How the TikTok algorithm created new words like ‘unalive'

Los Angeles Times

19-07-2025

Adam Aleksic has somehow managed to make linguistics cool. His rapid-fire videos have attracted an audience of millions across the social media universe.
In them, the Etymology Nerd explores linguistics topics like the semiotics of dating websites, the social science of emoji usage and how we are naming our children after influencers.
A Harvard graduate with a linguistics degree, he has now published a book called 'Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language,' which explores in depth some of his more fanciful and fascinating theories. We chatted with Aleksic about edutainment, brainrot and President Trump as influencer in chief.
(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)
Did you get into linguistics because you wanted to explore online language?
I don't think you can actually hope to fully be caught up with online language itself, as it's mutating by the minute. The book is more of a road map of the general patterns we're seeing. I personally got interested in etymology in ninth grade. I didn't know I would be going into internet linguistics.
How do algorithms shape and change language on the web?
You can't avoid talking about algorithms if you're talking about modern language change. I'm looking at my own videos thinking, 'Wow, I can't say this specific word because of the algorithm. I have to say it another way.'
I use the example of the word 'unalive' as a replacement for 'kill.' That developed in English-language mental health spaces to circumvent platform community guidelines that were enforced by an algorithm used by Chinese government, which was then retooled for TikTok. Suddenly, 'unalive' was all over the internet. Algorithms are creating new words.
In the book, you talk about context collapse, the notion that effective videos are designed to appear as if they are addressed directly to the user, even though they are, in fact, bringing in disparate users to a single focal point.
When you're looking at a video on your For You page, you really think it's for you. But it never is.
As a creator, I never think about individual people. I think about what's going to go viral, but also, what do I want to make? I make the video first for myself, then I make it for the algorithm. Never do I consider the actual people that end up seeing the video.
Your phone is an extension of yourself. You perceive a message coming from your algorithmic version of yourself. The algorithm doesn't actually align who my intended audience might be with who the actual audience is. It just sends my video to whatever makes the most money.
What about brainrot — the notion that the internet is damaging young people's ability to think and reason. Does this apply to online language?
I think there's no such thing as 'brainrot' with words. They've done neurological studies. No word is worse for your brain than other words. Now, the other stuff, culturally, is another conversation. It probably is bad that these platforms are monopolizing our attention to sell us things. So I can say, linguistically, we're fine.
Do you think the internet makes us smarter?
It's an interesting question. What is 'smarter'? I know that's a hard thing to define. I think like with any tool, it can be true. Every tool has good and bad, right?
You talk about rage-baiting and hyperbole, or hype, as a tool to gain virality online. Our president is quite proficient at this tactic.
I think Trump's language uniquely lends itself to virality. He has these phrasal templates, like 'Make X Y Again,' or 'This has been the greatest X in the history of Y.' People use his sentence structures as these skeletons, which they can remix. He coined 'sad' as an interjection, which I regularly see my friends using. I don't know how much of it is intentional. Maybe he just stumbled into it. But the fact of the matter is, I think we have Trump in office because he is uniquely suited to the internet.
Chris Vognar chats with Michael M. Grynbaum about his book 'Empire of the Elite,' a history of Condé Nast during its '90s heyday.
Hamilton Cain calls 'The Aviator and the Showman,' Laurie Gwen Shapiro's joint biography of Amelia Earhart and her husband, 'a vibrant account of the courtship and union of the famous pilot and her publisher husband whose intrusive management of his wife's career may have cost her life.'
According to Ilana Massad, Kashana Cauley's novel 'The Payback,' a satire about student loans, of all things, is a 'terrifically fun book that made me laugh out loud at least once every chapter.'
Valorie Castellanos Clark thinks fan fiction writer turned novelist Brigette Knightley's debut novel 'The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy' is 'proof positive that writing fan fiction is an excellent training ground for building a novel.'
Today we are chatting with Carlos Chavez, a bookseller at Hennessey + Ingalls, a sprawling space in downtown L.A. that specializes in books about art, architecture, graphic design and all things visual.
What's selling right now?
Because we are a speciality bookstore, sales are really across the board. Everyday it can be something different. Someone came in yesterday and bought a bunch of books featuring art from the painter and sculptor Claes Odenberg, for example. We also sell a lot of books on industrial design, and fashion designers have been buying books about shoes. The other day a prop designer came in and purchased books with red covers. It's a mixed bag.
Art books can be very expensive. Why do you think there is still a market for them, despite the plenitude of images online?
There are still plenty of book lovers who want to hold a book, and they want to see it before they buy it. For many of our customers, books are a great source of artistic inspiration of the kind you just can't find online. This is the kind of store where customers are free to linger for hours if they want to.
There has been a lot of social unrest downtown this year. How is the store coping?
Business has been up and down. Some days are better than others. I think people were scared to come out, but yesterday was a good day, for example.