49
votes
Poem from my 13-year-old son
The Skibidi Wonderland
Imagine a world with skibidi rizz
Where the rivers run with flowberry fizz
Every tree has a W gyat
Everyone is ruled under Kai Cenat
Everything, even the hills looksmax
Criminals will have to pay a fanum tax
Every December we celebrate Rizzmas
Where we get candy and gifts from St. Grimace
From the screen to the ring to the pen to the king
Every October we celebrate Hawktuahween
Everyone follows the sigma grindset
Everyone thinks with the sigma mindset
The skibidi sky has a rizzy aurora
All citizens have skibidi aura
Can you imagine a world where all is rizzy?
Can you think of a world where all is skibidi?
Can you fathom a world where all cheese is drippy?
'Cause I yearn for a world where I can hit the griddy
Some lighter fare. He's working on his humor/parody voice. Or his brain has fully rotted.
I only vaguely know what some of this means, but I think it's well written and a treat to read!
I started dabbling in poetry this year and it's upsetting that this has more flow than anything I've written. Props to your kid.
I think you mean dabbing in poetry
Such a kind thing to say! He gets to start the day with a huge smile from a stranger, so thank you.
Hang in there with the writing. For me personally, poetry is immensely harder to nail than prose, but tackling something funny or low stakes used to help me when I wrote long ago.
Definitely channeling Lewis Carrol there. I love it.
Unrelated: can someone explain "rizz" to me? It makes me feel approximately 109 years old to ask, but apparently this is my life now.
Cha'rizz'ma.
A thousand years and I would not have guessed!
Hahaha, we barely notice these words anymore. In daily life, they are almost entirely context-dependent. Last night, my partner made him a sandwich and he exclaimed, "Woah, that's the Ocky Way!" She just responded, "You're welcome."
@CptBluebear gave you an actual answer.
What's the Ocky way?
My understanding is that a sandwich shop in NYC run by brothers would describe things they made as "the Ocky Way" on TikTok/insta videos. It has a special inflection. I believe "Ocky" is a mishearing of a word for brother (in Arabic?).
As for the definition, the Ocky Way appears to be stuffing food items into other food items. Or making a sandwich around an already complete food item. Something like that.
But in slang it's basically "excessively good".
I grok it as a sort of spiritual successor of groovy --> cool --> sweet --> sick --> rizz. A generic adjective meaning that something or someone is perceived in a positive light, with connotations of charm befitting the present age. Whatever is the next word after rizz doesn't matter, it'll be chosen to mean something positive and charming but newer than what is rizz.
My understanding (based on this poem as well as other sources) is that "rizz" is a noun rather than an adjective like your other examples. You speak of someone "having rizz" not "being rizz". As far as I can tell, that's how this poem uses it too -- even using a derived adjective "rizzy" that I haven't heard before (though it might just be because I'm not around teenagers as much).
True, so maybe more like charm, move, swagger, game etc.
Was Oxford's word of the year 2023 apparently, which I prefer over 2022's "Goblin Mode".
I definitely think rizz is more well-established slang than goblin mode was for sure.
It's a verb too, I've mainly heard "rizzing on" someone if you're trying to charm them or get in their pants or trying to reach out to them about their car's extended warranty or, uh, anything.
ooh, I hadn't heard that before but that's a cool usage! English allows a lot of zero derivation for verbs so I'm not too surprised it's ended up being one.
Ooh interesting...around here it's "rizzing up"
Seconded! I was thinking, @thereticent, Can you do the Jabberwocky poem next?
Modern day Shakespeare hits different
If Shakespeare invented the human, my son invented the NPC.
I could easily see that being a song lyric. Trap beat under it.
Hilarious, can I post that in some meme channels? And who to attribute?
He says thank you and yes! You can attribute it to Søren. He doesn't really have a social media landing spot beside the Geometry Dash community (roboj9), so that works just fine too.
And thank you from me as well. You all have really encouraged him today!
So I got my teen to explain this to me and now I need to wash my ears out.
OP, did your child explain all these terms to you?
I am unfortunately deeply acquainted with them all. He has a tendency to explain everything that comes through his mind, though he tries to do it tactfully when it's something graphic.
Edit...
Some rules in our house: both kids are allowed to ask definitions and origins of terms without shame. There are rules about whom to use them around, but it's generally only with friends who already know them and with us when they have follow-up questions (or a particularly irresistible but deviant joke). 13yo is not allowed to joke about certain things or use particular slang with his 9yo brother, but 9yo is allowed to try out rare edgy jokes with his brother, and 13yo steers him away from clearly inappropriate ones. It's been a good system. For example, "Hawk tuah" ain't allowed, proclaimed by 13yo.
Ah. Well, my lad's nearly 18, and if he thought something was rude or offensive (because he knows by now) then he wouldn't bring it up in front of us, though he knows he can always ask, and did get some guidance on more mundane 'old people' swears and other words. This stuff was wild though.
Are you in the UK? I am, and if you're not, then I find it interesting that this vernacular seems to be global, at least to some extent. That just wouldn't have happened in my day. Street slang was way more localised, sometimes differing from village to village even. Gosh that makes me sound old. :(
I'm in the US. Agreed--the spread is more widespread age/interest-related. Actually more just age, because now the "normies" also know all those words, it seems.
Yes, your method makes a lot of sense, and maybe would have been ideal. But, my 13yo is autistic and needs the boundaries to be clearly stated, often individually. He knows to quietly ask rather than to just try out the jokes unannounced with us. I suspect that my 9yo will be much more like your 18yo in trajectory. He doesnt particularly like things once he knows they are inappropriate, so he doesn't push us for info beyond appropriateness and feels scandalized when he gets too much information from friends.
I... just wow. That is awesome.
@hobofarmer
This is really well composed! I like that it sticks to using couplets throughout, keeps it rhythmic and there's a certain amount of anticipation built off that for the reader to enjoy.
Also, almost every single rhyming phrase correctly rhymes against two syllables. Many people keep a single-syllable rhyming or half rhyme schemes, but I've always heard that (in English) it's best to have two syllables rhyming (and I think this is how rhyming is specifically defined). For instance:
... skibidi rizz
... flowberry fizz
and
... pen to the king
... Hawktuahween
Rhyming "to the" and "tuah" is perfect in casual American English.
The whole thing is great!