Keeping Up with Terms Like It's My Job!

I do it for the plot!

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that it’s raining in Los Angeles. And it’s definitely a hoot to poke some fun at all of us soft precipitation-adverse beings who overdress for the weather, incessantly complain and bring the drama when water falls from the sky, BUT we are not built for this — and neither is Los Angeles!

@dylanstretchberyWe are heroes 🌧️ ☔️ 🌧️ #fyp #foryoupage #weather #rain #california

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A couple days of downfall and we’ve got flooding, landslides, road closures and, on a personal note, pots, pans and towels all over my leaking house. My magical neighbor’s have all pitched in to help me in my war waged against the water - and as of now, we are winning.

My mom always loves to tell the story of when I went to college in Oregon and I called her in the first month of my freshman year with this super scholarly question: “Mom, what do people wear in the rain?” During that first year it rained 99 days in a row without stopping. Oddly, no one really wore rain boots or a raincoat? But Oregon is very green with great storm drainage and all the people of the land have dewey skin.

In LA the water has no where to go. The land is like “I’m good,” and our skin is like sandpaper. Oddly, we like it that way. So, please, as you roll your eyes at our “downfall” please know that this will ONLY make us softer. We are a population of house cats, acting as people. Deal with it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about algorithms and how they scare me! But, I also would love for a social/computer scientist to study how “off” the algorithms are for moms with young kids. You spend more time playing content and looking up things for your lunatics on your devices than you do for yourself. This applies to amazon orders, streaming shows, and most of your website search history. My daughter demands that I look up things like “boots with pockets” and now the creepy cookies think I really need a place for tiny storage on my shoes. I don’t.

I take some joy in staying “off the radar,” since it makes me think the robots will never truly know my heart. At best, they will know a mish-mosh of the hearts of my family. Maybe that is somehow more beautiful? Am I crying or is it just rain? I suppose we will never know.

The one platform that has me PEGGED however happens to be the scariest: TikTok.

And, as you probably guessed, my favorite TikToks are those from teachers who ask their students about slang, or moms asking kids, or older siblings asking younger ones. It’s apparently 99% of my current algorithm. So, hang with me — I’m keeping up with terms like it’s my job. (In fact, I used rizz at my job this week.) Here is a quick glossary of what’s hot and what’s not according to educators of the youth.