Fireworks and Brain Rot

classic american soundbites in full skibidi mode

English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.

—James D. Nicoll

English is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.

—Paul Scott

Above: George Washington as a Gen Z streamer.

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Against my better judgment, my younger cousins ran a linguistic black-ops program on me over breakfast. They cracked open a crumpled “study guide” scrawled with phrases like skibidi, gyatt, and “chimpanzini bananini,” then forced me to recite a full Gen Z vocabulary pack.

If you have no idea what any of that means, congratulations—you caught the last chopper out of semantic ‘Nam.

If you do, yeet yourself somewhere; you’re part of the problem.

Rather than let it fester, I decided to stress-test this newfound knowledge by grafting it onto bedrock American quotations.

Consider this experiment equal parts linguistics lab and July 4th fireworks show. If anything, it serves as proof of just how flexible—and combustible—our mother tongue can be.

• Patrick Henry: give me two double-chunk chocolate cookies or give me chicken jockey

• Declaration of Independence: big facts no cap—we’re all built the same, npc vibes get voted off

• Abraham Lincoln: like eighty-seven years ago the ogs were spitting straight fax, no printer

• Teddy Roosevelt: ay chat, stay low-key but swing that giga-stick, silent rizz mode

• Franklin D. Roosevelt: biggest opp is fear itself. yeet the overthink, keep vibin

• John F. Kennedy: fr stop simpin for uncle sam handouts. what are you dropping for the homeland, king

• Martin Luther King Jr: got the whole vision unlocked. unity glow-up, skibidi nowhere in sight

• Neil Armstrong: one lil moon stroll for ya boy, mega dub for the human squad, rizz level max

I hope your Fourth of July—and your fireworks—go off with five big booms.

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Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.

If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter X.

With sincere gratitude,

Tom