From doomscrolling to zombie-boxes: a guide to screen-time slang

Many of us are spending more time in the virtual world than the real one these days. Birthday parties, meetings and classes are all being held inside tiny rectangles. And after a long day staring at a screen, many of us replace the work computer with another one. This constitutes thrilling entertainment in lockdown.

We gazed at devices for fun long before covid struck. For just as long, we have worried about what screen time may be doing to our health – parents often try to prise their children away from devices. Research suggests that the effect of looking at a screen depends on what activity you’re engaged in: reading a book on a tablet may be more elevating than scrolling through other people’s perfect-looking lives on Instagram.

Today more than half of humanity has access to the internet, up from a quarter of people in 2009. With so many of us online, a new lexicon has emerged to describe our on-screen lives. Some of it may be familiar: you’ve probably typed a furious WTF or a blunt TBH (with luck eventually defusing the situation with a LOL). The internet is ever evolving, and phrases quickly become outdated. If you want to keep up with the lingo, you’ll need to keep looking at this screen for a few more minutes.

Зомбоящик (zomboyaschik)
A TV or other zombifying technology (noun)
Social media may really be eating your brain

“Watching the zombie-box again, are we?” my grandfather would say as I, then a teenager, ogled the hosts of MTV Russia in the noughties. Entertainment television flourished in post-Soviet society and my generation was hooked. A new term was coined for the TV: the zomboyaschik. Even pensioners could not resist the device. At 9pm every night my grandfather would watch the news on a state-owned channel. That was my cue to leave the room, muttering: “zombie-box”.

As technology has advanced, zomboyaschiks have diversified. The word now describes all forms of zombifying technology, from smartphones to social media. Some Russians scroll through Facebook. Others argue with Kremlin trolls online, or descend into the murky depths of conspiracy theories. All zomboyaschiks numb the brain for a few hours. But spend too long glued to one and you might get stuck, mindlessly fixed to the screen (a verb, zalipat, has emerged to describe this feeling).

In a zombie film there are rules you can follow to escape: carry a gun, stock up on tinned food, avoid cities. There is no simple strategy to avoid getting sucked into a zombie-box, particularly in a country where everyone – from propagandists at the Kremlin to Vladimir Putin’s most devout haters – is producing zombifying material. At least wasting hours online helps pass the time in an apocalypse.
Sasha Raspopina

凡尔赛文学 (fanersai wenxue)
1. Versailles literature (noun)
2. A way to mock the online humblebrag
Young Chinese know how to eat cake

Influencers like to flaunt their wealth and success. They flood our Instagram feeds with photos of gleaming teeth and sculpted abs while we squeeze into old jeans. Worst of all, celebrities often disguise their boasts as complaints or seemingly modest statements – a practice known in English as humblebragging, which is commonly mocked online.

Young Chinese ridicule such behaviour in a new way: they write social-media posts that mimic the humblebragging stars. “What’s the use of giving me a Mercedes-Benz car key?” begins one example on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. This form of jeering has been labelled “Versailles literature”.

The term was inspired by “The Rose of Versailles”, a popular Japanese comic based on the ostentatious life of Marie Antoinette, later adapted for TV and film. The series has long been popular in China, and last year the word Versailles was borrowed from it to label people who indulge in excessive spending sprees. Videos now teach viewers how to flex in the Versailles style. One tip is using rhetorical questions to exude superiority. There are thousands of aspiring writers: #versaillesliterature has been used 950m times on Weibo.

Young people in China now view online content with increasing scepticism, dissecting the airbrushed images and spurious captions on their screens. By mocking those who wish to be envied, teens are no longer passive consumers of the stuff peddled by influencers. The humblebragger has been humbled.
Georgia Banjo

Nomophobia
Fear of being separated from your mobile phone (noun)
Taking dependence on your device to a new level

It’s not unusual to feel a pang of worry when leaving home without a mobile phone. Some people have a more intense response: trembling, sweating, shortness of breath and a racing heart rate. These are all symptoms associated with “nomophobia” (short for no-mobile phobia), an extreme fear of being separated from your device that manifests itself physically.

Teenagers seem more likely to suffer from nomophobia than their parents. One explanation for this, proposed by researchers from universities in South Korea and Hong Kong, is that young people often associate their phones with memories, in the form of photos and intimate messages. Some teens may consider gadgets as extensions of themselves, increasing their dependence on the devices.

The psychological pull of mobile phones can also take other guises. You may have experienced “phantom-vibration syndrome” – a feeling that your phone is buzzing in your pocket, when it isn’t. Or perhaps you endure “ringxiety”: thinking you can hear a device ringing, when no one has called. One theory is that constant connectivity can put you on edge, making you more inclined to perceive signals that are not there. Perhaps a bigger worry than leaving your phone behind should be the consequences of always having it with you.
Bo Franklin

Pansos
One who attempts to gain higher status on social media (noun)
In Indonesia, extra Instagram hours pay off

There are 160m social-media users in Indonesia, nearly two-thirds of the population. Among them is Roy Ricardo, an Indonesian rapper who observed five years ago that many of his compatriots were shamelessly cosying up to celebrities. Brown-nosers in his network hoped that the influencers’ popularity would rub off on them. “Make friends for a purpose/spit out closeness to get benefits”, Ricardo tut-tutted on a track called “Panjat Sosial”, a direct translation of “social climber”. The phrase was rapidly adopted by millennials, who mashed the words of the song’s title together (Indonesians love a portmanteau) to create pansos.

If the rapper had understood the benefits of ascending the rungs of social media, he might have changed his tune. Shortly after Indonesia’s president was inoculated against covid-19 on January 13th, Raffi Ahmad, a celebrity, rolled up his sleeve for a jab. The government is prioritising social-media influencers to get the first vaccines, alongside doctors and nurses, as part of an effort to convince sceptical Indonesians of how important the injection is. The authorities haven’t said how many followers you need to qualify for a queue-jumping jab. But compared with Raffi’s nearly 50m Instagram devotees, Roy Ricardo has a piffling 261,000. Time to get climbing.
Charlie McCann

Démerdentiel
Disorganised digital interactions (noun)
The French hate Zoom meetings more than most

In France, face-to-face meetings are called présentiel and on-screen ones are known as distanciel. Last year a third, ironic category emerged: démerdentiel. It describes the disorganised and frustrating virtual gatherings – from Zoom quizzes to never-ending board meetings – that many people have endured during lockdowns.

The term comes from the verb démerder, meaning to improvise or make do, though it doesn’t imply a spirit of joyful co-operation. Démerdentiel is a complaint, insinuating that someone else is at fault for a chaotic get-together. In 2020 French universities were blamed for creating uncertainty over whether classes would be présentiel or distanciel. Libération, a newspaper, declared that lectures would, in fact, be held in démerdentiel. The new phrase was used to point out – with some satisfaction on the part of the commentators – that the authorities had failed.

Other variants have popped up. People who join Zoom meetings on holiday are on vacanciel, a grumble about the constant need to log on. But nothing has stuck like démerdentiel, perhaps because it includes the satisfying swear word merde. In the country of Voltaire, a man who thought optimists were idiots, whingeing remains something of a national sport.
Pamela Druckerman

Doomscrolling
The compulsion to read negative news online (verb)
The origins of your never-ending nightly scroll

Have you been “doomscrolling”? The word describes a compulsion to read negative news online. Though the term was coined in 2018, we have long devoured stories about impending doom. The “Epic of Gilgamesh”, one of the earliest works of literature – dating from 1800BC – describes a great flood that turns humans into clay. Today there’s bad news aplenty and negative content floods social-media feeds. There is little else to do in lockdown but swot up on the deadly virus, police brutality or armed insurrection in America.

Why can’t you stop yourself reading negative news? One theory is that when humans see danger – in the form of a fearsome animal or terrifying headline – we want to gather information to avoid the peril. The reflex is ill-suited to the Twitter age. With so many potential threats, you’re more likely to feel stressed than safe.

There are ways to stop self-flagellation by smartphone. Karen K. Ho, an American journalist, reminds her doomscrolling Twitter followers to drink water, stop slouching and shut their eyes. Follow @QuittrBot on Twitter, and it will insert periodic reminders into your stream that you might want to do something else instead. The first step to getting over a problem is admitting you have one.
Josh Spencer

Yanny
Something that distracts internet users for at least 24 hours (noun)
Moments of unity are rare and precious

In October 2020 Kim Kardashian shared photos on Instagram of her holiday on a private island where she and her friends “danced, rode bikes, swam near whales, kayaked, watched a movie on the beach and so much more”. Most of us were stuck at home on our sofas when we saw the pictures, having missed out on a summer break because of the pandemic. Kim’s tropical paradise and her careless post – “I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal” – was all anyone could talk (or rant) about on the internet, at least for a day or two.

These fleeting moments, when something divides or bonds people online for a short time, are known as a “Yanny”. The term emerged in 2018 when an auditory illusion, “Yanny or Laurel”, went viral. A short clip of a computer-generated voice was heard by some people as Laurel and by others as Yanny. In retrospect, a viral photo meme from 2015 known as “the dress” (which some people saw as white and gold, others as blue and black) was also a Yanny.

Though such moments seem trivial, they often bring us a light moment of relief. When Bernie Sanders sported a pair of patterned mittens at Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20th, a new Yanny was born. People shared, laughed and liked photos as Sanders’s gloves were Photoshopped onto album covers and into famous paintings. Memes brought the internet together – and Donald Trump wasn’t on Twitter to see any of it.
Lauren Kelly

低头族 (ditouzu in Mandarin, deiteozug in Cantonese)
1. The low-head tribe (noun)
2. Smartphone addicts
Bow your head in prayer to the screen

Smartphone addicts in China are called ditouzu, or the “low-head tribe”. The term describes the way clan members bow their heads while staring at screens. Often they are oblivious to the world around them. Gruesome news stories abound about those who, transfixed by their phones, fall into ditches or drains. Some break limbs. In 2015 a Chinese woman was glued so strongly to her device that she drowned.

Not surprisingly, many Chinese are worried about the rise of the ditouzu. Parents berate their children for belonging to the tribe. Teachers preach about the perils of lowering your head for too long. Several Chinese cities have changed their laws: you can now be fined for crossing the road while looking at your device. On the subway in the city of Shenzhen in southern China, staff remind passengers to look up at the arriving trains. Chinese state media warn against smartphones becoming “spiritual opium”.

China has many other tribes. The “nibble old people tribe” describes youngsters who live with their parents and continue to leech off them. The “lightning-marriage tribe” is for couples who have shotgun weddings. Neither clan will challenge the supremacy of the bowed heads. There were 930m smartphone users in China last year and their ranks are growing.
Sue-Lin Wong

ILLUSTRATIONS: JULIA GEISER