If I were to make a list of all of the internet slang terms I’d like to see retired for a minimum of five years, the result would sound something like the “Cell Block Tango” number from “Chicago”: Bop! Slop! Banger! Wig! Cicero! Lipschitz! And frankly, the song fits perfectly. They (being the innumerable social media users who participate in superfan, or “stan,” culture) had it (the kibosh on overused, obnoxious stan jargon) comin’. They only had themselves to blame.
As a writer who is both gay and old enough to have watched the internet explode into the nefarious monster it’s become, the way language transforms online both irks and fascinates me. I was an early adopter of “bop” back when we were still using the word to classify the singular bounciness of Carly Rae Jepsen songs in 2015. As these things go, the adjective’s chosen definition soon twisted shape. The qualities that defined a “bop” quickly became less specific when they trickled down through social media. Soon, the word became a stand-in for “catchy,” shorthand that could be used to categorize just about any song with a single word. That’s when all the fun started melting away, and before long, Meghan Trainor’s PR team issued an unforgettably batty press release for her Valentine’s Day-themed EP, where the word “bop” appeared twice in the copy. “Meghan’s serving your insatiable thirst for dance-ready bops with the upbeat banger that is ‘Foolish,’” the release stated, cramming two bits of gay slang into one sentence. “It slaps so hard you’ll be stanning for days.” As diet maven Susan Powter proclaimed in the ’90s: Stop the insanity!
