TikTok Is Changing How We Talk & How We Vote

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Social media algorithms are leading to the creation of new words, new accents, and even new identities. And while using the apps may seem like a fun, trivial way to waste time, they’re actually having a profound impact on how we communicate — and on our our democracy. To find out more, Kara talks to Adam Aleksic, a 24-year-old Harvard-educated linguist and social media influencer, and the author of Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language. They discuss the way new words, communities, and identities develop on social media apps; the financial motives and incentive structures underlying the algorithms; the mechanisms through which they shape user behavior; and how they ends up impacting our culture and politics. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	all your base are belong to us.
0:03.1	Greatest one.
0:04.0	Yeah, that's a 90s kind of reference.
0:06.1	That's Kara Swisher's time period when she first came on.
0:09.5	Usually I come on here and I make people feel old.
0:11.5	You're making me feel really like a child.
0:13.0	It's all. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:29.1	This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
0:32.2	Today I'm talking to Adam Alexic, a 24-year-old Harvard-educated linguist who is the author of Algospeak, how social media
0:39.3	is transforming the future of language. And he's also a social media influencer himself.
0:45.8	Adam says the social media algorithms are leading to the creation of more new words than ever before,
0:50.9	and recognizing the incentives behind the algorithms can help us understand how our language,
0:55.4	culture, and even our politics are being influenced by opaque systems owned by a tiny number of
1:01.0	billionaires or beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. I'm excited to talk to him because I've
1:06.1	been following how language changed on the internet since before he was born. Let's be clear.
1:11.9	And there's all kinds of words that do come out and people use and they come and they go. It started with memes.
1:16.2	All kinds of things happened in the early internet. You started to see this and people talk in
1:20.1	short language, memeified language, essentially. And it also creates new words and new ways people
1:26.0	talk to each other. The meme, I think, is one of the more important social media cues of the era. And if you know them correctly, you're on the end. If you don't, you are cringe, often like myself, as my kids say. Our expert question today comes from Rochameraling, the founder of The New New Thing, and a writer and podcast hosts at
1:45.4	Pop Culture Mondays.com. She's a good friend of mine, but I got to say, she knows more about
1:50.4	internet memes than anyone else I know. So stick around.
1:57.6	Support for this show comes from ServiceNow, who are enabling people to do more fulfilling
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