Improve your Vocabulary: Learn 16 new social, political, and internet words

Hi, everyone. In this lesson we're going to look at new words for our times. These words reflect social movements or new things happening in politics. We're going to start with "millennial". "A millennial" is a person who's between the age of a teenager now and their late 20s. Thankfully I just escaped being a millennial, because millennials are whiny and they are... They're just so weak, and they're like little special snowflakes, very delicate. And millennials are just... They've been so prote

cted all their lives that when it comes to it in the real world they are... They like whine and they shout, and they cry, but they don't do a lot. No offence to any millennials watching. [Laughs]. Next word is related to the millennials. The millennials need "safe spaces", because this world out there is... It's so... It's so mean and people say such horrible things that they need to be protected inside their safe spaces. And so, the idea of a safe space would be somewhere on a college campus wh

ere you know you can go and be safe, and you don't have to be scared or upset by any of the mean things that old white men and politicians say. Anything that offends you in the safe space, it's all very relaxed there. You can... Maybe you'll manage to, you know, do a bit of studying in that safe space, nobody can get to you. The next word is also related to the millennials in the safe space, they go here because there nothing bad will ever happen to them, but when they go out into the big wide w

orld: "Oh no! Oh no!" They need "trigger warnings". "Trigger warnings" is... You give a trigger warning when something you're going to say could upset someone, it could be offensive to them, and it could create a trauma or a kind of flashback to them, and because they are so weak they can't hear this thing and they need a trigger warning to keep them safe. When someone is triggered, then they're triggered by something they don't want to hear, and sometimes they might scream, like: "No! No! I can

't take it! No!" That's when they're triggered. So, because they have such big emotional responses to things they don't like, that's why they need the safe spaces. And I think actually, come to think about it, maybe the safe spaces are a good idea because they could just go in the safe space, and we wouldn't be in there, so they could do all that alone in the safe space. The next word is "social justice warrior", "SJW", also to do with the millennials. One of the things associated with them is t

hat they protest a lot, they're vocal, they like to take a stand against the things they don't like, which they typically do online, they talk about things online or perhaps they go on protesting and things like that. "A social justice warrior" is someone whose main reason to protest is things to do with race issues or gender issues, and they... Or they think that... Or feminist issues. They think that... For whatever group they belong to, they think that life isn't fair for them, so that's the

reason they protest. They're warriors, they're fighters, they're warriors. Next we've got "gender non-binary". A person who calls themselves gender... Say: "Oh, I'm gender non-binary", what that means is: "I'm not a man. I'm not a woman. I'm something in between those genders that hasn't... It can't be... Can't be specified as this or that. It's my own identity which is gender non-binary." Not the traditional man, not the traditional woman, but something in between. Next word is a word that's us

ed as an insult or a term of offence to people, is "libtard". The "tard" part reminds us of the word "retard" which means disabled person, and the "lib" part comes from "liberal". When you put it together: "libtard" means somebody who's so liberal in their politics or their ideas or their vision and their view of the world, they've actually become retarded and disabled because of it; used as an insult. The next two terms we have to look at together. We've got "globalism" versus "populism". "Popu

lism" in politics is movements like Brexit in the UK, and the election of Donald Trump in the USA. Two movements which were similar in the sense that in those countries the national media didn't support or expect those two things to happen. So in the UK, for example, a lot of the news coverage in the run-up to Brexit was all to get people to vote to stay in the European Union. And many, many people were surprised when the people in the UK voted in their referendum to leave the EU. So that's beco

me thought of as a populist movement, a movement of the people against their government. You know, they perceived that their government's not working for them or their group of people, and it's a change in the old way of politics, and it's more... It's more about them and their country and their small part of the world than it is about globalism. "Globalism" comes from the world, having a bigger vision of all the... All countries working in cooperation, for example, like the EU having a big supe

r state, and looking out towards other countries, more of them is coming back down. And it's also an evolved term, I would say, from the word "nationalism" which is about putting your nation first, but "nationalism" has connotations for many people to be... Bring up the Second World War again. So the new term is "populism", and I think what's different about "populism" as well is there are so many ways for average people to get involved in politics now which happens a lot online, starting Facebo

ok groups, making YouTube videos, all things now where people can be their own media, which you couldn't do before. So this brings us back, in a way, to the millennials, and using the internet and using new ways to communicate our message and the politics we believe in. Next we've got the idea of "fake news". "Fake news" can be completely made-up stories on the internet, which the whole purpose of making up the story is to get people to click on it. When they go to that fake story, whoever creat

ed the fake story makes money from all the people going to look. So that's what fake news means in the truest sense. The way it's also becoming used in my understanding and how I'm seeing it evolve as a term is that the mainstream media, traditional newspapers, traditional journalists will say that the alternative media, that it's not supported by a big newspaper behind, but it's, you know, someone making content in their bedroom or whatever, the smaller... The smaller kind of people giving out

opinions. The mainstream media will say some of their stories are fake news, they're not true. And they'll say: "People are believing fake news and things that are not true", and the same the other way around; the people who don't believe the mainstream media and only look at the alternative media will sometimes say: "Oh, it's fake news, it's fake news, it's fake news" in the mainstream newspapers, so it's a bit like two sides disagreeing on something, whether something's true or whether it's fa

ke. The next idea is "to virtue signal" or people who are "virtue signallers", this means people who have a kind of politics or a kind of belief, or they do something in their life because the reason, the real reason is they want to look good, or they want to look kind, and they want to look like they're really good people. But it's not a genuine... It's not really genuine; it's just to look good. So an example would be let's say you decided to adopt children, and you decided: "Oh, I'm going to

go and adopt children from the middle of the Congo Rainforest. I'm going to go and adopt five children from there." And you bring them back to your country, and then you start making... You start, like, telling everyone about these children that you adopted and why you're helping them so much, and you know, and you have to let everybody know about it. And the reason... The true reason isn't because you love the children or you wanted to help them, it's just so that everybody says: "Wow, you help

people so much. Oh, you're so kind", and you get attention. Next example is "data dump". A "data dump" is when an organization like WikiLeaks, a group of hackers or an organization that brings hidden things out into the news, they will get thousands or millions and millions of emails, and then they will pass them on to the newspapers or they'll put them out there so that individuals can go and look into a subject, and find the information about it. But there's so, so, so, so much information, i

t's too much for one person to do all by themselves. And the reason for doing the data dump is to bring the hidden secret things out into the open. So perhaps there was something illegal that happened in government, or perhaps there's been a conspiracy, a secret about something, and the reason for doing this data dump is to... It's not... If you think about it, then it's not one individual person, saying: "Hey, you did this!" which is maybe going to get them into be really... It would be dangero

us for them to come out and speak about the government perhaps or an important person, but when the information comes out this way, perhaps... Perhaps that's why it's done, maybe it's safer to get the information out this way. Okay, the next term is "Pizzagate". When you hear of something going on, an event or a... Yeah, something that happens and it has the word "gate", the suffix "gate" in it... "Gate" comes from a famous time in American politics called "Watergate" when there was... Right. Am

erican history is not my strong point, but anyway, there was a... There was a problem with a president being in trouble about something, and things had been kept secret about it. But in Watergate, the secret came out. And since then, when there is a big scandal, usually in politics or when something that was a secret before comes out, this is where the "gate" part comes from. Now, in terms of "Pizzagate", I don't want to go into it too much; this is something that you could look in yourself if y

ou're interested, but "Pizzagate" is about the idea that the elite, the people in the government, people in the high-up positions are... Not saying all of them, but they... They abuse children and they're into pedophilia, having, like, sexual things with children. So the idea, this whole Pizzagate scandal and storm is about those people in the high-up positions using code words to do with pizza. So they're just writing emails about pizza, it looks like, but actually what they were writing about

was secret messages about having sex with children. So that's all I'm going to say. If you want to look at it, look at it yourself. Next thing is "digital nomad". "A digital nomad" is someone who works on the internet from anywhere in the world, a "nomad" is a person that has not one home, they just move their home all the time, from here, to here, to here, to here. Nomads used to be in the desert, but now nomads can be anywhere with their laptop computers. I did this... I did this for a bit, I

lived that dream. I lived that dream for a while. I thought I'd live that dream forever, but no, not anymore. The next word is "minimalist". "A minimalist" is often a digital nomad who can't carry a lot of stuff around because they're always moving, so they say: "Oh, I don't want to have a lot of stuff. I'm beyond stuff. I don't need to have lots of things, because I'm a minimalist. And I care about the environment, and I don't need material belongings." So, yeah, a minimalist is usually someone

that cares very much about the planet and wasting things, so the point of living their lifestyle by not spending a lot of money, not buying things they don't need. And it's a trend, it's one of the trends at the moment of a lifestyle trend, how to... And a lot of people are interested in how to minimalize their life. "How do I not need so many clothes? How do I...? How can I stop buying so many things from the supermarket? How can I live with less?" So people will be interested to... In those k

ind of things would be minimalists. The next word is "coworking". "Coworking" is when you don't have a... Perhaps you're someone who works for themselves, perhaps you're someone who works on the internet. Generally you could work from your house, but when you work from your house all the time, it's... The downside of that is you don't see enough people, perhaps it's hard to stay motivated, perhaps it's just boring as well. So, a trend is for coworking or coworking spaces, where you rent... You r

ent access to a place where you can go and work. And another reason people do it is because here in the coworking space you have fast internet, you have... Maybe there's good coffee you can drink there, and maybe it's a cool, inspiring environment for you to be around. So, it's either somewhere that you pay to use and you can always go, or it could also be as well some caf�s are designed this way so that people can go and work there real easily; they have good desk space, lots of places to charg

e your laptop, so those would be coworking caf�s. The next idea is "hot-desking". "Hot-desking" is when... It could be in your office where you always work, but it could also... Yeah, it could be wherever you work you don't have a set chair and desk where you always work every day. "That's my space, I always sit here by the window." No. Hot-desking isn't like that. You could move around to different places in that place where you work, and other people can sit in your chair, because you don't ha

ve a chair when you're hot-desking; you move around. And the last word, to mention here: "preppers" are people who think... They're getting prepared, basically. They're getting prepared, prepared for a big disaster; World War III, environmental catastrophe, riot, looting - they're getting prepared for when... They're getting prepared for when... For when shit hits the fan. So, what they do is they... Perhaps they'll be energy-independent, they'll have their own way to generate electricity, they'

ll have survival skills, like how to capture animals, how to butcher them, how to grow food, or they might, if they... I'm not going to call them... It's a different way. Some preppers aren't going to want to learn the skills; they'll just buy lots and lots of space, travelling astronaut food or army food, they'll buy, like, three years' of army food so that if all the food did run out from the shops they would still have something... Something to eat when shit hits the fan. But yeah, the point

of them is they're worried about all this stuff going on, and I guess they want to protect themselves, and feel safe and feel ready for if things go dangerous and wrong politically. So, thank you all for watching. Now what you can do is a quiz on this lesson. I'll see you again soon. Bye.