I’m going to offer my own theory here, which doesn’t seem to be in line with the most popular theories which seem to me to be creative guesses at the origin.
I think it’s possibly from twitch.tv culture. “Kappa” was a popular emote with a smug face often used to denote sarcasm. Plenty of streamers have used the phrase “No kappa” to indicate they’re not joking, and some shortened it to “no kap”. Since it was passed on orally, it became mistranscribed to “no cap.” People were looking for an explanation for a phrase that didn’t exist, and inadvertently invented one, which became the predominant theory that you’ll find if you search for “no cap origin.”
No, I’m pretty sure it came from hip hop culture, like a lot of slang recently. I’m basing this purely my anecdotal observation of the kind of people who use it most frequently.
It’s the sound of the A-10 Warthog’s main gun. It became a meme over a couple decades of war. “If brute force isn’t working, you’re not using enough of it,” kind of captures the gleeful power and arrogance.
It’s from a meme, “Money printer go brrrr” which was I think a spin off of the “It prints money!” meme for the original Wii (Edit: did some research and I think they’re unrelated.) Its the sound of the machine, printing money, it go brrr.
I’ve seen it used for all kinds of things, but “go brrr” is basically a dismissive way of talking about how “winning” something is.
Edit: I think Picard Manuever explains it better actually, and while I don’t think my usage note is untrue from how I’ve seen the meme used in evolutions, I’d have to agree that it originally and usually takes the form they described.
It’s generally finding amusement in something doing what it’s supposed to do in a straight forward and effective manner, in contrast with an alternative overly complex method.
The US government printed a lot of money after the 2008 financial crisis. Some people criticised this, saying it would devalue the US Dollar. But the government went ahead with the plan, resulting in a meme where critics bring up a lot of arguments and Obama (?) says ‘haha money printer go brr’.
I reject “sus” being zoomer exclusive. Among Us has been a huge hit for 5 years now, was popular across demographics, and made an appearance in Glass Onion, which is the boomeriest Millennial movie ever.
I agree, but for a different reason. I had an Aussie friend that said “sus” all the time on IRC, and that was in the 00’s, so it well predates Among Us.
Ok, maybe suss is Australian. I was surprised to see it listed with "on cap" because I've heard suss being said all my life by a wide range of people, but I did grow up in Australia.
I have appropriated “sus” and “yeet” and sometimes “gucci”…I think those don’t even come from the same gens of slang, but they feel right in a sentence. Especially yeet.
I’m pretty sure my friends and I have incorrectly appropriated yeet. We’ll use it in the normal way but we’ll also say yeet like sweet or hell yeah. We’re all upper 20s now so it feels rather hilarious.
Once you consider that “yeet” is the opposite of “yoink”, it really seems like it’s actually a millennial word. Though interestingly, my spell check considers “yeet” correct but not “yoink”
I get most of my slang from among us and then I learn the correct usage on tiktok and then I purposely do it wrong because aging is fun and I’m a parent.
Thank you! I thought I was going mad because I distinctly remember saying “sus” when I was in highschool in the early 2000s. It was definitely used both as “go sus it out” but also “don’t sus us miss” was something we said all the time when a teacher tried to catch students smoking behind the portables.
So it sort of just feels like Gen Z expanded the definition.
in this specific context it means bullshit, like “no bullshit,” but it can’t be used literally any other way because “to cap” someone means killing them
It’s all predominantly young kids adopting/appropriating American Black vernacular and calling it their own. Millennials did it, genz does it. Go ahead and down vote me, my back hurts.
See people say this like it’s Black vernacular but dont recognize that it’s just urban vernacular. Urban vernacular changes frequently because there’s more people around. The internet adopts it quickly, and it spreads from there, as the actual initial definition of a memetic concept.
There’s a reason society as a whole doesn’t co-opt rural Black vernacular, and it’s because it isn’t actually racially-based.
Exactly. I just had this argument with a couple of friends who were raised rich white kids, in the rich white neighborhood. They were criticizing me for appropriating black vernacular, and wouldn’t believe me that my entire neighborhood and school spoke that way. It’s inter-urban (poor) slang, not specifically black. Most of my neighborhood was Mexican, yet they all used these terms. Granted, they have different inflections on the words, but the vocabulary is pretty much the same. Anyways, now I have friends accusing me of racism for speaking the way I’ve spoken my entire life. I just hadn’t loosened up enough to speak that way around them before. Ain’t identity politics grand?
As a millennial, describing something as fire, or mids, that was us. Y’all youngings are appropriating old people culture. That’s how we described weed in the 2000s.
Edit: also when kids were saying ‘ratchet’, that was a direct descendent of Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Ken Keasy used that name to be a homonym for “rat shit.” Next time you hear so e drop ‘ratchet,’ ask them what it means. They won’t even know.
It’s weird how old slang crops up like that. Ratchet was like, the 60s.
Edit2: I predict “kind” will get taken in, like “KB” or “kind bud” to mean “dope”. Like “you those shoes are kind, fam”.
I also predict that “beasters” might make it’s way in, but “beast” already meaning “dominate” might trip it up, because “beasters” were weed that was grown rushed with phosphates in the soil in indoor hydroponic labs, and that shit had lower THC content than most mids, looked better, but smelled off. Dead giveaway was hollow stems. Idk. Calling beats by dre headphones “beasters” would be a fitting insult to their products.
Fleek died the moment someone managed to get that fire started. Good riddance.
We used to call Mexican brick weed regs, or reggie, which I guess was slang for regular. Though I’m not sure why we called it that because it was much easier to find “fire” weed…which we called krypto or crippie. I think that was a south Florida thing though.
Ah, I’m in a border state, so brick weed was super easy to get. I had a buddy that would stuff a quart zip lock full for $40.
I personally find all of the high quality weed to be too strong. I don’t smoke enough to have a high tolerance, so even one hit can be too much. I wish shops would sell lower thc stuff, although I’ve had good success with D8
Yeah, we called it brick weed cause they were packaged to save space not the product… and we generally didn’t fuck with it because it wasn’t even green by the time it was up in New england
I bought a batch of that shit once that had been dyed green - you could tell because most of the green pigment ended up concentrated at the end of the fat stems. Nastiest shit ever, I’m probably lucky to be alive.
I’ve had Indiana ditch weed. There’s basically no THC in it at all. But it’s useful to sell to other high school kids who aren’t aware of that and then think they’re high when they smoke it.
I had never heard that slang for weed before in my life and I was meeting up with an old friend about 10 years ago who was going to get weed for me and he said, “I can get mids.” And I said, “I don’t do pills, man. I’m just interested in weed.” I thought he said “meds.”
I take it as average rather than great, which while it does have a less than stellar implication, doesn’t seem like it is inherently bad. Moreso a “meets expectations” with a hint of “there are better options available”
I hear mid and I think oh shit, cheaper for more that isn’t overpriced shiny crystal smelly shit but still almost smokes the same.
Kinda like every movie, song, and game ever describes as mid lol.
I swear people can’t just enjoy popcorn shit anymore which is all anything mid is. Sometimes I don’t want to watch the best movie ever. Sometimes I just want to watch stupid lighthearted comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Sometimes I just want another stock standard Meteoidvania or Harvest Moon clone.
When you quit chasing new highs constantly, even the old highs work well. And I don’t even smoke lol.
“Yo” is another one that the Zoomers love. I haven’t heard so much usage of that word since the mid 90s. And “bruh” is just another form of “bro”/“brah”.
Another good example is when twerking made a comeback a few years ago, despite not being a thing since 2000s hip hip.
there was a book (Terry Pratchett?) I read as a young adult that had a character called Yoless because it was the 90s and he didn’t ever say “yo” and everyone thought that was notable, weird and hysterical
I’d argue they’d know what it means but wouldn’t know the origin. Words evolve. I just learned this etymology now but I’ve always known what it meant implicitly when said. Tbh I assumed it was more local/rural slang when I was younger because I mainly heard it from other kids, not in media, etc.
I guess what I mean is if you asked them with regard to the etymology… Ratchet is a word. It has a meaning highly disparate from “shitty.” Like, it’s a tool. A noun. It does things.
So kids using this word against its actual meaning, ask them why and they won’t understand.
Like if I asked you why you were using the word ratchet (say yesterday), which is a tool that helps turn bolts, in place of the word “shitty” and you’d be all 🤷♂️🤷♂️
I thought it was an AAVE corruption of “wretched”. Nurse Ratched was certainly that, but it didn’t derive from the character’s name. Urban Louisiana slang, more like.
Is teaching AAVE a thing anymore or did they decide it was racist? I can’t keep up. I know for a while there was an argument that teaching AAVE at schools was designed to entrench a kind of linguistic class ghetto, but then you also had the liberal “hecking valid” argument, and I’m not sure what the current party line is.
Nurse Ratchet has nothing to do with African American Vernacular English, or “ebonics”.
Just gonna add that bringing AAVE and education into the conversation (which has nothing to do with ebonics or education whatsoever) makes you come off a bit like a possible race baiting dog whistler. It’s an amazingly easy thing to avoid, so I’ve tagged you with a cute lil nickname to keep track.
Well these things always have their roots in the past and get re-appropriated from other uses, but I don’t recall seeing the term before 2 - 3 years ago.
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