The Slang Election

Every few years some official committee of older Germans gathers to vote on what they think youth slang should be, which is roughly as useful as asking fashion magazines to predict what teenagers will actually wear. In 2014 they came back with a list so aggressively divorced from reality that you wonder if they polled at a convention for substitute teachers.

The whole thing is fundamentally broken. Real slang doesn’t get voted on. It either catches on because it fills a gap, because it sounds right, because it spreads on the platforms kids actually use—or it quietly dies. You can’t legislate authenticity.

That said, some of these weren’t terrible. FOMO actually stuck globally because that feeling is real. Twerking needed a name. Foodgasm is stupid but true. Those words earned their place.

Then there are the ones that exist purely for the gymnastics of it—Obamern for eavesdropping, Tebartzen for buying expensive stuff you don’t need. They’re creative in this trying-too-hard way that’s almost endearing. Look, we can make words.

The best are the compounds that shouldn’t work but do. Immatrikulationshintergrund—literally college background—for someone useless at anything practical because they chose university. Bürgersteigdeko for dog shit on the sidewalk. Fappieren for jacking off. These aren’t reaching for cleverness; they just fit exactly what they describe, and they sound right.

The whole competition is ridiculous and kind of touching all at once. You can feel this desperate need from adults to prove they’re listening, that they get it, that they’re still relevant to youth culture. And the words themselves tell you what was occupying German teenagers in 2014—what stressed them, what they wanted to name and make jokes about.

If I’d been asked, Fußpils would have my vote. Beer for the road. Practically a philosophy.

I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone use Immatrikulationshintergrund unironically, but the word itself still makes me laugh. Sometimes the best slang is the stuff that sounds too absurd to work, and then somehow it does anyway.