Remember when you were a kid and you repeated the same dumb joke again and again until everyone was annoyed with you? And the annoyance would make the joke even funnier? But only to you? So you’d just say it more? And everyone else was thinking, “will you please shut up already?” Well, kids still do that, but it’s actually worse now because they use memes.
Viral video of the week: “Sticking out your gyat for the rizzler”
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A real virus spreads quickly, goes out of control, and makes everyone sick—so it is with this week’s viral video, “Sticking out your gyat for the rizzler.”
The short clip features a character from Fortnite dancing while a squeaky child’s voice sings lyrics featuring hyper specific gen-z slang over music lifted from “Ecstasy” by Suicidal Idol. It is extremely annoying, at least to me, but the kids seem to love it (or at least love to hate it.) The video, posted about a week ago on TikTok by ovp.9, has been viewed millions of times, and the many lip-syncs and responses it inspired have been viewed and shared even more millions of times. In the unlikely event that you want to see more of this, check out the 40,000 or so uses of the original sound on TikTok (but do it fast, before the Rizzler disappears down the memory hole like “one, two, buckle my shoe.”)
Here are the lyrics: “Sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler. You’re so skibidi. You’re so Fantum tax. I just want to be your sigma. Freaking come here. Give me Ohio.”
After extensive research, I have deciphered what it all means. Overall, it’s similar to “slang overload” memes that were popular a few years ago. The words are meant to be obscure. It’s one of those things where if you get the joke, the joke is on you. I understand about 90% of it, but only because of writing this column every week.
- Sticking out your gyat: Originally, gyat or gyatt meant something like “god-DAMN,” and was used as interjection when you see a sexy person. But the meaning of “gyat” has morphed into something like “attractive booty.”
- Rizzler: This is a play on “rizz,” slang for charisma. The singer is identifying themself as someone with rizz—a rizzler.
- Skibidi: A reference to the annoying viral cartoon series on YouTube called “Skibidi Toilet.”
- Fanum tax: This one gets deep into very-online kid culture. It’s a reference to an in-joke from Twitch streamer Phanum. He apparently takes a little of the food from the plate of anyone who is eating around him and calls it a “Fanum tax.”
- Sigma: Sigmas are a made-up-by-the-internet category of men who are neither alphas nor betas, but are cooler than both. It’s really dumb.
- “Ohio”: Ohio is a reference to the state. In meme-speak, it’s regarded as an almost supernaturally terrible place.
A new man genre drops: Meet the iDubbbz-Conner Man
There is a growing trend in male grooming among the young to rock a mullet and a mustache, like half of Hall and Oats in the 1980s. The two most well-known examples of this micro-trend (and the people who gave it the name) are YouTubers Kurtis Conner and iDubbbz. After being identified by Twitter user @custardloaf with a tweet that read, “so so so sick of seeing this genre of man,” Idubbbz’s responded with a photo of the pair and “We are NOT a genre. We are real people with real feelings.” But they obviously are a genre, just not a new one.
Young people ironically adopting uncool fashion choices has been around so long there isn’t a name for it. The specific choices change—15 years ago it was millennial hipsters wearing handlebar mustaches and ‘70s T-shirts, and before that it was gen-x “norm-core,” punks dressing in the most boring clothes you could get at K-Mart. The through-line among all these groups is pairing a style that’s absolutely out-of-style with something incongruous that says “I’m doing this on purpose.” Norm-core people wore punk rock hair with knock-off Izod shirts. Early 2000 hipsters wore expensive designer eyeglasses. In the case of Idubbz-Conner, the visible tattoos mark their style choices as “ironic,” lest anyone mistakes them for a pair of lunkheads from Montreal.
What is a “pavement princess”?
They say that in the 1990s, the explosive popularity of roller blades crumbled immediately once the following homophobic joke took off: Q: What’s the worst part about roller-blading? A: Telling your parents you’re gay.
It seems that today’s young people are trying to do the same thing for those expensive, dangerous, lifted-too-high pickup trucks that were designed for work or riding offroad, but have never seen either. They’ve been dubbed “pavement princesses.”
The term was around before the popularity of the internet, but it’s growing in use online now, and hopefully it negatively influences the decision of every suburbanite shopping for a 250 at the Ford dealership. Wags on Reddit subs like r/shittycarmods are sharing hilarious pictures of pavement princesses like this truck with a special tow-hitch that isn’t fooling anyone, or this monstrosity, or this little fella who needs a step-stool to open his hood.
What is “gamer dent?”
“Gamer dent” or “headset dent” is the impressions left on gamers’ heads after wearing headsets for a long time. It’s a real thing, but it’s harmless and temporary. Similar to the impression left on your finger from wearing a wedding ring, a too-tight headset worn for too long can leave an impression in your skin, but it isn’t re-shaping the skull. A gamer dent will disappear if you take a shower, massage your head, or just leave the ‘phones off for a few hours. Skulls sometimes have weird dents naturally too, and it’s usually nothing to worry about, except when it’s a sign of a skull tumor.