Millennial Translates Slang For Her Older Coworkers And They Help Her With Work-Speak, Shared On Twitter Interview With Author
There are a lot of differences between generations that include what music we like, what clothes we wear and it is actually evident from how we talk. People who lived in different periods of time have different language they use, especially colloquial speech and slang, because it changes with new generations and within a generation, but doesn’t overlap.
So it is sometimes hard for older people to understand what the younger generation is talking about when they use slang and that might make the distance between the generations even bigger than it is. Luckily, there are people who don’t mind explaining what the terms the youth uses mean.
Twitter user The Meanest TA, PhD. shared a hilarious thread of her interactions with her older coworkers of her explaining slang terms to them and in return receiving some tips on how to express her frustration in a professional manner.
More info: Twitter
Twitter user caught the internet’s attention after she shared her hilarious interactions with her coworkers explaining the current slang to them
Image credits: Joi Ito (not the actual photo)
The Meanest TA, PhD. or Meanie, as she refers to herself, shares funny work-related stories and her love for cats on her Twitter account.
Bored Panda reached out to Meanie and although she wanted to maintain the mystery of who she is, she revealed to us that she is a consultant at the company she works for.
After a little digging through her account, we also learnt some fun facts about her that she gives in her intro meetings. She says, “I live on a ranch with my husband (PF, college professor), and my in-laws. I have three cats (Winky, Barn Cat, Princess Pouty Paws), and for some reason Hank the bull has taken a liking to me so I manage his emotions.”
She works with 5 men whose ages range from 48 to 75
Image credits: MeanestTA
Image credits: MeanestTA
Looking at the things Meanie tweets, it seems like she is a fun person to be around, she has a great sense of humor and doesn’t put up with people’s foolishness, although she doesn’t sugarcoat anything, so that might make her seem intimidating. In her bio she introduces herself as an “Academia-adjacent early onset curmudgeon.” So we asked why she thinks she is The Meanest TA and there’s actually a story.
The Twitter user told us, “I was a teaching assistant in grad school. I made this account to vent about the weird expectations universities place on grad student teaching assistants. It’s a joke, really, I got assigned the sweetest, most easygoing elderly professor my first semester and he said he got ‘the meanest TA’ to keep him on track.”
Image credits: MeanestTA
It seems they are very invested in today’s slang and asks The Meanest TA if they are using it correctly or what it means
Image credits: MeanestTA
Meanie tweets quite a bit and there are many gems, but the thread that went viral with 141k likes was about her teaching her coworkers slang usage. Meanie herself is about 30 years old, as she confesses in an unrelated tweet, and her team members are 5 men, ages from 48 to 75.
In return, the Twitter user asks her coworkers to make her frustrations sound more professional. We wanted to know if they actually use the advice they give each other and Meanie admitted that she definitely uses the professional phrasing her coworkers suggest her: “I am a lot more blunt than my team and while I don’t deal with external clients/partners as much, they act as a buffer when I do.”
Image credits: MeanestTA
But in return she also gets very important advice on how to make her frustrations sound professional
Image credits: MeanestTA
Image credits: MeanestTA
Generations are often put up against each other and we like to highlight the differences between them. If there are any misunderstandings between kids and their parents or grandparents, we explain it with the generation gap.
However, Meanie doesn’t feel it and says that it’s not hard working with her older colleagues at all. She also adds that she is used to them and they like each other’s personalities.
Image credits: MeanestTA
Image credits: MeanestTA
You may think that it would be hard to be the youngest on a team with a generation gap, but the Twitter user actually doesn’t mind it
Image credits: MeanestTA
Because it’s a more unusual team consisting of people from different stages of life, we were curious to know what are the most challenging aspects and the fun parts about being a part of such a team and being the youngest one.
Meanie revealed that “The most challenging thing is that they assume people will take them seriously, I assume the opposite.”
She continued with the positive, “The most fun is the different life experiences and how they line up. So when I was getting my driver’s license in 2009, two of my current team members were returning from military deployments and two were retiring from their first careers.”
Image credits: MeanestTA
Which just proves that the differences between generations can be overcome and all of them should be appreciated for their characteristics
Image credits: MeanestTA
Image credits: MeanestTA
It seems that age isn’t an obstacle on this team and both sides can learn from each other, and it also is an inexhaustible font of hilarious tweets. Did you find Meanie’s slang explanations amusing? Also, will you use any of the professional corporate language that they suggested using instead of what we are all thinking? Let us know in the comments and if you have any similar experiences to share!
People were really amused with the thread as it got 141k likes and they shared their own experiences of similar situations
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But I'm only 28 and I use periods and other punctuation in my texts... It's so damn hard to read a text without. It just keep going, gets confusing, and loses context. Edit: I love the symbiotic relationship going on here between coworkers of different generations.
I make an effort to leave off the final period since I learned punctuation in texts reads as aggressive now. It's my compromise and it physically hurts me to do it. Loved this thread tho.
This makes me want to use more periods. are people REALLY getting mad a periods? The ones that end a sentence? The future is dim....... .. . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . ... . . . . .
You seem confused. People are not "getting mad [at] periods", people read periods at the end of a casual text as being said with a serious tone, which depending on context can be perceived as a sign of anger or rudeness. When you use periods at the end of a casual text, people read that as a sign that YOU are angry.
It's all rather preposterous if you ask me. People need to consider their inner reading voice. If you read....idc with an angry inner voice you come off as mean. But if you swap it for a more light hearted inner voice it completely changes the tone. I don't understand why the world hasn't picked up on this. #frustratedtexter.
Oe preposterous... Haven't heard that one in a long time. Gonna put it on my list!
Studies about communication show that the vast majority of it is nonverbal (70% to 93% was what I got when I Googled). This is just a way of trying to add that nonverbal element to texted communication. I also wonder if there's a classist element here -- a lot of these types are especially down on "street" language. Plus the whole "I write *perfectly* punctuated texts" thing kinda implies you have a good phone.
But ... why?
I think context matters for this. A period after a full sentence doesn't give mad/threatening vibes as much as one after a one-word answer like yes/no/okay.
ok.
Rude. Lol.
Full stop. Agreed.
Oh no! You left a final period--I feel aggressed at!....... :D
I think it's like when your parents use your full name. It's not necessary for the communication, so it can seem formal which can be perceived as chilly. Not saying it's right or wrong. I don't think anyone voted on it or anything. Language is fluid. No sense getting mad about it!
If it's a long text with multiple sentences I think periods and commas, etc. are totally fine and won't be misunderstood. It's only if it's a short one or two word reply, then ending it with a period can make it sound more serious or blunt to some people, so they think it conveys annoyance or anger.
i dont know why youre getting downvoted its true
Yeah, spot on. In casual texts, we don't need punctuation to show the end of a sentence because most people hit "send" where they would put a period. Edit: What just occurred to me is that it takes effort to put in a period, so to put one where it is not really needed carries extra meaning. This is why periods in the middle of a text are fine, they're serving a grammatical function (to separate thoughts) so there's no extra meaning. At the end of a text, the period serves no grammatical function. You don't need to separate two thoughts because there's no words after. Since it's not serving a grammatical purpose, and it was deliberately included, people naturally look for additional meaning, specifically tone.
True. If the period isn't needed for comprehension, it seems superfluous and gets extra meaning attached to it.
Agreed. Made similar comment before seeing yours.
Punctuation has become a way to convey tone in text messages.
why are people downvoting you? its true
Took me a while to find out why my version of some official template emails, that we were supposed to use for all office correspondence, were invariably seen as being warmer and friendlier than colleagues sending same information. It was pointed out to me how my not using a full stop at the end of the paragraph sentence, but at the end of any other sentences within the paragraphs, was being read as not aggressive compared to those using the template as had been written with all the extra punctuation. That only stemmed from me being taught to use the block style letter format at school
Bestie, respectfully, ✨no✨
But... i always use punctuations in my texts tho. I hate when people text me a whole paragraph that I have to figure out cause of lack of punctuations.
Y'all are both doing it wrong, and it's not about all punctuation, it's about periods at the end of a text message in particular.
But I'm only 28 and I use periods and other punctuation in my texts... It's so damn hard to read a text without. It just keep going, gets confusing, and loses context. Edit: I love the symbiotic relationship going on here between coworkers of different generations.
I make an effort to leave off the final period since I learned punctuation in texts reads as aggressive now. It's my compromise and it physically hurts me to do it. Loved this thread tho.
This makes me want to use more periods. are people REALLY getting mad a periods? The ones that end a sentence? The future is dim....... .. . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . ... . . . . .
You seem confused. People are not "getting mad [at] periods", people read periods at the end of a casual text as being said with a serious tone, which depending on context can be perceived as a sign of anger or rudeness. When you use periods at the end of a casual text, people read that as a sign that YOU are angry.
It's all rather preposterous if you ask me. People need to consider their inner reading voice. If you read....idc with an angry inner voice you come off as mean. But if you swap it for a more light hearted inner voice it completely changes the tone. I don't understand why the world hasn't picked up on this. #frustratedtexter.
Oe preposterous... Haven't heard that one in a long time. Gonna put it on my list!
Studies about communication show that the vast majority of it is nonverbal (70% to 93% was what I got when I Googled). This is just a way of trying to add that nonverbal element to texted communication. I also wonder if there's a classist element here -- a lot of these types are especially down on "street" language. Plus the whole "I write *perfectly* punctuated texts" thing kinda implies you have a good phone.
But ... why?
I think context matters for this. A period after a full sentence doesn't give mad/threatening vibes as much as one after a one-word answer like yes/no/okay.
ok.
Rude. Lol.
Full stop. Agreed.
Oh no! You left a final period--I feel aggressed at!....... :D
I think it's like when your parents use your full name. It's not necessary for the communication, so it can seem formal which can be perceived as chilly. Not saying it's right or wrong. I don't think anyone voted on it or anything. Language is fluid. No sense getting mad about it!
If it's a long text with multiple sentences I think periods and commas, etc. are totally fine and won't be misunderstood. It's only if it's a short one or two word reply, then ending it with a period can make it sound more serious or blunt to some people, so they think it conveys annoyance or anger.
i dont know why youre getting downvoted its true
Yeah, spot on. In casual texts, we don't need punctuation to show the end of a sentence because most people hit "send" where they would put a period. Edit: What just occurred to me is that it takes effort to put in a period, so to put one where it is not really needed carries extra meaning. This is why periods in the middle of a text are fine, they're serving a grammatical function (to separate thoughts) so there's no extra meaning. At the end of a text, the period serves no grammatical function. You don't need to separate two thoughts because there's no words after. Since it's not serving a grammatical purpose, and it was deliberately included, people naturally look for additional meaning, specifically tone.
True. If the period isn't needed for comprehension, it seems superfluous and gets extra meaning attached to it.
Agreed. Made similar comment before seeing yours.
Punctuation has become a way to convey tone in text messages.
why are people downvoting you? its true
Took me a while to find out why my version of some official template emails, that we were supposed to use for all office correspondence, were invariably seen as being warmer and friendlier than colleagues sending same information. It was pointed out to me how my not using a full stop at the end of the paragraph sentence, but at the end of any other sentences within the paragraphs, was being read as not aggressive compared to those using the template as had been written with all the extra punctuation. That only stemmed from me being taught to use the block style letter format at school
Bestie, respectfully, ✨no✨
But... i always use punctuations in my texts tho. I hate when people text me a whole paragraph that I have to figure out cause of lack of punctuations.
Y'all are both doing it wrong, and it's not about all punctuation, it's about periods at the end of a text message in particular.