Viral Language

"aura" and "brain rot" are not new, sorry.

etymonline.com on "aura":

- 1870: In spiritualism, "subtle emanation around living beings".

- 1859: "Characteristic impression" made by a personality.

- 1732: "An aroma or subtle emanation".

The hyphenated term brain-rot was used by Henry Thoreau in Walden [1854]; search for it in this Project Gutenberg copy:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm

crazy how the behaviour impacts the language and language impacts the behaviour such like a loop

There are a few things being conflated here: general gen Z slang like "rizz"; "algospeak", or euphemisms to avoid demonetization or other disciplinary action from online platforms (e.g., "unalive" for "kill", or "S.A." for "sexual assault"); and replacing vowels with asterisks which is usually done to avoid attention from searchers for disfavored people/things, e.g., "El*n M*sk".

Even in the realm of gen Z slang, gen Z/alpha people don't generally talk as obnoxiously as depicted in the Rizzler song or the infamous Walmart ad with the bus driver. And there are certain things attributed to gen Z that I think are completely made up and then picked up and propagated by gullible journalists and marketroids. A few years back, a number of online outlets began repeating the rise of the term "cheugy" among gen Z, meaning roughly "cheesy and outdated, like something a millennial would find cool". But I could never find actual live examples of "cheugy" being used this way, either online or IRL, outside of thinkpieces about gen Z slang. I'm pretty convinced that "cheugy" is a phenomenon similar to the hoax jargon of "grunge speak" of the 1990s:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak

I think it's important to separate and clarify the different linguistic phenomena going in here, to avoid brainrot regarding how Kids These Days speak and use language.