How algorithms are changing the way we speak

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We Speak

Podcast: The Indicator from Planet Money (NPR)
Episode Date: August 19, 2025
Host: Adrian Ma
Guest: Adam Aleksic, Linguist & Author of Algo Speak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language

---

Overview:

In this episode, Adrian Ma discusses with linguist Adam Aleksic how algorithms and social media platforms have become powerful forces in shaping modern language. Through viral memes, word trends, and even the rhythms of our speech, the business and technical priorities of social media platforms are affecting the way we communicate, both online and offline. Aleksic’s insights, drawn from his recently published book, are used to explore how words are born, spread, and sometimes die in today’s algorithm-driven media landscape.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

How Algorithms Accelerate Language Change

• Algorithms as a New Inflection Point (03:00–04:12):
  Adam Aleksic explains that, much like the invention of writing or the printing press, algorithms are now a major force in language evolution.

  • “Every time there's a new medium, we're going to have a new way of communicating through that medium... now algorithms are an underlying infrastructure of the Internet and the way we mass communicate.” — Adam Aleksic [03:24]
  • Example: The rise of “unalive” as a euphemism for “kill” on TikTok due to content moderation, leading to usage even in school essays.

• Viral Spread and the ‘Engagement Treadmill’ (04:12–04:43):

  • Words like “riz,” which started on Twitch in 2022, became global within a year, aided by the amplification power of algorithms.
  • “Because of how algorithms amplify trends... these words get pushed further and the word riz entered what I call the engagement treadmill.” — Adam Aleksic [04:15]

---

Gatekeeping, Context Collapse, and Memes

• Loss of Traditional Grammatical Gatekeeping (04:43–05:33):

  • Algorithms drive rapid adoption and spread of slang across diverse groups, erasing prior cultural and social boundaries.
  • Words like "pilled," "maxing," or "sigma" spread rapidly, often outside their original communities.
  • “There's also no policing function... Once you get this video from a different context, you don't even think it is from African American English in the first place.” — Adam Aleksic [04:52]

• Words as Memes: Why Some Stick and Others Die Out (06:20–07:20):

  • Words like “cancel” fill enduring semantic gaps—so they survive—while others, like “skibidi,” are fleeting trends that fade as they spread beyond their core users.
  • “An important thing to remember is that words are memes and they get tied to meme lifespans.” — Adam Aleksic [06:41]
  • “If your Grandmother starts saying skibidi. Skibidi is gonna die out. I'm a strong believer that in about a year, skibidi is gonna be out.” — Adam Aleksic [06:52]

---

Social Media’s Impact on Speech and Accent

• Influencer Accent and Pacing (07:20–08:57):

  • The desire to maintain attention—driven by algorithmic incentives—shapes not just language but also delivery: faster talking, strategic pacing, and heightened intonation.
  • “Online...everybody's trying to sell you attention all the time because the platforms bake in attention incentives...So creators replicate that because we're just trying to earn a living.” — Adam Aleksic [07:56]
  • “One of them is the [influencer] accent. The I'll talk faster and I'll stress more words. That's my educational influencer accent.” — Adam Aleksic [08:17]
  • Adrián Ma jokes about Aleksic’s fast pace: “Now, in case you're wondering, you have not accidentally hit double speed on your podcast player. This is how Adam talks in his videos…” [02:45]

• Content Democratization vs. Linguistic Flattening (08:57–09:32):

  • Social media elevates more voices but flattens variance—platform incentives push creators to conform to specific, optimized styles.
  • “It does, like you said, elevate more voices in the way that we haven't had before, but at the same time, it prevents those voices from being heard unless they conform to platform incentives.” — Adam Aleksic [09:24]

---

Cultural Implications & Neutrality Toward Change

• Not All Influence is Negative (09:32–10:07):
  • Aleksic cautions against viewing these changes as inherently good or bad for language.
  • “I don't think there's anything ever wrong with language per se. Language is a way that humans relate to one another. I think language is a proxy for culture....the way we're communicating with one another is just again, us reflexively adapting to a medium to be heard. And I don't think that's actually bad.” — Adam Aleksic [09:44]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Emojis and Uniqueness:
  “Fun fact, Everybody has a completely unique emoji style, kind of like an emoji fingerprint. Which also means that no two people will use emojis the exact same way.” — Adam Aleksic [02:27]

• On the Influence of Meme Popularity:
  “Words are memes and they get tied to meme lifespans. And if there's no natural reason to keep the meme around, it dies.” — Adam Aleksic [06:41]

• On The Rise (and Fall) of ‘Skibidi’:
  “If your Grandmother starts saying skibidi. Skibidi is gonna die out. I'm a strong believer that in about a year, skibidi is gonna be out.” — Adam Aleksic [06:52]

• On Algorithms’ Role in Linguistic Flattening:
  “...it prevents those voices from being heard unless they conform to platform incentives.” — Adam Aleksic [09:24]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:00–04:12: How algorithms are the latest historical driver of language change.
• 04:12–04:43: The rise of “riz” and how algorithmic promotion accelerates word trends.
• 04:43–05:33: Loss of gatekeeping, context collapse, and the blurring of origins in viral language.
• 06:20–07:20: Why some words (like “skibidi”) die quickly while others (like “cancel”) last.
• 07:20–08:57: How attention economics shapes the “influencer accent” and online delivery.
• 09:24–09:44: The double-edged sword of democratized language change.

---

Conclusion

This episode offers an insightful and fast-paced tour of the new dynamics shaping English. Adam Aleksic compellingly argues that while language evolution is nothing new, algorithms and social media have hypercharged the process, giving rise to both more diversity in the words we use and, paradoxically, a flattening of how we speak as creators adapt for virality. His neutral, anthropology-style lens encourages listeners to see these changes less as a threat to language than as a reflection of new cultural and technological realities.

---

Book Mentioned: Algo Speak by Adam Aleksic
Guest Social Handle: @EtymologyNerd

---

Podcast Production Credits:

• Producer: Julia Ritchie
• Engineer: Kwesi Lee
• Fact-checker: Sierra Juarez
• Editor: Cake and Kenan
• A production of NPR

Transcript

[NPR Announcer]

NPR.

[Adrian Ma]

One of the beautiful and sometimes baffling things about the English language is that it's always changing. Like take the word riz, which means something like charisma, or the word skibidi, which kind of means anything or nothing, depending on how you use it. A few years ago, words like these were little known or didn't even exist, but today they're understood and used by millions of people. Now, don't worry if you don't count yourselves among them, because according to our guest today, the English language is changing at a faster pace than ever before, thanks to social media and algorithms. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. Today on the show, a conversation with linguist Adam Alexik, author of a recently published book called Algospeak How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language. This was actually a book I picked for an episode we recently did on Econ Beach Reads, and after the break, we'll talk with Adam about how the business priorities of social media companies increasingly shape the way we speak, both online and offline. This message comes from Capital One with the Venture X Card, earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy, plus get premium benefits at a collection of hotels when booking through Capital One Travel. What's in your wallet? Terms apply [e-mail] this message comes from Apple Card.

[NPR Announcer]

Did you know Apple Card is designed to help you pay off your balance faster with smart payment suggestions? And because fees don't help you, Apple Card doesn't have any. It's a credit card unlike any other subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Variable APRs range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on creditworthiness rates as of July 1, 2025. Terms and [e-mail] this message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices like full service, wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Think or swim. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

[Adrian Ma]

If you are a nerd for words, you might have come across Adam Alexic's videos on social media.

[Adam Aleksic]

Fun fact, Everybody has a completely unique emoji style, kind of like an emoji fingerprint. Which also means that no two people will use emojis the exact same way.

[Adrian Ma]

Using the handle Etymology Nerd, Adam posts videos on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram and spends a lot of time breaking down how the Internet is changing the way we communicate in the same way, everybody.

[Adam Aleksic]

Builds up their own inside jokes.

[Adrian Ma]

Now, in case you're wondering, you have not accidentally hit double speed on your podcast player. This is how Adam talks in his videos, because he says it keeps viewers engaged. And when I called up Adam recently.

[Adam Aleksic]

Adrian, hello, Testing Ipsum Lorem, I started.

[Adrian Ma]

Off asking him why he thinks algorithms are shaping the English language like never before. So you say there are these inflection points in history that have had a huge effect on the way people communicate. There's the invention of writing and the printing press and the Internet. Now you say we are living through another inflection point shaped by algorithms. Can you give us your argument in a nutshell?

[Adam Aleksic]

Every time there's a new medium, we're going to have a new way of communicating through that medium. The underlying process is the same. Humans use language to communicate with one another. However, now algorithms are an underlying infrastructure of the Internet and the way we mass communicate with one another. That means that the way we speak is going to be downstream of platform priorities. Platforms build in attention incentives. We have all these algorithms shaping in groups and echo chambers and where words come from, how words spread, how trends get popularized, how some words are censored, and we have to find ways around that. We've always had these processes in one way or another, but algorithms are affecting it in a new way. So one example I start the book with is the word unalive. The word kill is suppressed on TikTok, so many creators have turned to say unalive instead. And now we have kids in middle schools writing essays about Hamlet unaliving himself. And that's an example of social media algorithmic speak bleeding into the mainstream. And that's traditional algo speak.

[Adrian Ma]

Language has the potential to go viral in a way that it didn't before.

[Adam Aleksic]

Look at the word riz, which started out in 2022 in the back corners of the Internet. Kai Sinat popularized it on Twitch. By the end of 2023, it became the Oxford English Dictionary word of the year. I think it might have taken a word like riz maybe a decade to become popular in the past. But because of how algorithms amplify trends, they incentivize creators to use trending metadata because that's a way that creators tap into ongoing fads and stay relevant. Then these words get pushed further and the word riz entered what I call the engagement treadmill, where some words get pushed more because they are trending.

[Adrian Ma]

You reference types of grammatical gatekeeping that happened historically and in modern media are these sort of gatekeeping rules just out the window.

[Adam Aleksic]

Now online there's the experience of context collapse where somebody thinks that they belong to a community, that they can use this word. And we see the rapid replication of African American English for this reason. There's also no policing function. In the past there maybe be people who look at you funny if you use an African American slang word, but now there's no like audience perceiving you in that way. Once you get this video from a different context, you don't even think it is from African American English in the first place. And in the same way, that's just one example of a community that's emanating words incels and the manosphere also came up with a lot of words including the suffix pilled or maxing or the word sigma. And they're spreading this language and you perceive it out of context, you don't know that it comes from that group, you replicate it because it sounds funny. At a certain point we all end up talking like that.

[Adrian Ma]

I'm curious, like being so steeped in this all the time, you must have some favorite algo derived words.

[Adam Aleksic]

I'm particularly partial to the word skibidi. It comes from Skibidi Toilet, this YouTube short series where there's a fictional toilet race battling these camera headed androids. And it kind of speaks to these young children.

[Adrian Ma]

Okay, I think I understood about 50% of that, but okay, a YouTube show that pits a toilet against androids.

[Adam Aleksic]

It sort of speaks to young people, but it's seen as funny by older people. And then because we make fun of younger kids for liking skibidi toilet, we push this word further and then it becomes sort of this like hopscotching between irony and what's actually real. And also now influencers are using the word skibidi because it's trending and they know that if they capitalize on this trend, they can go more viral.

[Adrian Ma]

But it's not all about trends spreading words, right? I mean, sometimes these new words serve a genuinely useful function. You talk about how, for example, the phrase canceling somebody, it was used in black culture, but wasn't widely used until pretty recently and now everyone knows it. It kind of fills this semantic gap in our language.

[Adam Aleksic]

An important thing to remember is that words are memes and they get tied to meme lifespans. And if there's no natural reason to keep the meme around, it dies. One usual reason memes do die is because they get used by this out group that no longer feels like it's funny or cool. If your Grandmother starts saying skibidi. Skibidi is gonna die out. I'm a strong believer that in about a year, skibidi is gonna be out.

[Adrian Ma]

Okay, you heard it here first.

[Adam Aleksic]

But cancel is gonna stay around because that's a useful term for this new Internet concept that we have. Let's say selfie emerged around the same time as yeet and on fleek, and yet we don't use those words anymore because they were tied to this obtrusive meme that sticks out. However, selfie also being a meme, it just has a longer tail because it's now applying to this lexical gap.

[Adrian Ma]

Social media and algorithms, you say, also influence the way people talk, like their pacing and their tone. Can you talk about how that happens?

[Adam Aleksic]

Yeah. One chapter of the book focuses on the influencer accent. So I talk quickly in real life, clearly. But online also.

[Adrian Ma]

Okay, I was going to ask you about that. Are you, are you in sort of teaching influencer mode or is this is the way that you are when you're hanging out with your friends?

[Adam Aleksic]

There's some intermediate thing. Right. Every person will accommodate their communication for their expected audience. Right now I'm trying to cram in a bunch of information so people will buy my book. However, if I'm talking to my friends, I'll use a more laid back pace because I'm not trying to sell them anything.

[Adrian Ma]

Online.

[Adam Aleksic]

Everybody's trying to sell you attention all the time because the platforms bake in attention incentives so that they're trying to sell you things. They're trying to commodify your data, they're trying to keep eyeballs on the app as long as possible. They. They make it incentivized to grab your attention. So creators replicate that because we're just trying to earn a living. And then we have all these attention grabbing tactics. Replicate. And one of them is the accent. The I'll talk faster and I'll stress more words. That's my educational influencer accent. You also have like the stereotypical lifestyle influencer accent, which is good at grabbing attention for a different kind of audience. Like the hey, guys, welcome to npr. You have rising tones which make it sound like something's always coming next. So you keep listening and it also drives out.

[Adrian Ma]

Yes, right?

[Adam Aleksic]

Yeah. It also prevents dead air, which is like so bad for the algorithm. So there's new ways of communicating that have emerged that this is based on stuff in the past that just comes from valley girl accents. There's a sort of social prestige that perpetuates with these accents. And the educational influencer accent. There's like, there's always, like floor holding is a concept in linguistics that people need to make sure people keep listening to them. And we've had attention. If you're a teacher in a classroom, you got to make sure kids are entertained. In another way, though, algorithms, like, really amplify that natural human behavior.

[Adrian Ma]

What's interesting to me about this is that on the one hand, social media is very democratic. Anyone can publish anything they want anytime. And yet, like you say, the. The way algorithms incentivize certain kinds of posts, the way they drive people to maybe gravitate towards certain ways of talking, it kind of also flattens the way people talk.

[Adam Aleksic]

Absolutely. It does, like you said, elevate more voices in the way that we haven't had before, but at the same time, it's prevents those voices from being heard unless they conform to platform incentives.

[Adrian Ma]

When you put it that way, it does seem to kind of cast a slightly negative light on the fact that social media and algorithms are shaping the way that we talk. Is that how you think about it?

[Adam Aleksic]

I don't think there's anything ever wrong with language per se. Language is a way that humans relate to one another. I think language is a proxy for culture. And by following the conduits of language change, you can sort of understand more of where we're heading as a society. I do think probably the fact that these platforms are commodifying retention, that seems bad. And you can see that happen through language. But the way we're communicating with one another is just again, us reflexively adapting to a medium to be heard. And I don't think that's actually bad.

[Adrian Ma]

Okay, well, we've been speaking with Adam Aleksic. His new book is called Algo Speak. Am I doing it right? The Influencer Voice.

[Adam Aleksic]

Perfect.

[Adrian Ma]

How Social media is transforming the future of language. Adam, thanks again for being with us.

[Adam Aleksic]

Thank you for having me.

[Adrian Ma]

This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Kwesi Lee. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Cake and Kenan edits the show and the indicators of production of npr.

[NPR Announcer]

This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less and all plans include high speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for [e-mail] Switch this message comes from LinkedIn ads. Target your buyers by job title, company role and skills. With LinkedIn ads, all the professionals you need to reach in one place get a $100 credit on your next [e-mail] results terms and conditions apply. This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you. With plans starting from 15 bucks a month, shop plans [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5GB plan required. New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.