For Linguistics Influencer Adam Aleksic, Language is Political

April 8, 2024 9:13 AM

One of the Internet’s first and only “linguistics influencers,” Adam Aleksic, who works under the handle @etymologynerd, [Instagram / TikTok / YouTube] spends his time post-graduation traveling the world and creating videos about etymology for an audience of over 1.3 million across TikTok and Instagram.

Recent videos include explainers on (all Instagram links):
Video game terms
Keyboard related words
Gossip
Deadass
Zero
-core

posted by ellieBOA (6 comments total)

I became very aware of how the use of modern language exalts the few and oppresses the many during, uh, amphetamine psychosis... but some of those insights continue to ring true three years later. Looking forward to reading these.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:24 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]

“Influencers uptalk with the end of our voices, we use macroprosody, which is the stressing of more words than is necessary,” he explains. “I will talk very quickly, intentionally, because maybe somebody will have to go back and re-watch my video, which is good for my retention rate. "

I thought ytubers talked quickly because of people's short attention spans, and to fit into the format (ytube shorts, tiktoks, insta reels, etc). Interesting to think that all these social media platforms decided that short videos were more popular, not because short videos actually were more popular, but because people watching them more than once gave them a stats boost.
posted by subdee at 9:52 AM on April 8 [3 favorites]

Normalize never mentioning the word "influencer" ever again.
posted by tommasz at 10:32 AM on April 8 [4 favorites]

Oh, these videos are great. The keyboard one had a lot of stufff in it that I didn't know (and I'll just add "boilerplate", which comes from newspaper presses rather than early printing presses, but came from the literal boiler plates of prepared text that newspapers would use (often sent to them by advertisers) in cases where it'd be more efficient to just reuse the same preparation over and over rather than set it each time.

The "-core" one is also great, and starts off about where you'd think, but then goes somewhere very unexpected (for me, at least.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:43 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]

"Lingfluencer" feels like a real missed opportunity.
posted by The Tensor at 11:08 AM on April 8

Adam has launched a Substack.
posted by ellieBOA at 7:03 AM on April 12