Adam Aleksic is a Gen Z linguist and content creator posting educational videos under the username @etymologynerd.Dozens of video game terms have sneaked into everyday conversation over the past several years, particularly among younger people. For instance, it’s common to hear “speedrun” for completing a task quickly, “sidequest” to tell your friends about an unexpected adventure or “spawn” when you’ve made a sudden appearance.
All of these come from gaming culture, where they’re used to describe virtual actions — yet they’ve transformed into offline slang.the early 2000s, millennials have adopted gaming words such as “noob” , “OP” and “gg” in real life. These terms reached such ubiquity online that they made intuitive sense when extended to analogous in-person interactions.
There has also been an uptick in “narrative identity-building,” or the construction of personal stories around ourselves. People refer to themselves as the “main character,” describe others as “NPCs” and romanticize their past adventures as “lore,” a term frequently used to describe the backstories of characters in video game universes. Even “sidequest” implies a departure from the overarching plotline, like a diversion from the structured adventure of a role-playing game.
Many of these terms start in ironic contexts. A lot of metaphors arise because it sounds funny to extend a phrase from one context into another that it’s less associated with — but comedy eventually gives way to authenticity. Even if people initially said “swing and a miss” or “gg” in a joking manner, those phrases are now acceptable in serious contexts, as they’ve lost their humorous subtext. The same will be true for a newer generation of words. Eventually, people might be surprised to learn that “speedrun” or “spawn” had origins in gaming.The Washington Post accepts opinion articles on any topic. We welcome submissions on local, national and international issues.
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