![]() ![]() ![]() Kids have always had their own slang, but today’s adolescents are digital natives constantly barraged with information. ![]() Gamer forums and chat rooms are rife with references to “unaliving” characters only to have them “respawned,” or resurrected.ĭ - the hipper alternative to major English-language dictionaries that so far do not appear to address “unalive” in this sense - uses this example in its definition: “The point of the game is to unalive all enemies before losing your last life token.” It follows that a vanguard of youth culture - video gaming, in which characters are killed right and left and defeated players often cry, “I’m dead!” - has incorporated the term. “I think they have sort of developed these alternative words as a means of still being able to joke about those types of things without it coming across in such a harsh way,” Haeberle says. Steven Adelsheim, a Stanford University psychiatry professor and the director of the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, also advises against overreaction. “‘Unalive’ is not only successful, but also seems to be creating almost this kind of solidarity or affiliation between groups of people who share this ability of decoding what ‘Let’s go Brandon’ means,” he says.ĭr. Political conservatives chummily co-opted “Let’s go Brandon,” and TikTokkers did the same with “unalive.” Like “Let’s go Brandon” - which arose from a sports broadcaster’s on-air mistranslation of a vulgar crowd chant about Biden at a NASCAR race - “unalive” took on, well, a life of its own. Using “unalive” could actually make for more meaningful discussions among youths - giving them a sense of community and trust they couldn’t have with adults who use the words “suicide” or “kill.” Beltrama draws a parallel between “unalive” and how a saying like “Let’s go Brandon” has become a way to express disdain for President Joe Biden without using the profane phrase that it’s code for. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10-24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and suicide rates for that age group increased more than 50% from 2000-2021. ![]()
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