This week's trip into the hall-of-mirrors of modern youth culture features a new piece of post-meaning slang, another poisonous dispatch from the incel parts of the internet, a German earworm going viral, and the return of tanning without worry or necessary fear.
A mysterious acronym, #tlpur, has started showing up in comment sections where younger people hang out. No one really knows where it started, and what it means depends on who you ask. Some say TLPUR stands for "True Love Pills Until Rope," while others claim it means "The Lookspill Proves Us Right" or "Too Late for Puberty." However, the idea behind TLPUR is to make up what it means to anyone who asks, making it an in-group signifier.
As the acronym took off, more and more people started posting repetitive, vaguely hypnotic videos about TLPUR set to an old Weezer song, offering abstract definitions in the comment sections, such as "TLPUR is essentially when belle delphine hand sticker" and "Tlpur is essentially 808."
A "crashout" is an intense, angry, emotional outburst, while a "D1 crashout" borrows college sports terminology and refers to an elite, epic crashout. The "top 5 horror movies" trend has taken the internet by storm, with users noting real-life anxieties and minor inconveniences, setting them to a melancholy snippet of Katy Perry's "The One That Got Away," and posting videos under the #top5horrormovies tag.
The rise of the word "hiplet" helps explain why many of the videos posted under the top 5 horror movies tag simply list "men" five times. "Hiplet" is slang for a woman who has "hip dips," i.e., women who have inward curves on their outer thighs just below the hip bone. According to the lore, hiplets aren't dating material, but the response from the internet's young women is mostly sarcastic dismissal.
A new trend, "tanmaxxing," has emerged, where teens intentionally get as dark as possible as quickly as possible by tracking peak UV indexes and baking in the sun without sunscreen and/or using heavy tanning oils. Most tanmaxxer content is videos of people lying in the sun doing nothing, but there are also videos appearing that question whether the sun is actually harmful.
A viral German song, "Du bist gut genug," has taken the internet by storm, with younger people creating funny remix videos and using it as a reaction meme. The song's message, "You are good enough," has resonated with many, and it's quickly becoming a popular earworm.
