And it’s time for the eleventh Japanese slang review of 2023 (see all prior posts here)! In these posts I deep dive into the world of Japanese terms you probably won’t see in a textbook, looking at what they mean, how they are used, and where they came from. Sources and definitions for the terms I discuss here will come from a variety of places, but as always I draw heavily from the website numan.tokyo. As always, these are “new to me” rather than something I am able to trace the exact origin or date of… but many are actually new!
The 10 terms for this month are:
- ぷちょへんざっぷ: Put your hands up
- 岩塩: Poor service/reception
- やんのかステップ: A movement a cat does
- 海外ガール: A non-Japanese woman, or fashion/behavior which gives those vibes
- 写真へたくそ選手権: A phrase used when you post a bad photo
- グルディス: Group discussion
- だ㌔: A variant of だけど
- エス: Two women in a sister-ish friendship/relationship in Yuri manga
- ゼニガメ顔: A cute face akin to Squirtle’s (the Pokemon)
- キング化現象: When everything someone does makes you laugh
1. ぷちょへんざっぷ
The phrase ぷちょへんざっぷ is one I stumbled across on Twitter when I encountered the meme you see below.
To explain what is going on in this image for those who aren’t hip with all the cool kanji radical jokes out there, the left shows the kanji 掲 (“to raise”, “to put up”, or “to publish”) with its radical 扌highlighted. This radical is known as the tehen (手偏) or “hand radical” because it comes from 手. That’s why you see it in words like 持つ (“to hold”). In contrast, on the right this kanji 掲 has been edited to raise the 手偏 up into the air. This new, non-existent radical is then labeled the puchohen, or the “pucho radical”. The joke here, of course, is that puchohen sounds like puchohenza, the Japanese rendering of “put your hands up”. So because you are “putting your hands up” by raising (= 揚げる) them, the 扌 radical is now in the air, with the entire joke playing off how へん (radical) and へん (hand) sound the same.
I case you’re wondering if I’ve started simply doing meme/joke reviews now, the answer is “no”. The only reason I’m covering this joke here is that… well… I didn’t understand it at first, you see. To my shame. So I Googled ぷちょへん to figure out what a “pucho radical” was. Doing so quickly solved the joke for me and also, to my surprise, lead me to find that ぷちょへんざ is not just a transliteration of English for the sake of the meme, but a phrase with a long life of its own in Japan. And it’s not super obscure either, at least among young people (who party, so パリピ). Wikipedia created a Japanese page for ぷちょへんざ in 2020, and it’s seen coverage since at least 2017. The term was likely popping off before then though, as Google Trends notes spikes in both the katakana and hiragana representations (with katakana preferred vastly, being used for the Wikipedia article) by 2015. Google Trends is always a bit late to the game, but the first clear evidence I can find of ぷちょへんざ is in lyrics to a song released in 2013, so at least I doubt the word goes back before 2000.
Meaning wise, ぷちょへんざ is just putting your hands up, of course. The largest use is in club settings, where DJs might exhort the audience to ぷちょへんざ instead of “手を挙げろ”, or people might think about how they’d love to scream ぷちょへんざ while, well, ぷちょへんざ-ing.
The phrase can also just be a call for people to make themselves known. As in this request for “people from Ikebukuro Nishiguchi” to put their hands up that, sadly, got no responses.
Here’s another case of ぷちょへんざ = “make yourself known”. Do you like bikes? Well then ぷちょへんざ with an interesting story and this person might spread it.
And here someone translates a call for “kids” to ぷちょへんざ if they are “willing to spread info about [heart]’s birthday”, calling the phrase a request for readers to ふぁぼ. What’s ふぁぼ? A “like”, especially on Twitter, which comes from “favorite” being shortened to “fav”, which ended up as ふぁぼ. So be careful! While ふぁぼ comes from “favorite”, it doesn’t mean to “save” as a favorite.
Actually, since ぷちょへんざ is pretty easy to describe and doesn’t see too many difficult uses, let’s do a bit of bonus slang here and talk about ふぁぼ. Unlike ぷちょへんざ, it seems like hiragana is preferred for ふぁぼ by far, with the word peaking on Google Trends in 2012. Although to be honest, from what I saw on Twitter, both words appear in hiragana quite a lot. I imagine ぷちょへんざ is searched in katakana quite often by people who don’t understand what it means, leading to the Google Trends results, but seems to be used in hiragana without any restraint by users in the know.
Anyway, unsurprisingly you absolutely can verb ふぁぼ too. There is no rule that you have to use ふぁぼる or ファボる, so go with your favorite. Remember though, ふぁぼる means “to like”, so when this person is shocked that “more than 3000 idiots” are ファボってる-ing a post, they mean “liking” not “saving”.
And here’s an example of the past tense in a post wondering what the 11 people who ふぁぼった a blank image are “seeing”.
I checked to see if ぷちょへんざ is being verbed similarly, and the answer is no. There were a few ぷちょへんざる and ぷちょへんざった out there, but no more than a dozen of each in the entire history of Twitter. The form ぷちょへんざを appears, but usually with verbs like “hear” or “see” to refer to someone saying the term, rather than anything like ぷちょへんざをする to mean “(I) put hands up”. Oh well, perhaps that’s something someone can get buzzing in the future. Anyone ぷちょへんざっている-ing to get it going?
2. 岩塩 (がんえん)
Let’s start this entry with a little background. The phrase 塩対応 (しおたいおう), or “salt reception” is used to refer to a reception or interaction that is cold or unwelcoming.
Arguably, 塩対応 is itself slang. But it’s very well established slang, the kind that is quite likely to just become a “normal” word if it isn’t already. The Nihongo hyougen jiten even has an entry dating back to 2015 which you can see below. Note how it specifically links the phrase to the prior use of “salty (しょっぱい) to describe expressions which show someone to clearly be not enjoying what’s going on, and to idol culture (the contrasting treatment being 神対応).
It seems very clear that idol culture, especially bad treatment during hand-shake events, was a clear source of the spread of 塩対応, but it’s difficult to trace down the first use. This website asserts it’s just a change from しょっぱい対応, nothing more. Wikipedia sources 塩対応 back to 2000, instead linking it to the comedian Teruyoshi Uchimura, but they don’t have a clear source and I can’t find any origin video. And a number of websites note prior use of a similar phrase in wrestling as a source or influence. Basically, fans use 塩試合 to refer to a boring or uninteresting match, which itself relates to a use of しょっぱい in sumo to refer to a weak player.
Did wresters’ use of 塩試合 lead to 塩対応? Did the use of しょっぱい to mean “bad” jump directly to 塩対応 and 塩試合 is just a by-chance creation of the same process? I don’t know. But regardless of where it first appeared, 塩対応 has been mainstream since the early 2010s at latest.
Perhaps because 塩対応 is fairly well established though, it seems that people are a bit bored with it, and are therefore making up new versions. In the August slang review this year, I discussed a tweet mentioning a Disney Mickey character who gave customers a poor reception. In this tweet, the Mickey actor is described as 岩塩な, or “rock salt” but used as a な adjective rather than as a noun. For some reason my brain didn’t connect this to 塩対応, so I just thought there was some issue with salt? Like, because something was rock-salty the 対応 was しょっぱい? Clearly that’s not the case, as “salt” isn’t a な adjective, but I write these reviews after work so I’m often quite tired. Anyway, someone who wasn’t tired pointed out to me that this was probably a reference to (or evolution of) 塩対応… and they’re right! So let’s investigate it.
“because I’m 岩塩 I do salty 対応”
As far as I can tell, 岩塩な is a pretty new adjective. It doesn’t come up on Google Trends at all yet, unlike the word 岩塩 which is, of course, just a normal word that people would search for if they want rock salt. Looks like Japan has had a consistent demand for rock salt over the years though, so I’ve you’ve been getting into the rock salt game lately seems like a solid choice.
In searching Twitter, I found 岩塩な used back to 2010, but it was mostly to talk about actual salt at that time. The first clear use of 岩塩な to talk about attitudes or behaviors I was able to find came from 2014 by adding 対応 to the search… but it’s the only tweet I found using the word and 対応 together between the start of Twitter and December of 2015.
Since 2016 though, it became very easy to find examples of 岩塩な to refer to coldness even without including the words 対応. Not surprisingly, many of the first uses described the behaviors of 推し, as you can see below. Given that 塩対応 is thought by many to be a term from the world of fandoms, it’s not surprising that 岩塩な would be created by the group to innovate after “their” term went mainstream.
As of 2023, the word isn’t super popular by any means, and barely compares in popularity at all to 塩対応. On the other had though, it’s super easy to find uses of it these days too, so I think the popularity is on the rise. Even if you sometimes have to detail what’s going on because you’re worried people won’t understand what your adjective means.
That said, we do need to be a bit careful. Some people are using 岩石な just to mean “salty”, as in this next post. I highly doubt this Pistachio candy has “accents” which provide a cold reception. It’s just rock-salty accents.
3. やんのかステップ
Now that we’ve talked about things people do, let’s talk about things cats do. You know, to be fair and balanced. A やんのかステップ refers to when a cat’s hair stands up, it balls its back up, and then moves sideways.
The name for this pose/movement popped off in 2020, when the tweet below went viral. Basically, やんのか is a rephrasing of やるのか, which is literally “are you going to do it, eh?” but is specifically used to threaten or intimidate. It’s sort of a “come at me then!” challenge. The poster below combined this word with “step” to create the “come at me step”, and Japanese people loved the term so it went viral. The idea here is obviously that the cat looks a little intimidating, and often does the pose when they aren’t in the best of moods.
However, while May 11th, 2020 is when the phrase blew up, that’s not when it started. There’s obvious use of やんかのステップ attached to videos of cats before 2020, as well as some bizarre やんかのステップ comments by people that don’t show an image or video, or even clearly refer to anything. One of them is by the same poster as before. Did they just see a やんかのステップ and want to shout that out into the online void? Who knows.
From what I can tell, the first clear use of やんかのステップ to refer to a cat’s behavior is sometime around 2018. The image below is a screenshot of the first video on Twitter explicitly using the term while showing a cat doing the same thing seen in the viral post above.
But what caused this term to appear in 2018? Is the tweet above a linguistic innovation, or also a copy? Well, I can’t answer either question for sure. Sorry. I guess it’s time to unsubscribe. Try as I might, it’s very hard to find uses of やんのかステップ before 2019 anywhere else. Google doesn’t have them. This cute animal discussion website started writing articles using the term in 2022, and the first questions about why a cat might やんのかステップ on Chiebukuro popped up in 2021…
…but deep in the internet, on the webcomic/blog Mamekichimameko no Nichijou, there’s a comic about a cat doing a やんのかステップ… although the comic itself doesn’t use this phrase. But on July 16th, 2017, just under a year before the video I posted earlier, someone commented on this comic with “hey, my cat does that too, like they are saying ‘yannoka kora?'”… and that’s that. Clearly this person’s comment is missing the suteppu part, but at the very least we can see that calling this pose yannoka is an idea many people can have.
Long story short though, these various views solidified into the development of a distinct word around 2018, and then thanks to a viral video most of Japan(‘s internet…) knows about it by 2020. And now you do too, which is hopefully quite useful if your cat has a bit of a yakuza streak.
4. 海外ガール (かいがいガール)
Our fourth entry is a bit of an tricky one to unpack, so bear with me. In theory, of course, 海外ガール is any woman who is overseas. The word “overseas” here being “not in Japan”. In practice though, the term most broadly refers to a stereotyped image of Western actresses or female influencers, especially those from America. The pictures which adorn this “海外ガール room”, for instance, don’t show the largest international or racial diversity I’ve ever seen.
More broadly though, 海外ガール often just refers to things that Japanese people feel give off “non-Japanese and probably American girl” vibes. It’s far beyond my abilities to unpack what specific things do this or why, but examples I viewed include this dress…
…these nails…
…these outfits, but NOT the others…
…Blackpink singing No Scrubs in a car…
…or overalls and a sleeveless shirt, which as an American is the first one for me that really goes “ah yeah, America”.
But it doesn’t really matter what I find to be “海外”, it matters what young Japanese people do, and there’s no question that labeling things as 海外ガール-ish is a bit of a boom at the moment. The phrasings 海外ガールのような or 海外ガールっぽい・らしい are quite common, and I did even find な adjective uses as well.
If seeing multiple images of Korean artists is perhaps making you think “oh wait Korea is technically 海外 so is Korean fashion 海外ガール fashion?” the answer is “no”. The 海外 in 海外ガール is very squarely rooted in reference to America-centric Western styles. For some reason, there are just plenty of K-Pop artists Japanese people on Twitter think match that style.
In terms of its history, the term saw use on Twitter since late 2013. Not a lot of use, but use.
But Twitter isn’t the main place for using the term, nor is it where the term is thought to have spread. Rather, 海外ガール is a word associated more with Instagram, YouTube, and other fashion-sharing communities.
Indeed, videos of “海外ガール” style rooms in TikTok have a combined 718 million views as of the current date. And I’ll be honest, the whole “wall covered in posters and photos that aren’t quite lined up” definitely has nostalgic vibes to me as an American.
So while use of the term 海外ガール existed since 2013, and I see a clear increase in use since 2016, we kind of hit a boom in 2020. YouTube and Instagram are very hard to search via date, as Google fills your results with old websites don’t actually contain the word itself but now host links to videos/articles that do, but from what I can tell the first use of 海外ガール in the titles of fashion YouTube videos happened in 2020.
I’m far too old and out of touch with fashion to say more about this trend, but there’s no question that 海外ガール is a bit of a buzzword at the moment. To my eyes, it has a bit of a retro view of what is popular fashion in the USA at the moment, but I might just be out of date. As a lot of people are drawing on western influencers to discuss 海外ガール fashion, perhaps retro is in? Certainly, 平成レトロ is a thing at the moment too.
5. 写真へたくそ選手権 (しゃしんへたくそせんしゅけん)
Speaking of hashtags used to share images, 写真へたくそ選手権 (literally “shitty photo championship”), is a viral phrase for sharing a photo that you know isn’t that great. Like this picture of a dolphin? Kinda blurry, right? Well then nominate it for the “dolphin shit photo championship”.
On the other hand though, sometimes the tag is used specifically for photos which are blurry or messed up somehow, but actually look kind of nifty or mysterious as a result. Like this picture of Hogwarts is not good, no. But it does have a bit of a uniqueness too it as a result.
On the OTHER other hand, some people are just using 写真へたくそ選手権 in a way that feels humble braggy to show off pictures that are actually good. Like, this person qualifies that their photo is bad because the character is far away and the main dish is absent, but, come on. It’s not blurry, the rice looks good, and the framing is interesting. The only thing this is actually へたくそ at is being a submission to a 写真へたくそ選手権.
Ugh. I’m so offended looking at these good pictures labeled as “shitty” that I’m going to have to see something really awful yet interesting precisely because of being really awful to get back in the mood to continue this blog post.
The exact origin of 写真へたくそ選手権 is, as is often the case, unclear. But the use as a hashtag started around 2017, with “bad” photos of cats exploding out of nowhere in October of that year. Seriously, there are 0 hashtag results on Twitter for #ねこの写真ヘタクソ選手権 in September 2017, but pages of hits in October.
The earliest use of the phrase itself I could find goes back to 2015, in this post here where someone notes that the photo of… something?… is a candidate for best shitty photo, but the real thing is awesome. So go to booth C2_05 to check out whatever this mysterious object is. Hurry, you’re only over eight years late!
写真へたくそ選手権 really popped off in 2018 though, when people started taking bad-but-entrancing photos of the figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu. Basically, Hanyu appeared during a parade, and due to the crowd size and awkward positioning there ended up being a lot of bad photos taken. Like this one!
But people liked the photos despite (or because of!) how bad they were, and sharing them became a bit of a meme. There were even a few news and online magazine articles about the fad, like this one below.
As you can see from the article, the “normal” word for a bad photo is just 失敗写真. But where’s the fun in that? It should go in the へたくそ選手権 for boring slang terms. Sometimes, you want to call something へたくそ, and 写真ヘタクソ選手権 is here for those times. Just please don’t upload good pictures and call them 写真ヘタクソ選手権. There’s enough of that kind of 謙遜ヘタクソ選手権 material out there already.
6. グルディス
Looking for somewhere to talk about your 写真ヘタクソ選手権 rankings? Well, a グルディス may be just the thing for you. The word グルディス is a business term I stumbled across recently, and is very simply a shortening of グループディスカッション. A グルディス is therefore not an insult directed at a グル, but rather a bunch of people sitting down (usually in an office etc.) and having a chat.
From what I can tell, the word グルディス is fairly new. Major use appears to have picked up around 2016. The longer グループディスカッション has seen use for at least a few decades, but the full word is a bit of a mouthful so it’s quite understandable the people came up with a way to save a few breaths.
The shortening グルディス itself is quite a bit older than Google Trends indicates above though. I can find uses of it dating back to 2008, and have posted one of them below. I’ll be honest, there’s not a lot of グルディス in 2008, and none via Google, but it is out there. Still, use on Twitter really picks up around 2014-2016.
As it stands now, グルディス is seeing a lot of use in discussions online about office work, marketing, etc. It’s even sometimes seeing further shortening as GD, which I imagine is quite confusing, but, hey, it is what it is. If you also don’t like it, maybe we can sit down and GD about what to do.
I checked to see if グルディス was being verbed at all, and the answer is “not really”. I saw a few グルディスをする, which appears to be the normal form if you want to verb things. There were one or two グルディす out there, but it’s really not normal. In contrast, グルディスる exists, but for a completely different meaning: the verb is actually, believe it or not, a verb for insulting グル. The グル in this case are groups, usually of idols, with the word appearing in forms like 推しグルディスる (diss the group of your oshi) or 他グルディスる (diss an opposing group). They are not a popular phrases, but they are the dominant use of グルディスる.
7. だ㌔ (だけど)
The construction だ㌔ is a replacement for the “normal” sentence ending だけど (but). It’s read usually as dakedo would be, but I suppose you could potentially say dakiro – no one knows for sure I guess, as だ㌔ is a form of written play not spoken play. Still, however you want to “say” it, だ㌔ is just だけど at the end of the day. To type it, write da then kiro, with ㌔ normally being a way of writing “kilo”, as in kilometer or kilocalories.
As for the origins of だ㌔, these can be traced back to a “plastic surgery tarento” – this is their term for themselves by the way, not mine – named アレン. This tarento is semi-famous for spending over 100,000,000 yen on plastic surgery, using TV appearances that resulted from interest in their spending to promote themselves as a TV personality. From what I can tell, アレン has only been somewhat successful with the “convert surgery into fame” plan. Perhaps it’s fair to say they are in the mid-leagues? Certainly, アレン runs a mildly popular Instagram account and has a sizeable Twitter following, but they don’t have millions of subscribers on either platform.
Beyond just rather idiosyncratic looks though, アレン has become famous for an idiosyncratic way of writing online. As you can see in the screenshots below, which include one ㌔ for けど, アレン likes to mix in small and large characters, use forms like ㌃ for “ある (exist)”, write アンタたち as ァンタ達, employ ｻﾞﾏした instead of しました, and – while not visible in the screenshots below – use ヮタクシ with a small ワ as their written first person pronoun. It’s incredibly hard to read, and I imagine extremely time consuming to write, but certainly helps アレン stand out. The official name for this language style is kurimango (see also this article), with kuriman referring to アレン’s female fans. This kuriman term itself is also part of kurimango, as it is usually written in emoji as 🌰🈵, which you can see on the right of the image below in the post header of “kuriman Osaka meetup”.
I obviously can’t find when アレン first wrote だ㌔ anywhere, but they joined Twitter in 2018 and didn’t use it in a Tweet until January 30th, 2021. In that year, アレン used だ㌔ over a dozen times. And while だ㌔ came first, appearing in the first two uses of ㌔, アレン used ㌔ without だ more times in 2021 than I wanted to count. So I posit that アレン came up with だ㌔ around the end of 2020, and became infatuated with the ㌔=けど part of it quite quickly.
That said, アレン also blogs, and does so primarily on a website with poor search tools, so there may be ㌔ uses before 2021 out there. But as further proof that 2021 was the big year for ㌔, confused questions about ㌔ use start popping up on Yahoo! Chiebukuro in July of 2021.
Did アレン actually come up with だ㌔ on their own though? Well, that’s a trickier question. There is 0 doubt that アレン popularized ㌔ use for けど in Japanese writing. But while the numbers are few, there have been at least a few people using ㌔ for けど on Twitter since 2011 at the latest. I imagine that if we had the 2chan archives available as a searchable document, we could find cases going further, but this is just a guess. Am I saying アレン is a thief? No. But アレン is absolutely not the first person to come up with this little style either.
As it stands, だ㌔ is certainly seeing a bit of use. A major source, expectedly, is from アレン’s fanbase, who go all-in on kurimango. But there is also a large body of だ㌔ use from people who are otherwise writing “normally”, or at least normally for the Japanese internet. Indeed, it’s quite likely that some users of だ㌔ now have no idea where it’s from, but just know it as an “internet term”. I’m personally not surprised that だ㌔, out of all the kurimango available, took off outside of the アレン fandom, as it’s pretty easy to type and use compared to a lot of the rest.
So if you’re feeling like a bit of dakiro instead of dakedo, feel free to use だ㌔ then! Don’t be surprised if people think you’re a big アレン fan as a result だ㌔.
8. エス
The word エス comes from the phrase シスターフッド (sisterhood) or the word シスター (sister). One of the two, or maybe both, depending on the source you read. Unlike most Japanese shortenings though, where we cut off bits off the word to give us something like シスド, this just comes from the “s” at the start of the original English term. The term is used by fans of yuri manga to refer to when two characters, stereotypically an older and younger student in the same school, become sister-like friends (or, obviously, lovers). Basically, a close couple made up of an older and younger character, with one generally being more confident and the other more hesitant. But wouldn’t you know it, that’s why they make such a good pair!
Indeed, there have even been entire books written around the エス theme. Like this one here!
Given that we are working with just two katakana here, there’s no way for me to really trace this word’s origins. But it does seem to be quite old! Wikipedia, for instance, has a Japanese article on “エス文化”, which notes works in this theme since 1910 being called お目 or おでや as a slang term. This free article in the journal ejcjs asserts that エス as a cultural phenomenon (not in manga, obviously) dates back to the 1800s. Unfortunately though, neither tell me when エス started seeing use itself. The only claim to that nature I found was here, which notes that the term first appeared in the Meiji period (again, not for manga), but really took off during the Taishō Roman(ce) movement. Although, again, that’s not the first use by fans of manga either. English Wikipedia has an article that calls all of this “Class S“, noting that エス itself saw use to refer to yuri by 1990. None of this is a clear origin, but it is clear that the stories which influence what is called エス now date back to almost 200 years ago.
Anyway, to wrap all this up, I’m sure many readers already know this word, and some probably know way more about the history of it and yuri than I do. What I’ve done here is far from an in-depth history, and there’s much more detailed stuff available, so if you’re interested check out some of what I’ve linked. But for those who didn’t know this term, I do hope this short introduction helps unpack confusion that might be caused by seeing エス somewhere and assuming it’s the same thing as the more commonly known “S”. It’s not, although in speech it could theoretically be hard to tell the two apart.
9. ゼニガメ顔 (ぜにがみがお)
Do you play much Pokemon? Well, if not, here’s ゼニガメ or, as better known in English, Squirtle.
Do you see that thing on the top of ゼニガメ’s shell? The blue thing, with the eyes and mouth? That’s ゼニガメ’s 顔. With that in hand, we can begin to comprehend the term ゼニガメ顔, as it is a (complimentary!) term used to describe people with a face that’s cute in the same way ゼニガメ’s 顔 is! You know, with round pupils, a small nose, and a wide smile. According to the website that turned me on to this word, here are some key examples of Korean idols (they say that’s the most common target) associated with the term currently.
To be clear though, ゼニガメ顔 is a positive thing, not an insult. Some celebrities are even aware of the label, and have embraced it to some extent. For instance, Jeonghan of Seventeen is, let’s say at least slightly, aware that he’s associated with Squirtle.
Solar of the band MAMAMOO even did cosplay.
From what I can see online, the current use of ゼニガメ顔 is absolutely still rooted in Korean idols. But that’s not the exclusive use either. There are plenty of people saying that they have a ゼニガメ顔, designing ゼニガメ顔 for online characters, or noting ゼニガメ顔 in non-Japanese celebrities.
As for origin of ゼニガメ顔, the first use I can find dates to July 26th, 2015. There are uses of ゼニガメ顔 before that, but they are usually referring to ゼニガメ’s literal ゼニガメ顔. The year 2015 is when we see the first use of the phrase attached to a photo of a human, and then things explode pretty quickly after 2016.
10. キング化現象 (きんぐかげんしょう)
Our final word of this month takes us back to something I talked about back in August. If you’ve read that post, you’ll know what it means when Japanese people say that someone’s changed into a frog or a snake. If you haven’t, give it a look, because I’m going to use “frogged” and “snaked” here as shorthand. So now that you know what those terms mean, what about when someone talks about another person changing into a KING? Well, it’s probably not the biggest logical leap, but it refers to when you start viewing someone as a person whose every action is amazingly funny.
While I was only able to get a vague start date for many words this month, that’s not the case here. The term キング化現象 was invented by the TikTok-er しゅぎ who… actually has a very small following overall. But a small following doesn’t prevent someone from going viral, and on May 24th of this year しゅぎ posted the following proposition which got 15k likes and, more importantly, over 270k views:
What しゅぎ has written here is a suggestion to “make キング化現象 go viral”. They define キング化現象 here as “when someone you like, or are dating, does anything at all, and that makes you laugh out loud as though its hilarious”. As a result, if someone would do any kind of frog-making act, the issue is resolved by you laughing at how interesting they are rather than losing interest in them. The creater しゅぎ notes “holding a tray and looking around” as a prototypical source of people getting frogged, and included this nice illustration to show how it would instead occur if the person instead got “kinged”. In this follow-up TikTok しゅぎ then stressed that this “laughter/amazement” part is a key difference between someone changing into a king and changing into a snake: if the person you like does something that might frog them but you fall for them deeper, they’ve snaked. But if you laugh, they’ve kinged. Easy! Simple math. And a good thing too, although it brings the risk that the person you’re infatuated with thinks you’re mocking them.
As far as I can tell, most people online using キング化現象 are broadly embracing it as a term for “makes me laugh”, but there is some confusion. This person, for instance, notes that their oshi is “cute” for being not great at Twitter… but that’s really more “snake” than “kig”.
On the other hand though, there’s a lot of Twitter discourse right now about the phrase itself, so I’d say more people are talking about キング化現象 than using it. But that might not be the case for long – the word is still new, which means discussion about it is not surprising, and it seems to have caught at least someone’s attention. In July, for instance, EXIT went on TV to discuss it…
…and in that same month, Shibuya Trend Research labeled キング化現象 the “most likely candidate” for the next trend among Japanese youth. Now, I am writing this in late October, and キング化現象 is only seeing cursory use on Twitter as of now. But Twitter is not the cool hip site anymore, if it ever was.
Indeed, the biggest evidence of キング化現象’s popularity I can find right now is that people are using it in the titles of TikTok videos to farm hits. What I mean by this is that the キング化現象-labeled videos have nothing to do with any ~化現象 word, but are clearly baiting views via the phrase, expecting people to look for it. The screenshot below, for instance, comes from a video with the description “There’s something called キング化現象, but what kind of 現象 is it?”. Now you might think that means the video will be about キング化現象, but that’s because you, like me, are a sucker who is likely to click on the video expecting that. Once you do though, you will find out that all you get to see is two guys dancing. I literally scanned over a dozen videos that were doing this trick, and I learned nothing about キング化現象 from all my work. All I learned is that I wish I got paid for watching the kinds of videos I have to watch to write these blog posts sometimes. Perhaps, if I’m being generous, the idea might be that the dances are a bit silly, so if you watch them and laugh you are creating a live example of キング化現象 while frogging was instead a risk. But I doubt that, really. I’m pretty cynical about what’s going on.
And that’s it for November! I hope this wasn’t a candidate for a ブログへたくそ選手権, but that the vocabulary rather helps you navigate common situations, such as using キング化現象 to describe when 岩塩 treatment from the ゼニガメ顔 partner in your エス relationship makes you laugh, when you need to ぷちょへんざっぷ to encourage your cat’s やんのかスッテプ performances, or just a グルディス about what clothing is and is not 海外ガール… if you want to learn MORE slang, you will have to wait another month だ㌔.
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Scripting Japan 
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