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Let's dig this groovy chick! Come on, men!
— Beach Blanket Bingo
Most television shows for audiences younger than 25 are written by people significantly older than the target demographic. On its own, this is all right. It is when these writers attempt to co-opt the culture of the younger generation that the trouble starts.
The biggest problem is slang. Either it's out of date (usually from the writers' own childhood), or it's awkwardly misused. Either way, there will be gnarly, bitchin' amounts of it, slathered over the dialogue like sauce over a particularly inept casserole.
Also problematic is what kids do in their leisure time. This can be particularly painful if they're attempting An Aesop about something that's recently become popular. Usually, that involves many stereotypical "bad boy" or "cool" activities, such as videogames, surfing, motorcycling, or fixing cars; a recent example would be grossly stereotypical "Sk8r Boiz". However, even your standard episode won't probably show video games (for instance) as anything but the back of a TV with some Pac-Man-esque beeps and boops played over the soundtrack.
This also applies to commercials focused on kids, although they'll at least be knowledgeable about the product they're selling.
Totally.
Of course, this all can be done well. Most producers figure, though, that kids can't tell good writing from bad ( Viewers Are Morons, after all), and throw whatever out there. Buffy Speak is a common way of avoiding this for those who do care. Another way to avoid the problem is to do it intentionally badly.
Shows on the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon (especially the "New" Nick), and Cartoon Network are known for doing this, despite most of them centering around tweens and teenagers. This is usually entwined with the overuse of far-past-neutered euphemisms, like "crud". This has very good odds of being paired up with Badbutt.
A rich, deep well of Narm, especially when it's a Long Runner's obvious ploy to stay Relevant, Dammit. See also Jive Turkey, Buffy Speak, Surfer Dude, Valley Girl, Leet Lingo, Xtreme Kool Letterz; this is also a common trait of the Mascot With Attitude and the Hippie Teacher. Get A Load Of That Square is a common mockery of this. Contrast with Spock Speak; Little Professor Dialog and Grokking The Horrorshow. A character like this may also be The Nicknamer.
Examples
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Advertising
- There's this commercial
 for the Hardee's Little Thickburger. Presumably it was pulled fairly quickly.
- An advertisement for the "Slim and Lite" revision suggests that players can "put it where they like", which typically means "shove it up their ass". Sony seems to be getting annoyed at their customers.
- Despite trying to win over — presumably — the kid demographic, consider how anachronistic the Chuck E. Cheese mascot is with his depiction as a "Sk8r" boy,
nearly over a decade after that fad has run its course with young kids. The mascot originally started as a suspendered, straw-hatted barbershoppe-type performer, appeared in the 1980s as a skateboarding mouse, went out of style, then swerved right back into relevancy when the Sk8r boy image appeared, and is now fading back out of style — all without any changes ever being made to the character itself. If the owners just wait long enough, maybe it'll come back into style yet again.
- And how long until goofy cartoon animals are in style again?
- Amp'd Mobile briefly retained a commercial gimmick which involved elderly people talking like teenagers (i.e. one features an old black woman who uses street vernacular and says stuff like "Where you at?"; in another, an old white lady makes frequent usage of "like", "whatever" and "totally"). Later referenced on the The Simpsons:
Marge: Yeah, I'll bet there'll be old people talking like young people, like those cell phone commercials everybody hates.
- Also parodied in The Simpsons episode "Pranksta Rap", when Bart uses slang words that Lisa (and even Marge) knows aren't used anymore.
- Amp'd? Is that the non-US name for them? Because these commercials were for BOOST Mobile in California and Texas where I've lived during their run.
- AMP'D was a mobile phone company in the US as well.
- Some regional American dialects have used the phrase "where you at?" or even "where yat?" as a form of greeting going back several generations. Okay, so what's Boost Mobile's excuse? To make it even weirder, it had old white people using modern "black" slang.
- This Hubba Bubba commercial; note The Libby-sounding voice at the closer.
- This commercial for Cingular. It's been argued that it's intentional irony; this does not prevent it from being very annoying. A later commercial combined it with the "hip grandma".
- This commercial for Schick Quattro parodies this and mixes it with Sophisticated As Hell.
- What happens when a cell-phone advertisement becomes a big hit, but ad execs don't fully get the joke? Apparently, teenage girls talking to one another in textspeak... face-to-face.
- Parodied in a series of Volkswagen commercials which would end with a grey-haired, thickly accented Peter Stormare "un-pimping" someone's ride.
German Guy: Yo, Mike, you vant us to un-pimp dis ting say vhat?
Mike: What?
Car is launched from trebuchet
- The Cliff's Notes banner ads, some of which were, at the time of writing, visible on this very site. Among their misinterpretations of textspeak are spelling "who" as "hoo", a Zero Wing reference, and the mystifying term "xcore" (which is possibly "score" spelled with Xtreme Kool Letterz). Xcore sometimes means "hardcore."
- Gas stations advertising "We got the hooch" after the popular '90s song.
- EA's initial teaser for Skate 2 announced "We're dropping the deuce." While this can be read as "dropping number 2", its slang meaning is "taking a shit". This was possibly intentional, which makes one wonder how they felt about the product.
- Parodied in an Aim Trimark ad, where some executives, upon being told that their new shoe design is "sick", take most of the commercial to puzzle over whether or not that's a compliment. Then the Aim Trimark guy comes and says that he's not going to invest your money in a company run by these idiots.
- "It's The Legend Of Zelda and it's really rad! Those monsters from Gannon are pretty bad! Octoroks, Tektites and Leevers too, but with your help our hero pulls through!"
- For the Nintendo Entertainment System: Your parents help you hook it up.
- While on the topic of Nintendo, their "Play It Loud" campaign was the epitome of this trope. Give The World A Wedgie? Seriously?
- A billboard ad for forest fire safety: "Get Your Smokey On". Hmm, should the anti-drug ad on the other side of the sign be nervous?
- A sign for youth sports that says "Be a Playa". While it obviously was meant to say "Be a player of sports!", what it actually said was "Have promiscuous sex!"
- Is that the same one with the TV commercial with that cartoon referee? Completely agree. That word does not mean what they think it means.
- In 1968, Columbia Records ran a notorious ad in Rolling Stone showing a bunch of picket sign-toting young radicals in a jail cell with the caption "But The Man can't bust our music."
- In a commercial for Lunchables' newest product, "Wrapz", three kids lousily rap about the wrap. Possibly intentional, but still full of fail, and with slang like "A'ight" pronounced "Ah-Ite.".
- A recent Australian example for a rather mediocre car combines this with Buffy Speak, explaining that the Holden Astra "has extra features to an exclamation mark". Um...what?
- A poster advertising the Slush Puppies sold there. The right side of the poster is a generic image of some Slush Puppie cups, but the left side is in a league of its own. It consists of three open cell phones with text messages on them. They read, in order, "LuVN DA CHiLLLLLLLLLLLL TASTe and FLAVZZZzzzzzzz" "REal FRUIT JUICE ITS GOT VITA C!!!!!!!!" and "GOTTA GET A SLUSH PUPPIE PLUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
- You've gotta love that they miss the point of texting and chatspeak entirely: It compensates for a lack of space for typing by shortening everything, not adding as many extra characters as possible while shortening the rest of the word.
- Some people actually type like that, though. (I don't know why...)
- They get so used to using chatspeak that they still write everything that way, regardless of how useful it is or isn't.
- Similarly, Big Daddy Pizza posters saying Narmful things like "Every other slice is a sliver", "Wanna Piece of Me?", and "Show Your Hunger Who's Boss".
- There is a German PSA about hepatitis that features a hip-hoppin' syringe (filled with a hepatitis vaccine), singing about using it to protect yourself. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.
- Monster energy drinks. JUST LOOK AT THE CAN'S DESCRIPTION.
- Any Canadian Troper will be familiar with the horrible McCain Pizza Pockets commercials, which shows what happens when a company founded in a small Maritime town tries to make an ad that plays in Toronto's suburbs. The worst part is that, in spite of being mocked by the entire country, McCain kept churning the horrible ads out.
- Special mention must be made of K-Mart's Back to School 2009 ads, which went Beyond The Impossible in creating not one, but two horrendous pseudo-slang words that no decent human being will ever utter without monetary compensation: "Blingitude" and "Rockstare".
- Parodied in this Tim Horton's Steeped Tea commercial.
- One Disney Channel ad encouraged people to stay for the upcoming shows, because after whatever was coming next, "Then it's off the heezy with The Proud Family."
- A short lived McDonald's banner advert, apparently intended to appeal to the hip kids of the internet had the brilliant dialogue: "Quarter pounder for $1...I'd hit it". That does not mean what they think it does.
- A TV ad for the Game Genie in the late '80s featured a pair of Bill-and-Ted-soundalikes and opened with the phrase "Yo video game dudes, talk to me!"
Anime and Manga
- The TokyoPop translation of the Tokyo Mew Mew manga, which gave characters terrible catchphrases that clashed with their personalities (such as Ojou Minto's "Bust a move, girl") or just sounded awful (Ichigo's "Shocker!").
- Likewise, to appeal to less traditional manga readers, the Viz Media translation of Hot Gimmick gives everyone vaguely Valley Girl speech patterns. While this sounds reasonable coming from the mouth of the teenage protagonist, coming from traditionalist middle-aged Japanese housewives? Not so much.
- Speaking of Tokyopop, the OEL manga Bombos vs. Everything uses this trope liberally.
- Viz Media's translation of Love.com. Japanese teenagers do not talk like that.
- If an anime is subjected to a Macekre dubbing companies will often shove painfully bad slang into the scripts. Take for example this line from DiC's Sailor Moon dub:
"Serena:" This contest is going to be major boss, Luna!
- Let's not forget the infamous "KRILLIN'S IN DA HOUSE!" monstrosity from Dragonball Z. also from garlic jr arc " Totally crampin my style"
- Z has other examples as well, even in the superior re-dubbing of the first 60-some episodes - though they usually aren't quite as bad as the above. Krillin is the usual culprit, having actually said "totally radical" at least once, and describing Goku as "one bad dude".
- Yes. That's right, boys. Mondo cool.
- The fact that KRILLIN is the mouthpiece for this slang sounds like a subversion to me; even the other Z-Fighters don't rank him very high on the Cool scale (hot robot wife notwithstanding.)
- Demashita Powerpuff Girls Z. Not too much in the way of speaking, but most of their motions seem ripped from '90s "thug4lyfe" gangsta rap videos.
- Excel Saga had an episode where Excel and Hyatt had to be the teacher of a bunch of Delinquents who spoke in incredibly anachronistic slang. However, this was both in the original and intentional, as Hyatt actually questioned why they were talking like that.
- Parodied in the dub of an early episode of Pokemon, when Jessie and James disguise themselves as teenage girls who talk exclusively in over-the-top Totally Radical speak.
- The original Japanese version is making fun of the ganguro fashion fad, wherein Japanese girls bleach their hair, tan their skin, and wear lots and lots of Day Glo eyeliner and lip gloss - all of which makes them look like a cross between the stereotypical California Surfer/Valley Girl and some sort of monstrous crone. Not surprisingly, this is also parodied with Jynx, which is also modeled off of the Yama Uba (Mountain Hag).
- In the otherwise fairly good English dub of Code Geass, Kallen gives this priceless line:
Kallen: "You fellas know full well what this badass mother can do!"
- Who can forget this gem from the dub version of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
Elemental Hero Neos: If you go into this duel doubting yourself, Yubel will own you!
- Isn't that somewhat of an aversion or subversion since people playing the game actually talk like that, rather than it being what adults would presume kids would say?
- Maybe, but it's not a player saying it, it's some kind of cosmic monster spirit, so it's still stupid.
- Cosmic monster spirits wouldn't keep up with modern slang anyway.
- Humorously enough, this can also be taken literally.
- Not to mention "I'm gonna throw down a face down!"
- Intentionally invoked with Bakura in a few episodes of Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series.
- Rad, of Transformers Armada is infamous for his catchphrase "Wicked sweet!", as well as the meme "I want to tell you about the Transformers!"... and, well, just look at his name.
- The infamous 4kids dub of One Piece changed the original Japanese opening (which they even had translated) into a rap song. A very bad rap song.
- The Mahou Sensei Negima manga has this problem in a few volumes, depending on who's doing the translation. The first volume practically borders on a Gag Dub. Volume 5 is a little better, but having characters actually say "OMG" and "WTF" does not work well.
- In the .hack//SIGN DVD exclusive episode "Unison," there is a lovely conversation between Balmung, who is an office worker in the real world, and Kite.
Balmung: This shindig looks like the bomb-diggity.
Kite: What did you say?
Balmung: What I mean is, it's not bad at all.
- Interestingly the Japanese script had Balmung speaking normally: Kite's reaction is because Balmung praised Helba and her party, who previously only had his contempt
Comic Books
- In the early Silver Age, Snapper Carr was essentially the Justice League Of America's collective sidekick. He spoke in constant slang and was always fixing hot rods, going to baseball games, and so on.
- Acknowledged in the JLA/Avengers Cross Over when Marvel's Rick Jones says that Carr is an okay guy "no matter how he talks".
- Bob Haney's work on the original Teen Titans comics of the mid-to-late 1960s could be the archetype of this trope. The least subtle display taking place within one such issue which featured Robin deducing that that a message from an adolescent was a forgery based on its "vernacular". Daddy-O.
- In fact, most slang in comics of that era sounds really stupid; Marvel tended to be ahead of the pack, but not by much.
- A number of other comic book examples are scrutinized here.
- An issue of Deadpool spoofed this when the title character time travels back to the 1960s and encounters the then-current versions of Spider-Man's cast. Their constant overuse of inexplicable 60s slang is a running gag throughout the issue, with Mary Jane being the worst offender. And upon hearing Harry Osbourn speak, Deadpool actually asks if he is having a stroke.
- An issue of Superboy addresses this when the titular character seeks to reinvent himself after being given the cold shoulder by a girl for his over-use of early-90's cliches and expressions. However, all this accomplishes is trading sunglasses for bug-eyes (which were never seen again), a leather jacket for a PVC one, loses the piercings for a scruffy goatee, ditches his belts all together, and saying "Word. Reprezent." instead of "Don't Mess with the S!"
- In NextWave, Boom Boom uses phrases like "Oh noes!" and "ZOMG!" in both everyday conversation and periods of extreme stress. However, this is due to her actually being completely brainless, in the most literal sense of the word. Warren Ellis, the comic's writer, practically lives on the Internet and was taking the opportunity to lambast some of its stupider members.
- The acid overdose survivor Arkady in Freakangels apparently starts talking in lolcat when drunk. "I can has vodka" indeed.
- DC Comics's miniseries The Weird from the late eighties had the "son" of its titular character speak in terribly inaccurate slang — flying with his pseudo-father was apparently "bogus" and The Weird's abilities were "the dudest". Jim Starlin: good writer, terrible slangologist...
- The front cover of DC's Raven miniseries proudly states, "Finally in Her Own Emo Series!". Someone at DC is apparently unaware that emo, when applied to a person, is generally considered an insult.
- In Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the new Robin and the teenaged members of the Mutant gang use slang created for the comic, like "he's gone totally billy" and "She don't shiv".
- Fray's anning hab of abrevving half of the words in every sent she speaks has a sim eff to the more comm vers of this tro on a lot of peep; That is, making it both hard to under and frustringly diff to igno.
- Lampshaded in Buffy Season 8 story arc The Time of Your Life, where Buffy is thrust forward in time and actually meets Fray. Upon hearing Fray speak, Buffy's response is, "Uh...English?"
- Archie Comics are notorious for this trope. For example, one late-80s story had a lifeguard tell a surfing Veronica, "I really dig the way you attacked those waves with your rad moves". Around the same time, an in-house ad for an Archie calendar featured a cartoon teenager, sporting a ridiculous multi-coloured mohawk, oversized shades that Elton John would reject, and mismatched-colour clothes, telling the reader, "I ordered mine!" Like gnarly, daddy-o, if a rad hepcat teen like him bought one, I better slap down the bread too, yo yo yo.
- Played with in a story titled "Lingo Lesson". In it, Archie talks like this, as does a brownie troop that his mom leads. It drives Archie's dad nuts.
- Ah, Jubilee...she's like totally like radical. Y'know? Like with her ultimately killer shades, and like totally far out outfits? Like, too bad about like the parentals being all dead like. This is like how normal teenagers like talk...right?
Film
- This is part of the plot in the first Scooby Doo movie: the gang starts getting suspicious when those who arrive at the island resort speak like any average teenager, while those who leave speak using awful Totally Radical slang. It's because they're actually monsters wearing a human skin, and Scrappy Doo taught them how to speak like "normal teenagers".
- The movie Gleaming the Cube is named after a particularly interesting-sounding skateboarding term one of the writers overheard from a crew member's son. The boy had made the phrase up on the spot.
- The Jets in the stage/film musical West Side Story speak (and sing) in a street language including both actual Fifties slang and words that Arthur Laurents made up.
- The film Juno suffers from this in the first half, though it's heavily debated if it's either the writer, Diablo Cody, trying to be hip and "indie" or if it's simply she being ironic. Most agree with the former.
- With the release of Jennifers Body, it would appear Diablo Cody suffers from this trope on a constant basis.
- Struck me as a rare deliberate use of this trope, to make the dialogue unique and charming even if not realistic. Much like the Buffyverse.
- Flight of the Navigator: When the technical-talking ship's AI scans David's brain, for some reason (not the least of which he's voiced by Paul Reubens), it starts speaking like Pee Wee Herman.
- This scene from Camp Rock:
Tess: makes random hand signs
Caitlyn: Okay, what is that?
Ella: She said "Whatever, major loser."
- This was outdated ASL slang from the 90s. She made a W, E (looking-ish thing), L on her forehead.
- In Better Off Dead, there is a scene where the teenage protagonist's father attempts to connect with his son while awkwardly using slang he is reading from a book on how to communicate with teenagers. He still gets some of it wrong, saying things like "Right off!"
- Who can forget the immortal scene from Fern Gully The Last Rainforest? We still have no idea if it was meant to be a satire (note Crysta's reaction) or if the writers were serious:
Zack: You know — bodacious, bad, tubular...
*Zack looks meaningfully into Crysta's eyes*
Zack: As in, you are one bodacious babe.
- It was probably something resembling a satire; when it becomes clear to everyone that Zack is making sense only to himself-and that his exaggerated surfer dude persona prevents him from converting to normal English to explain just what the hell he thinks he's talking about-Batty quips, "Awesome use of the language, dude."
- Spoofed in Shrek the Third, where Shrek spews out a string of hip-hop slang in a failed attempt to relate to Artie.
Artie: Help! I've been kidnapped by a monster that's trying to relate to me!
- In the movie Disturbing Behavior, Katie Holmes' character uses the term "razor" as analogous to "cool" or "sweet".
- The Neverending Story III was just... ugh. Definitely only one of the many problems with this film (the primary being its existence) we had school bullies being referred to, by the other students, as "The Nasties," and Bastian's step-sister referred to his sense of style as being "Un."
- Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure seems to intentionally embrace this. Much of the comedy comes from the two characters' flamboyantly silly version of California teen slang, which turns out to have swept the world in a utopic future. Their legacy includes two prime directives: "Be excellent to each other," and "Party on, dude!"
- However, the movie was popular enough that its slang actually did catch on, for at least a while. (And admit it, you've used "Be excellent to each other" unironically at least once.) This is arguably a wellspring of a number of other Totally Radical attempts, because some people remember that the movie's slang caught on in a big way... but didn't notice when the fads passed.
- In the modern remake of Freaky Friday, not only the dialogue, but the themes of the movie seem Totally Radical, adjacent to Adults Are Useless. The conversation in the restaurant where Anna (in the body of Tess, her mother) is talking with Jake over contemporary music (like they have a college degree in it) and then singing along with a rock cover "Baby One More Time" comes off as Totally Radical. The moral of the story seems to be that teenagers just need to be left alone, and not relate to their parents (or vice versa), because neither can understand each other.
- How can we forget Terminator 2, which actually caused a Defictionalization with "Hasta la vista, baby." None for "No problem-o," though.
- "Hasta la vista, baby," was far from unheard of before that film. It's just that T2 particularly popularized it. The film really took it to a whole new level.
- A common complaint critics leveled at Steven Spielberg's Hook was that it invoked this trope with its approach to the Lost Boys, who ride around on skateboards, play basketball, and refer to Peter Pan as "The Pan". ("Pan the Man" at one point.) Leonard Maltin complained that they "would be more at home in a McDonald's commercial."
- I always thought that "They think he's a righteous dooood" sounded a little strange from Ferris Buellers Day Off.
- I always thought that having this line delivered by the matronly school secretary was a deliberate parody of this trope.
- Dogma had "Buddy Christ" with the Catholic Church trying to get the youth demographic.
- This Troper has seen the statue displayed unironically at Catholic Schools.
- Mean Creek for the most part is a pretty strong aversion of this trope, the teen talk is realistic and full of realistic profanity instead of cheesy slang, things like drinking, smoking and marijuana use are straight up addressed, and the Truth or Dare game in it isn't your standard fiction one with only mildly embarrassing PG-rated aspects. However writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes did fail to realize that the teens of 2004 don't have the exact same interests teens in his day did, and don't consider Super Soakers the best thing since sliced bread or fantasize about Heather Locklear. Throwing your backpack in your direction only to pick it up and throw it again also seems more like a 90s thing than something common today.
Literature
- The girls in the Babysitters Club books rarely say "cool"; they almost always replace it with some random word that no teenager in the history of the English language has ever said, such as "dibble" to mean "incredible". To be fair, it is explicitly stated that they invented those words.
- They also use a fair amount of actual outdated slang, as much of the series seems to be stuck in Ann Martin's own 1960s childhood. In one particularly cringe-worthy example, Claudia uses the phrase "What a hoot!" in a completely non-ironic manner.
- Likewise, the band in The Last Days use the word "fawesome". Over. And Over. And Over. And Over. And Over.
- In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Raoul Duke picks up some of the literature available at the anti-drug conference and flips through it. He notes that none of what is described as "drug culture slang" is correct, specifically noting the use of the word "tea shades" for sunglasses.
- The Film Of The Book further emphasizes this disconnect by having a lecturer using '50s slang (the story is set in 1971) as part of a laughably inaccurate description of the drug scene.
- In Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series, the majority of which is set between 1914 and 1945, we get an early 20th century version that could be considered a subtle parody: numerous characters comment on the word "swell" replacing "bully," and their difficulty adjusting.
- Turtledove is also fond of using the phrase "lick 'em" (It basically means "we'll kick their ass!"). It shows up in just about every time period his books are set in: 1880s, 1910s, 1940s, 2080s...
- In the totally non-existent Dune prequels there are things called 'Cymeks,' apearently trying to combine 'cyborg' and 'mech' with a Really Kool K. Cybernetic and mechanical, huh?
- Probably the oldest example here, PG Wodehouse used a lot of slang from the 1890s in his works.
- The series Percy Jackson and the Olympians is told in first person point-of-view of a modern "tween". In the adult author's attempt to pander to the "tween" audience, he overuses out-of-date or incorrect slang to the point of being annoying.
- Actually, I don't see him using much more than the multi-generational "cool" and "dude", which, being a teen, I know is still very popular. Other than that, he name-drops junk food brands, which is excusable and mostly accurate. The biggest problem I see is that a kid branded as a juvenile delinquent and put in schools for the "mental" kids should probably be using "rougher" slang than the general population - but, because Reality Is Unrealistic, that would probably come of as more Totally Radical.
- In the column "Dude, Read All About It," Dave Barry explains how newspapers have been trying to attract younger readers to boost their declining readership:
If you read your newspaper carefully, you'll notice that you're seeing fewer stories with uninviting, incomprehensible, newspaper-ese headlines like PANEL NIXES TRADE PACT, and more punchy, "with-it" headlines designed to appeal to today's young people, like PANEL NIXES TRADE PACT, DUDE.
- Subverted in Garth Nix Keys To The Kingdom, when the characters seem to use offbeat slang. If the reader pays attention, they realize the series is actually Twenty Minutes Into The Future, and it's not confirmed that the characters are even speaking English.
- E.E. Smith's Lensman series is set at some point in the indeterminate future in which interstellar travel and communication is a relatively casual matter. While "Doc" Smith essentially created the 'space opera' genre, his characters use slang based on 1920s United States constructions, such as a male addressing a female as "toots".
- There's also a fair amount of constructed slang, such as the substitution "QX" for "OK," and the constant use of the word "jets" for... personal ability and competence or something like that.
- Parodied hilariously in Randall Garrett's short story Backstage Lensmen where the slang gets so thick that even the characters don't understand what they are talking about.
- Much of the communication in the series is done telepathically using the Lenses, which can be used to talk to everything from humans to Starfish Aliens. The author's use of 1920s-era slang may be a translation convention, intended to represent to the reader the way that Kinnison's thoughts sound inside his own head. It still sounds really weird, and it contributes to the Zeerust atmosphere of the series.
- The Animorphs usually steered clear of Totally Radical by just not having their characters use slang. For a period lasting 2 or 3 books, however, they tried to introduce "honkin'" as a slang term. It didn't stick.
- Lampshaded in a Discworld footnote of a footnote describing the final test of the monks of Cool:
"Yo*, my son. Which of these is the most stylish thing to wear?" "Hey, whichever I choose."
*Cool, but not necessarily up to date.
Live Action TV
- The masterful and hilarious Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! episode "The Derrick and Jim Show" creates an intentional nightmare of Clinton Era MTV clichés, What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome moments and Xtreme Kool Letterz.
- On Gap, a few of the lead characters use Totally Radical slang, such as "dude", "totally", and "awesome". However, the offhand and casual way the characters use it makes it seem more believable.
- Witness any
parody depiction of the 1960s youth culture in Dragnet 1967.
- The complete and utter disconnection of late-1960s/early 1970s television comedy from the sensibilities of the Baby Boomer generation was one of the things that spurred Lorne Michaels to create Saturday Night Live.
- Rebellious urban teen sidekick Ace in 1980s Doctor Who. ("Gordon Bennett, what a toerag!") For once, not the fault of the writer, who based her original dialogue on actual teenagers he'd actually met, but of Media Watchdogs who decided that authenticity was no excuse for a TV youngster using that kind of language, thank you, and insisted it be Bowdlerised.
- She also liked to say the word "Ace" itself, which naturally leads to anyone not familiar with that slang term to think she's just saying her own name, like a Pokemon.
- Russell T Davies mocked this in his ''Who'' novel Damaged Goods. When the Doctor returns to a rough 1987 urban housing estate he expect another teenage girl to talk and act like Ace. She puts him straight.
- The otherwise enjoyable late '80's story The Greatest Show in the Galaxy features (and opens with) a rapping circus ringmaster whose rap falls somewhere between hilarious, and "Oh God, my ears". Fortunately he's balanced out by the Circus Of Fear and Monster Clowns. Even the Doctor (briefly) gets in on the act.
- Brand-new invented slang was one of the keys to the success of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This has also helped prevent the show from becoming obviously (and painfully!) dated, as slang may change but the cadence and patterns mostly don't.
- However, just about every pop culture reference made by the characters on the show came from an era when the writers of the show were younger, but the characters hadn't been born. Sure, there's no reason a modern teen can't enjoy Monty Python or the original Star Wars, but anything that became popular among teenagers after 1995 or so (such as manga) pretty much never showed up, except for a few references to Harry Potter and Dragon Ball.
- Well, there was a reference to Trogdor the Burninator being used in the last season. Doesn't make up for the first episode, which featured Buffy and Cordelia discussing the hotness of James Spader... Mistakes Were Made, people.
- In Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, the episode "Just Like Me", when a fight breaks out between Tyzonn and Will, team leader Mack tells them to "Put your personal junk in your trunk." This... doesn't come off sounding right.
- Averted in Summer Heights High. Chris Lilley, the show's creator who also plays the three main characters, is unnervingly accurate as the teenage girl, Ja'mie. The show uses up-to-date slang and teenage speech mannerisms, as well as employing a realistic level of coarse language (which, amongst hormonal teenagers trying to sound cool, is a lot).
Ja`mie: Oh my god, ties are so random. Like, what are they anyway, just pieces of fabric?
- Parodied in an episode of News Radio: Bill is hired to advertise a malt liquor during news breaks, and adopts a "ghetto voice" during his ads, much to the chagrin of Catherine. Catherine ends up giving Bill a stream of "street slang" that she says will make the commercial seem more hip, that just makes him sound ridiculous ("It's got that upstate prison flavor that'll make your feet stank all night long!").
- Also parodied in their A Day At The Bizarro In Space episode, where "Gazizzah", one of the made-up words, has become a common greeting.
- The show Pizza is responsible for putting the phrase "fully sick" and "stooge" into the mouths of thousands of
bogans Australians bogans. And Uncle Tobey's together with Thorpie helped kill it. To elaborate for Non-Australians: If you want to kill slang, put it in the mouth of a metrosexual swimmer in an advertisement for cereal.
- Played with in an episode ofHow I Met Your Mother: when Robin dates an older man, his Totally Radical speech patterns (part surfer, part stoner) make him seem even older.
- Parodied in this Armstrong & Miller sketch. Have you ever asked yourself what it would be like if RAF pilots talked this way?
- Speaking of the RAF, there's this Monty Python sketch, in which slang totally fails as a tool of communication.
- In the US version of The Office, Michael frequently receives lessons in "black people phrases" from warehouse worker Darryl, never quite catching on that Darryl's just screwing with him.
- Parodied in the first several season of The Red Green Show, with über-geek Harold trying to seem "cool" and "radical", but merely revealing himself as the dork he was. Red's own speeches to teenage viewers were ironically much more authentic, as he didn't even bother trying to relate to them in the same way and just talked like an ordinary middle-aged guy.
- The Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Goodbye to That" featured this bit of dialogue from a young kid playing on an Xbox 360: "Man up, noob. You don't want to get owned. Stop crying about your Internet connection and learn to play. [doorbell rings] I gotta AFK a minute." It just comes off as forced. Sadly, most Xbox Live players do sound exactly like this. Also, the kid is like 11 or 12 years old. Ironically, he's about to get his ass handed to him by a Terminator.
- There is no natural way to speak like that outside of a chat box. Hell, even there it's not very natural. It's like overusing curse words; clunky and awkward. Like teenagers having sex. Like [et cetera, et cetera.]
- Season one, episode four of Veronica Mars is one big long Totally Radical marathon. Veronica and Wallace go undercover to end a credit card fraud scheme perpetrated by a pair of nerds called the "Silicon Mafia" developing a new game which will "make Quake look like Asteroids." Part of their scheme involves tricking the evil nerds into believing they've been invited to a demonstration of The Matrix MMORPG, which no one cared about in the first place. Apparently, it has "rag-doll effects." And "the physics engine is killer." The list goes on. And on. Also features a painful case of Pac Man Fever.
- Dark Angel has its share of examples, but one seems deliberate: it is perfectly in character for hyper-square Normal to name his messenger service—wait for it—Jam Pony.
- Mercilessly spoofed in the short-lived Funky Squad, an Australian take-off of American '70s cop shows like The Mod Squad.
- Parodied in Not Going Out: Lee has found yet another dead-end job, so Kate asks him if he bothered to look at some career leaflets she got for him. He dismissively says that they're all aimed at kids, citing a slogan: "Do you want a career, innit?" Kate reads the leaflet; the slogan in question is actually "Do you want a career in IT?"
- Beach Blanket Boo Boo
- The long-running Australian soap Neighbours caught on that youngsters spend lots of time playing computer games. Apparently they only got access to one game though, so for years, whenever they showed a character playing computer games, the soundtrack featured the distinctive sounds of Magic Carpet...
- Similarly, an episode of Zoey 101 had stereotypical computer geeks saying stuff like "LOL!" These are typed expressions, though they're occasionally said out loud, either by the savvy in a spirit of ironic playfulness, or by the clueless through a lack of understanding. Guess which category the writers fell into.
- Same thing goes for alternate spellings of certain words, such as "pwn" for example. Anybody who pronounces the "p" should be doing it in the most ironic/sarcastic way possible.
- The Season Two episode from Ugly Betty when Betty writes an article for Hot Flash, only to have Claire edit the hell out of it to make it sound more "youthful". Betty herself is indignant, and to her chagrin every single person who talks to her about the article comments on it. ("...Natch?")
- Spoofed in an episode of Hannah Montana; Miley goes to see a dentist, who greets her using a mish-mash of outdated slang. When Miley calls him out on this, the dentist says that he's just trying to be relatable, to which she quips, "To what, the 1970s?"
- Two And A Half Men had an episode where Charlie invited his latest girlfriend (a near doppleganger for his own mother) and her two kids. Jake gives Charlie a series of advice on how to handle the kids: don't rub their heads, don't call them "little dudes", don't raise your hand and say "high five" and don't ask if they would like ice cream. When they arrive, cue Alan who of course chains everything Jake had warned against, to the dismay of eveyone around. Alan doesn't even notice and enthusiastically plows through the entire list.
- In the early 1990s, the Game Show Wheel Of Fortune tried out a "Slang" category for some of its puzzles. Most of the slang used was dated, obscure or just plain nonexistant (e.g. OFF THE BEAM, LET'S CUT OUT OF HERE).
- Road Rules (the bastard cousin of The Real World) had a season simply titled Road Rules Xtreme (yes, with an X). This aired in the Aughties. And replaced the standard intro ("Throw out your old rules, these are the road rules") for a crappy metal song where the only lyrics were someone screeching "LIKE A MOTHERF**KER FROM HELL!" The show went on hiatus for a loooooong time after that.
Music
- The band "Leetstreet Boys" seems to be purposefully invoking this trope in their songs, most notably in the song "Yuri The One For Me". The band members can't possibly be younger than mid twenties, and the lyrics include such lines as:
"Like a Pokemon I Pikachu."
"You and I make Nintendo Wii
Will together be World Of Warcraft Level 70."
" Sephy's mom has got it goin' on."
Newspaper Comics
- For Better Or For Worse creator Lynn Johnston, in an effort not to sound dated ten seconds later, made up her own teenage slang phrases, which, since they were still being coined by a middle-aged woman, tended to sound pretty awkward anyway. Notable examples include "going/gone roadside" (ie, putting out); also, "foob" (a portmanteau of "fool" and "boob"), close enough to the strip's actual acronym that snarkers now routinely call the strip Foob.
- This really shined through because, well, it was a newspaper comic, which are not known for giving their readers the benefit of the doubt in intelligence... between that and just not having much space, Johnston would thus have to explain what her made-up slang meant... with slang or euphemisms that were Totally Radical.
- In Zits, Jeremy had to teach his dad not to say "What's up, dood?" Unfortunately, though he could pronounce "Whatup, dude?" (relatively in use at time of publishing), he had no idea what it meant.
- Parodied in one strip where Jeremy tries to get a slang word of his own invention to catch on: "Plasmic". It works about as well as you'd expect.
Radio
- The Reduced Shakespeare Company Radio Show:
Reed: I told you, Adam, Antony and Cleopatra has nothing to do with rap!
Adam: Oh yeah? Well, where does Cleopatra come from?
Reed: Egypt.
Adam: And what continent is Egypt on?
Reed: Africa.
Adam: Africa... African-Americans... rap! Boom! Hit it!
There was a red-hot mama and her name was Cleo
A babe born in Egypt but she moved to Italy-o
She hooked up with a dude who was built like a tree
Her old man's name was Mark An-an-an-an-an-an-an-an-
Video Games
Web Animation
- 90's Kids from Atop The Fourth Wall who is the physical embodiement of the Dark Age of comic books.
- Parodied on Homestar Runner, in Strong Bad Email #164, looking old. Strong Bad fears he's losing the "youth vote" of "young parsons who eat their yogurt through a tube", and thus calls an "emergency marketing meeting". The Cheat suggests frenetic, MTV-style editing, while Bubs thinks adding a lowercase "i" to the front of words is a good idea. Ultimately he undergoes a "lace-lift" which results in the opposite of the intended effect so that he ends up looking and sounding like his own great-grandmother.
- Several of the "Awesome" videos on Newgrounds use this trope for comic effect with characters such as Sonic and Gray Fox. "Yo yo yo B-boy Snake-Dawg-G..."
- My client has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of chilling out!
Web Comics
- Parodied throughout Kid Radd, as the main character is from an 80s Video Game which used this trope. "Woo, air guitar!"
- This Dr. McNinja strip manages to replace the Totally with Epic. King Radical is a recurring character riff on the trope, a villain known for such deeds as hijacking trucks carrying "Xtreme snacks." Subverted with that example when the Doctor finds a note from Radical in the truck stating that while his guess was good, Radical prefers fresh and locally-grown organic food.
- Deconstructed in xkcd.
- Achewood creator Chris Onstad makes a more successful effort to simulate teen slang indirectly than For Better Or For Worse. "Little Nephew" Charley holds forth in a half-recognizable, half-invented hip-hop lingo with Xtreme Kool Letterz. See Charley's blog for best examples.
Web Original
Western Animation
Real Life
- Too many church signs. This could be a Simpsons sign gag, and this (currently inactive link) is where the pic at the top of the page came from.
- If anybody has heard of any of the 20 Internet Acronyms Every Parent Should Know, please contact your local police station post-haste; they could definitely use you as a telepathic detective.
- The updated list of 50 acronyms contains some real corkers. A/S/L is legit, as pointed out, along with J/O. As are 1337 and 420 (the latter a marijuana reference) but both are a little out of place in a list that seems to concern itself mainly with cybersex. The rest seem to be initialisms of quite arbitrary phrases. Apparently, banana means penis. And "kitty" means vagina, obviously a pun on "pussy". Using either is a good way to give your cybersex session that little something extra.
- Objective Ministries is a Stealth Parody of fundamentalist Christianity; their Zounds! Youth Rock Ministry is an equally stealthy parody of this trope, to the point where it was originally posted on this page as a straight example.
- In 1992, a New York Times columnist wrote a glossary of "Seattle grunge slang" for that paper. He didn't make it all up, but his cunning informant did. The gullible reporter reported it as fact. Some of the slang actually made its way into the mediasphere in minor ways. For example, it inspired the title of the short-lived series Harsh Realm (very loosely based on a comic book called The Realm).
- Michael Steele, the new chairman of the RNC, drew a great deal of satire for promising an "off the hook" PR campaign in "urban-suburban hip-hop settings", among many such 'cool' comments.
- A great many conservatives, in an effort to liken their objections to the federal budget to the colonists' objections to British taxation, i.e. the Boston Tea Party, have been urging their followers to "teabag Obama/Congress/America", seemingly unaware of the testicle-based sex act the word refers to in slang. Certainly, the savvier members of the movement changed their rhetoric, but it was too late for The Daily Show and the like not to continuously mock it as such.
- You've got it backwards. The various groups setting up the "tea parties" did mail tea bags to politicians, but there was no language of "tea bagging" anyone. News commentators such as Rachael Maddow and Anderson Cooper marginalized the protests by referring to "tea bagging" and then the protestors took up the language as a Take That.
- I saw the news reports at the time. The phrase tea bagging was used in total seriousness and not an intentional marginalization.
- The annotation by to this article by Seanbaby points out an especially lame example from a company pamphlet shilling gamer chairs. His mockery may have even caused to company to pull the dialogue.
- At some award show a few years ago, Joan Rivers made a comment about a rapper along the lines of "always getting some bling for him and his crew." *cringe, facepalm*
- In an effort to appeal to appeal to a younger crowd, Pizza Hut has decided to change its name to "The Hut."
- As in Jabba?
- Or perhaps more appropriately, er, Pizza?
- Speaking of shortened brand names, "Mtn Dew", anybody?
- While campaigning in 2008, Mitt Romney once attempted to relate to the people by having his picture taken with bystanders while talking about camera phones and (awkwardly) using phrases such as "Who let the dogs out? Woof! Woof!" and talking about "bling bling" To a crowd of comprising mostly of African-Americans. On MLK Day.
- This horrifying joke, found on a Laffy Taffy wrapper:
Q: What did one cool alien say to the other?
A: Yo! You're a far-out dude!
- Similar to the above-mentioned "The Hut", Radio Shack is in the process of changing its name to "The Shack".
- To encourage young people to go to the lakes district, some council re-recorded Some beautiful wordsworth poetry as a rap song, along with a GOD DAMNED GUY IN A SQUIRREL SUIT. Called MC Nuts. If you think this sounds like an awesome idea, you need to be ritually executed. Here it is, in all it's horror Holy hell
- Another branding example: Denver's CW station, KWGN, calls itself "The Deuce" in an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic. On-air personality Chris Parente even said on the day of the change that it was "totally radical".
- Infamous source of insane fundamentalist rambling Conservapedia, apparenlty, thinks Ragsnaozzle Gus Gus is a slang term. For what, nobody knows. Naturally, due to the wiki nature of the site and the sheer insanity of the rest of it, we can't tell whether it's serious or not, but given it's been there since February 2009 at least...
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