MTV’s list of new slang for 2016 is mostly words black Americans have used for years
MTV's list of hot slang for this year is strangely familiar, almost like they dipped into the annals of Black Twitter and cherry-picked a few terms to use for their article.
MTV’s list of hot slang for this year is strangely familiar, almost like they dipped into the annals of Black Twitter and cherry-picked a few terms to use for their article.
In an article called Say Goodbye To ‘On Fleek,’ ‘Basic’ And ‘Squad’ In 2016 And Learn These 10 Words Instead, MTV announces that the new “in” words and phrases are things like ‘lit’, ‘trash’, ‘drag’, ‘fam’, ‘woke’, ‘high-key’/’low-key’ and ‘live.’
But these aren’t new words by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, black America has been using them for some time now, but apparently they weren’t “cool” or “hip” or whatever it is MTV thinks it should be calling their slang phrases until a largely-white audience was alerted to them.
Maybe it’s time MTV stopped stealing from Black Twitter (years after the fact) and got with the times.
Click on each word below to see how they chose to describe it.
