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Paul Spella / The Atlantic; Getty Meta Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does
You might be a hipster if you’re mistaking abstraction for transcendence.
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Paul Spella / The Atlantic; Getty How ‘I’m Dead’ Became a Good Thing
Dying of laughter is an exaggeration, but something about it has rung true over the centuries.
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Katie Martin / The Atlantic; Getty Trolling’s Surprising Origins in Fishing
A method once used by mythology experts has turned painfully aggressive.
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Getty Why People Can’t Stop Adding lol to Texts
It makes virtual communication feel more human.
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Prisma / Alamy Why We’re Calling Everything a ‘Hellscape’
The word captures our relationship to the daily chaos of recent years.
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Everett Are You Using Gaslight Correctly?
One rule of thumb can help determine whether the word is being diluted.
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Gabriela Pesqueira / The Atlantic What Makes Someone ‘A Lot’?
On a surplus of selfhood in relation to acceptable social standards of interaction
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Getty The True Meaning of Happiness
What’s the haps on the ultimate pursuit? Ask the Vikings.
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Getty; The Atlantic The Two Most Dismissive Words on the Internet
How to instantly end an argument—or maybe just start a new one
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Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock / Getty; De Agostini / Getty The Crucial Difference Between Cheesy and Corny
And what our strong neural associations with physical taste have to do with it
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Getty The Rap Catchphrase With Metaphysical Roots
How “it’s lit” captured an era’s pop-culture energy
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The Atlantic Why We’re All in a Shmood
The Yiddishism kids love
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The Atlantic What Love Meant in 4500 B.C.
The Copper Age nomads on the Eurasian steppes might have understood the Beatles.
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The Atlantic How Canceled Reached Peak Semantic Power
The metaphorical crossing-out dates back to antiquity.
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Lambert / Hulton Archive / Getty Why Everything Online Is Suddenly Cringe
The internet’s new social norms mean there are countless new ways to be humiliated.
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The Atlantic How a Crossword Editor Plays Wordle
It doesn’t have the richness of a crossword, but I play it religiously.
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Getty; The Atlantic Why We’re All Shooketh
The term is online slang of biblical proportions.
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Araki Koman Where Marx Meets Migos
The rap trio’s usage of bougie preserves the philosopher’s original intention.
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Olivia Arthur / Magnum Doing Grown-Up Tasks, in Millennial Slang
“Reaching biological maturity” doesn’t quite capture it.
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Araki Koman Normcore: Just Your Average, Everyday Paradox
The impossible tension of an anti-fashion portmanteau
