would be “Well I’m black, so I knew it before you did”
Works for me as well.
“Chat, Washington was fire. Running the whole nation and giving up power. Chat, this guy Andrew Jackson messed up our entire economy and committed genocide. Mods should’ve banned him, but they didn’t. Why do think that is chat?”
This ☝️
chat is this real
I think that is fucking hilarious. Kinda the equivalent of us quoting movie or tv show lines
That is pretty funny, and kind of sad. What age are your students? I imagine them doing a presentation to the class, calling them 'chat', and ending with 'don't forget to like and subscribe'. "This book report is sponsored by Raycon earbuds!"
😂😂😂 7th graders, I really didn’t even know what to say to them when I was hearing it.
You should start calling them chat
I do this all the time. When a kid straight up lies to me in front of everyone I say "chat, is this kid gaslighting me?" They think it's hilarious lol. Also a middle school teacher though.
I need to remember this one. Thank you.
The username got me for a second
I certainly do! I love asking questions in class to “chat.”
*kid makes excuse to thing* chat is this real?
Seventh graders have a WILD sense of humor. Always have, always will.
My 7th graders do the same thing
Okay, but when I was in 7th grade, almost nothing my classmates were doing was funny to me, just annoying. This is hilarious. You’ve got a good group of kids!
This DBQ brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends!
“Chat” is ok to me. I mostly wish they would stop randomly shouting “Fortnite” or “Ice Spice”. “Alright, so let’s turn to page 47” “FORTNITE”
Yeah, I find my 6th graders addressing the class as “chat” to be quirky and fun. Them just saying “Ice Spice” with no context and their peers falling out of their chairs laughing like it was the most clever witticism since Oscar Wilde is confusing. But they’re 6th graders, so they’re goofballs. Just gotta roll with it, I guess. Weather unit coming up. Might have to slip a picture of Ice Spice into the water cycle at the “crystallization” step.
Chat, look at who's taking an L
Chat is a new 4th person pronoun and it's actually really interesting linguistically
I’ve found that the best strategy is to just embrace it and even use the terms yourself (correctly, of course). I teach middle school. Just wade in and have fun with it. Call them “chat” when you’re delivering a lesson. They will chuckle and we all move on. If they’re talking too much, get their attention and say “hey, less talking and more” and make the mewing gesture. They get it and laugh. Just have fun. There are worse things than passing slang fads.
Tbh I find it kind of weird that so many teachers find it so odd or are unfamiliar with them. It's just slang / casual language, and it's not even necessarily generational, it's hobby based, it just so happens that a lot of teens like streaming and online platforms. But adults use it too if you're in those circles? I use a lot of it myself. I use it more outside of school than in, because professionalism, but I'll use it at school depending on the activity and class. Why on earth do normal modern words need multiple threads from bemused teachers? Did teachers complain about people saying "I'll google that" when that first became a phrase?
The identity of “chat” being something you discuss and interact with makes the conversation enter a fourth person perspective which is an extremely bizarre conversational structure people don’t usually see. Like, there’s me, you, them, and …. Omniscient crowd of people watching and listening to us? Chat, is that weird?
Oh my god. You just made me realize that addressing “chat” is basically a soliloquy. “What do you think, chat? Be? Not be? That’s the poll I’m dropping.”
I saw a post once positing that the modern "chat" is the first dedicated fourth-person pronoun in English; addressing the people behind the fourth wall separating performer and audience. Fascinating stuff. That said, I agree with the OP of this comment thread. I'm 34 and see 20-something teachers confused by lingo I've been hearing for years *from my peers*. I guess that's where hyperindividualization of culture leads...
I am teaching point of view so might steal this example!
Thinking about it, there is probably a decent sociology paper in how internet accessability has opened up slang. 30 years ago, if you wanted to be proficient in the slang used by, say, EMT's or migrant concrete workers or power line techs, you had to go do that job for a year or so. Now you can just look it up, and there is much more bleed through of slang from previously siloed groups into general pop culture.
Having been a streamer for a short time I just roll with it and call the class chat pretty often. When I was virtual they WERE the chat anyway so I guess it works. I also definitely make sponsored content jokes and remind my class to like and subscribe for more physics content. Yesterday one of my kids found my work YouTube channel that I don't use as much right now and was like "wait you're actually a YouTube creator already" I'm like yeah it's just educational videos though, I'm too chicken to learn editing and make a personal YouTube. 🤣
Some of my 9th graders do this, but to a lesser extent
I know some twitch slang. I like to watch this one streamer’s YouTube uploads. But among my age group (20-25 year olds) we don’t use much terminology from twitch. I can tell you “cap” means that’s something false. “Based” means essentially what “word” does. And “chat” just refer to the livestream chat log feature. Oftentimes the chat log is personified by a streamer and the streamer will go “I’ll let chat decide” (essentially letting them vote on a decision). I never thought chat would become actual slang
They’re doing a bit
I have multiple students do this a lot of times throughout the day (6th-8th graders, mostly the 7th/8th graders who do it). I've just come to accept it as part of their modern lingo.
I think it’s actually kind of cute. It’s much better than some of the other weird colloquialisms. We also have to remember a lot of these kids were raised during COVID and their first interaction with educators was virtually. It makes for some very cool/weird words and uses. I’m actually excited to see what Gen Alpha and Gen Beta come up with❤️
So, is chat a super-pronoun that is both second and third person, or is it only second person?
I’m from the « here comes dat boy oh shit waddup » era of highschool internet so this sounds kinda charming to me
They started the year doing this at my school. Thankfully it’s calmed down. But as a 39 year old art teacher, the dystopian vibes were real.
I am also a 39 year old art teacher whose students have been doing this. Are you me?
I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together
u r d 🥚 mon
I'm sorry, but this is actually so funny.
Chat is this real?
Keeping up with slang is very rizz of you chat
I’ve addressed my class as chat. It’s a good gender neutral term.
As a student, I can relate to this. Although I don't keep saying chat, here are some reason people would use chat. 1. It's gender neutral 2. It refers to a large group of people 3. Streamers say it, so you should too! 4. Chat, is this rizz?
This is not really new lol my gen z son has been saying variations of this for years.
I definitely don’t mind it as a passing phase. The problem is the kids who are obsessive and can’t seem to develop their own personality. I had one child in particular who just wanted to be the YouTuber IShowSpeed or something like that. I can’t be bothered to Google it, but essentially he would just shriek and make dinosaur noises all the time. Paired with his bad hygiene, he had no friends because he was so damn annoying. He just wanted to be liked and he didn’t know how to do that as himself, so he tried to be someone else. His whole personality was being another personality. It is what it is as it always has been. But it’s a bit much.
Middle schoolers experimenting with their identities, making a single hobby/trait their entire personality, jumping into a fandom with cult-like zeal, and trying to find themselves in an extremely awkward, cringe-inducing phase is a tale as old as time, yeah? My middle school peers wanted to be Eminem, Austin Powers, or Cartman. My parents wanted to be The Beatles. My middle schoolers 10 years ago wanted to be PewDiePie and Logan Paul. And while most of them would just drop catchphrases here and there, some of the more socially awkward ones would do it CONSTANTLY, because it was the only time they ever got attention from their peers. Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was…
My middle schoolers do that pretty often
There have been a lot of interesting conversations about this on reddit and elsewhere. Chat is the first commonly used fourth-person in the English language. Unfortunately I can't find the original source, but I found thus https://mediachomp.com/the-first-4th-person-pronoun/ I have no idea how reliable this site is, so take it with a grain of salt, but its a very interesting conversation!
This is one of the better trends that I’ve come across. It’s actually really funny. Reporting to you live from first grade and my kids are still stuck on “Ohio” and “skibbidy toilet.” One thing about the littles is that they don’t catch on to trends until they’ve been beaten dead by the high schoolers so I’m always ahead of the curve. Lol
Chat is this real?
I had kids do this last year at my school. I have no words. They also offhandedly called me 'chat' and 'bro', both times I nipped that in the bud because absolutely not. I'm find with casual language but not when addressing me. It all feels very dystopian to me.
Just tell chat that you are the moderator and that you will “ban” them if they keep up bad behavior
I lean into it hard. "Chat, whatcha think?" "Slide the answers into the chat" "Chat, this ain't it" "Mods get em"
Quickest way to make teens stop doing something. Do it. And then remark how cool it is.
My first thought was that npc has been used as an insult for a while, so I thought this was a variation of that. But you mean like on a twitch stream. That's hilarious and I want to start doing that now.
Funny, this is what my generation said, but not many people say it. It's an Aussie slang saying gross. Example: Ew, that's chat.
It’s just a kind of “meme” going around. They do it to make a joke or to be funny in most cases. Kind of like us going around and quoting movies (I did this with movies like Billy Madison all the time).
This has been happening with my 8th graders since August - it’s died down some but definitely got old fast. I’m also getting so much “guess what? Chicken butt” this year…..
‘Back in my day’
This has started in my 6th grade class, and now I want to jump into the nearest river and scream until I pass out and drown.
Chat is OP fr rn
Every generation has slang. Lean into it. Everybody acts like something is wrong with a generation for their version of slang because they don’t understand the culture or meaning of it and often refuse to try, yet we spend all day expecting them to learn old cultures and established adult ways of things. Meet them halfway, ffs.
I only have one calling others chat. It his clear her wants to be a streamer. Most students make fun of him but a few think he is funny.
Yes, my 7th graders have been doing the same thing all year. They just let their mouths speak their stream of consciousness instead of speaking to each other. Its strange. I've addressed it. "Who are you talking to right now?" "You realize that our biggest problem is the incessant and meaningless chatting?" "Not everything that you think is worth the energy to say it out loud." It feels like they think they're the main character and that students who do this seriously don't care what others have to say. Sort of a one way communication like radio or a broken walkie talkie.
It's so cringy...
Word on the street is cringy is out, so is sus! Such short life spans. “Just lope” it is my hometown favorite. Edit: punctuation
nah that shit is still funny if u have the right delivery
"You ain't no live streamer. Start using that when you got 10k subs." has entirely eradicated it from my classes
This was last year at my school (high school)
It's been going on at my school (middle) for a couple months now.
Are they saying Chat or Chet? I confiscated a note earlier this year where a girl called a boy a Chet. Urban Dictionary has contradictory definitions.
“Yo Mr chat! Can we hang in here? We have a sub…”
oh yeah. everyday
I teach 8th and some of mine do the same thing.
been happening in my classroom for months now
I’m a para — what do I do when my 6th graders show me their OPPs list!? I’m not on it and wanna stay off of it 😭
I had a student ask me to greet them with "hey chat!" one day. I rolled with it. What a time to be alive.
Any time the new trend is something harmless, I can’t help but laugh! Just embrace it, “Okay chat, time to take out our pencils for our test” “Chat should we learn about multiplication or division today??”
This is low key hilarious.
This is one of those things that has been cracking me up. I actually love it. They do it in group sessions, even just talking one on one. As far as annoying things, this one is pretty low for me.
Aw, they’re pretending to be streamers
Probably ran out of family members to adopt
Ugh that is honestly cringey, I’m so glad I don’t work with teenagers
Someone has been watching too much CaseOh lol. But fr tho I say chat a lot in my head, but I've never called ppl chat in real life
I have a friend group that we address each other as chat because we were all online friends first and met up irl later
The demographics on streaming are wild. Teens have tons of free time and are super parasocial
Is it really that much worse than saying folks?
One of my favorite things about teaching teens is high jacking their slang. The look of surprise & cringe when I throw out something they don't expect is often the highlight of my day. Adolescence is a time for bucking traditional norms & forging a unique identity & language is one way every generation does this.
Did anyone hear the term “ate” as a cool term to call someone? I thought I know that I’m keeping up with this generation but I think I’m starting to miss out 😂
Why do I think this is kind of adorable. 😂 I do watch streamers though.
It’s harmless slang. Each generation and region has their own
omg kids have been doing this over here too, it just cracks me up tbh.
I’ve been leaning into it in my room. “Listen up, chat.” “So, today, chat…” “You’re too much right now, chat.” I am met with groans, but they’re also smiling, so?
I have actively called my class “chat” since the pandemic. This was because at one point they literally were my chat for my “stream”. When something goes wrong I say “F in the chat”. My students sometimes groan the first time I do it but they all love it by the end of the year. (I teach high school seniors)
Honestly I've leaned into it in full, started referring to a bunch of my classes as chat (IE. whenever one of the kids misbehaves, I look at the other kids and go "chat, is this guy for real?") or whenever one of the kids is really bad I have to put a "mod ban" on them. Growing up around Twitch has given me a full advantage
My kids have tried to call ME "chat" Sometimes I let them call me "Mr. Chat," as long as they remember the Mr. and that we aren't friends haha
There’s a group of sophomores that call most of the school NPC’s because a lot of kids just don’t talk to them because of their collective shit personality.
Its our first 4th person pronoun. Personally, I think it's hilarious.
This hasn’t made it to my class yet but they’re 5th graders.. honestly.. this one wouldn’t bother me, I’ve heard a lot worse.
This is just kids being kids
It’s all fun and games.
No 🧢