25 More Words You Need This Summer

Soash Meads, Side Quests, SIA, Sufferingcorn, and more

I’m back with another set of 25 new words I learned this summer! If you missed the first set of new summer words, including Cigarette Wife, Zimpin, and Extrinsic Drift, read them here.

As anthropologist Mary Douglas once said, “as learning proceeds, objects are named. Their names then affect the way they are perceived next time.”

We are prone to name things so that we can deal with them, and so we can persuade others to treat them a certain way. Every new name has a spin, a lean, a hidden instruction, and without a name, we don’t know what to do.

Words are perishable—use ‘em while ya can!

Now, onto the words.

Screenlife

1. Alcoholic Glamour- This is the normalization and romanticization of alcohol use disorder. Pronounce Alcoholic Glamour with a French flare like you’re saying L’amour. Like the Heroine chic of the 90s, Alcoholic Glamour fetishizes alcohol addiction. Dylan Mulvaney plucks Bud Lights from a clear cupcake carousel alone in a bubble bath. Attractive women chug gigantic glasses of wine. Men share shirtless selfies in the shower with artistic craft brew cans.

   

   Dylan Mulvaney with enough Bud Light to kill a girl.

2. Soash Meads- Hits of social media used like a drug. When you drink from the soash meads you might feel better for a second, but then comes the hangover… a sense of inferiority, of insecurity, depression.

3. SufferingCorn- SufferingCorn refers to content that people watch of other people suffering emotionally. Corn is a stand-in word for porn because social platforms don’t want people using the word porn. An example of sufferingcorn would be breakup diaries on Youtube or short-form content of girls just crying in their rooms. This is different from traumaporn or watching war footage. Sufferingcorn is really about performative domestic emotional displays. An example with 2.8 million views:

4. RelationshipCorn- RelationshipCorn is the opposite of sufferingcorn. It is about watching happy, idealized couples. It is about forming parasocial relationships with social media couples. Relationshipcorn glamorizes stereotypical gender roles and monogamy. Like the soash meads, watching it leads to feelings of inferiority. Relationshipcorn depicts idealized, fantasy romances; they aren’t real, so like photoshopped bodies, you can’t achieve them. Manifestelle describes Relationshipcorn’s harmful effects in more detail.

5. Garmonbozia- Garmonbozia emerged from David Lynch's show Twin Peaks and from the Twin Peaks fandom. It means all pain and suffering consumed on television. It is a dark force that decays culture. Garmonbozia takes the physical shape of creamed corn in the show, but it means so much more. People have very complex geographical theories about garmonbozia’s origins. It is negative energy transmitted across screens. Humans and evil feed off it like vampires. Watch this for a brilliant five-hour analysis of David Lynch’s feelings about Garmonbozia, TV, and screencorn. Garmonbozia is a television precursor to sufferingcorn. (Btw, yesterday was the 31st anniversary of Lynch’s Twin Peak’s film, Fire Walk With Me. Another fun fact: VHS tapes of this movie are sprinkled throughout episodes of Seinfeld in the background sets.)

Screen cap from Twin Peaks the Return showing the Garmonbozia

6. Privital Drift- The movement of the domestic/private quotidian into the public sphere facilitated by social media. This drift is not for political reasons but serves consumerism, “content,” voyeurism, fetishism, and sex capitalism. Examples: TikToks from under the covers, girls livestream brushing their teeth, filming everything in your fridge. The expectation of no privacy.

   BedLife

7. Not Girl Summer- Very different from the Hot Girl Summer of 2019-2020. Not girl summer is about totally checking out and staying inside your bedroom to avoid the real world and also to avoid the extreme heat and bad air quality.

8. Bed Rotting- The GenZ anti-capitalist, rest-culture practice of laying in bed all day and doom-scrolling or watching streaming. Not-Girl summer involves a lot of bed rotting.

9. MentyB’s- I guess this one actually arose on TikTok during the pandemic, but I didn’t catch on until now. A MentyB is a shruggy way to say mental breakdown and can be applied to a broad spectrum of mental struggles, from being locked up for 72 hours in a psych ward to just a stressful situation. It is trivial, yet serious. Gallows humor at its finest.

10. Retire from the Plot (RFTP)- Unlike when you lost the plot, retiring from the plot is a choice. You exit the game metaphorically and leave the rat race, or bedrot, or just stop being in the storyline people seem to want you in. First heard this used in reference to Caroline Calloway, author of the memoir Scammer, from an interview with Seltzer Rocks.

11. Serial Friction- Erotic ebooks and short stories posted online, on KU, Wattpad, and Medium. These are quite popular and mostly read and watched by women who consume them daily.

12. Daybook- We used to call them Novellas—the Daybook can be read in one day. They are between 7k-5k words. People also like these because then they can say they read more books per month or per year. They are under 200 pages. My first book, Cactus Friends, is a daybook, coming in at 47,000 words. Another recent example: Open Throat by Henry Hoke, cited as one of the best novels of 2023, but comes in at only 176 pages.

    

    Cactus Friends, my first novel, also a Daybook. Turned sideways so you can see the length more clearly.

    GamerLife

13. Main Quests- Meaningful life goals that you focus on one hundred percent, like finding a satisfying job or a life partner.

14. Side Quests- Everything that distracts you from your Main Quest, from Fboys to Instagram.

15. NPC- Y’all probably know this one already, but just in case, an NPC is a non-player-character, which refers to video game characters that are just there in the background like extras. NPC has come to mean an insult hurled at people who are like sheep or very basic, who don’t seem to think for themselves. More recently, TikTokers started performing as NPCs. One NPC performer from Montreal, PinkyDoll, has gained thousands of followers and successfully monetized pretending to be an NPC. She reportedly makes $7,000 dollars a day acting like an NPC.

    

    PinkyDoll pops popcorn with a hair straightener

16. Main Character Energy- When you walk into the room like you own it. When you are the main character in your own main quest movie.

17. Villan Energy- When you stand out by looking like a villain. Reported to be more powerful than main character energy. First head used by the musician Qveen Herby. Her haircut in the image below typifies villain energy.

Qveen Herby in her Villian Energy

SummerLife

18. Sodies- Soda that isn’t diet. The implication is unhealthy but delicious. Can also mean two chunky girlfriends. You can drink sodies with your sodies. Originated from a viral clip of Amy and Tammy from the TLC show “1,000lb Sisters” talking about their soda pop drinking habits. Sodies are the perfect refreshment for Summer in America.

You know it’s a thing when people get tattoos of it.

19. Summer in America (SIA)- This is a phrase uttered with a shrug as an explanation for wild behavior that could only be witnessed during the summer in America. The acronym harkens to TIA, which gained popularity in the 2000s and meant “This is Africa,” used as an explanation by expats in Africa to explain the kinds of crazy things you could only possibly see in Africa during that time period. An example of SIA/Summer in America is the Alabama River Boat Brawl.

Screen caps from the now-famous hat toss in the Alabama Riverboat Brawl.

20. Florida Drift- When extreme or fringe/conspiracy ideas move to the mainstream.

21. Senior Death Week- The phenomenon where every summer recently graduated high school seniors die in strange deaths while celebrating their newfound adulthood, often during senior beach week. Example: the teen who jumped from a Bahama cruise ship and got immediately eaten by a shark. It plays on the term Senior Beach Weak. This is also, Summer in America.

22. FloridaCore- Fashion that looks very Florida. For example, wearing swimwear or beachwear as everyday clothes, or airbrushed T-shirts, fringe, outfits that look like what Disney World tourists would wear. Example: JLO in FloridaCore

    

    JloLIfe

23. Ho-lygamy- A woman exercising her sexual options with glorious intention. Instead of a CEO, she’s a CEHo, the boss of her own sexuality. She may have five sugar daddies, or do a one-night stand once a week. She may engage solely with F*ck boys. Can also apply to men who only sleep with Hos. They are also practicing ho-lygamy.

24. Resting Rich Face (RRR)- Think Gweneth Paltrow. Think botox. Think Ice Queen. It’s giving judgment. It’s giving expensive skin cream.

    

    Lucille Bluth, from Arrested Development, early practicer of RRR.

25. Luxury Beliefs- The term Luxury Beliefs was coined by writer Rob Henderson to describe the way some affluent Americans will adopt certain beliefs as status symbols, but often the outcome of the beliefs wouldn’t impact them due to their income. This phrase is weaponized by both sides of the aisle. Things accused of being luxury beliefs: defund the police, open borders, covid-denial, climate-denial, non-monogamy, Burning Man ethos, school choice, the legalization of all drugs, defunding libraries, and mandating electric cars.

    Conclusion

    Hope you enjoyed these new words and can use a few of them!

    Now You

    Which new words gave you a chuckle and which ones were way too cringe?

    What other new words should I be aware of?

    Feel free to email me any new words you discover!