Slang, according to Walt Whitman, is the English language’s ‘lawless germinal element below all words and sentences… behind all poetry, and proves a certain perennial rankness and protestantism in speech’. One wonders what he would have made of ‘mogging’, which Collins has named word of the year.
To mog is to outshine or outperform another in a certain activity, and is used primarily among Generations Z and Alpha – those born after 1997. You can be forgiven if you’re unfamiliar with the term.
Teenagers will always behave like teenagers and develop Polari that their parents fail to understand
The word has its origins in the acronym ‘AMOG’ (alpha male of the group), which was widely used in the pick-up artist scene of the early 2000s. The shortening came in the mid-2010s, when angry teens on bodybuilder and incel forums adjusted the meaning to refer to outdoing someone. Common usages include ‘height-mogging’ to describe shorter men being less successful with women than their taller peers, and ‘frame-mogging’, which refers to situations in which the world’s Johnny Bravos get the girl while the skinny languish in perpetual virginity.
‘Mogging’ has now been adopted in the mainstream and is used in less controversial ways. ‘Wow, you absolutely mogged in the jacket today,’ someone insufferable might say as a compliment. It is only a matter of time until I’m tipped into suicide by an executive five years my junior telling me that my presentation ‘really mogged’.
Other words that have been popularised by my fellow Gen Z’ers include ‘fricy’, a clever portmanteau to describe food that is both fruity and spicy. The suffix ‘maxxing’ is also new, which refers to practising or enjoying something to its greatest extent. For example, you might have spent the last month ‘Autumn-maxxing’, or, as of right now, you might say that I am ‘keyboard-maxxing’. This is to say nothing of ‘6-7’, an online term that genuinely means nothing.
You will notice a trend with these phrases. They are essentially gibberish and, at best, have loose roots in existing vernacular, more usually in some obscure online subculture. On one level, there’s nothing new here. Parents have been complaining about youth slang for decades.
In the early 1950s, young Teddy Boys emerged from the wreckage of post-war London, provoking a moral panic over their casual violence and impenetrable rhyming slang (think ‘whistle and flute’). A decade later, mods and rockers came on the scene with jargon of their own. If you were a mod with a major presence on the scene, you were known as a ‘face’. For rockers, their heavy leather motorcycle boots were referred to as ‘kicks’.
The Baby Boomers are as confused today as the lost-generation parents of the Teddy Boys were half a century ago. Why are their children, many of whom have been well educated and raised properly at no small expense, speaking in this way?
Like the Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers before them, we Gen Z’ers are a listless lot. I should clarify that I, as an older member of the cohort, do not use the slang. But I’d contend that our existential listlessness is even more intense than previous generations, and that this is fundamental to understanding why the slang is so absurd.
The threat of nuclear war will have worried the Teddy Boys, but bear with me. The young men and women of my generation have never known meaningful economic growth, were desocialised by COVID, have been raised on immersive technology we have not yet evolved to use responsibly and are unique in that we will almost certainly be worse off than our parents. Oh, and the threat of nuclear war is back to boot.
This dire set of circumstances is the result of political decisions taken by the generation so angrily confused by their slang. Take housing. Due to decades of insufficient housebuilding alongside mass immigration, young buyers have been priced out of the housing market. The Centre for Policy Studies calculates that the proportion of those aged 18-34 who own their own home has declined from 51 per cent in 1989 to 28 per cent. The labour market is no better. Labour’s Employment Rights Act and minimum-wage hike have priced young people out of the jobs market. According to the Prosperity Institute (my employers), the ratcheting cost of the minimum wage is preventing the creation of up to 600,000 new jobs for young people.
This may sound like a wonkish explanation for some light-hearted slang, but it deserves consideration. Forgive my downtrodden peers if they indulge in a little Dadaist absurdity, and revel in wealthy Boomers desperately trying to understand Nadsat for NEETs. Teenagers will always behave like teenagers and develop Polari that their parents fail to understand. But when the world is so absurd and hard to progress in, there’s often nothing better for demotivated, desocialised youngsters to do than just stay inside concocting increasingly meaningless lingo.
If older readers are wondering to themselves why Generation Z’s slang is so floridly nonsensical, they might start by looking at how the leaders they voted for have created a world that doesn’t make sense to begin with.
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