I've been seeing a lot of discourse about "neopronouns" on apps like Twitter and TikTok by people my age lately...and for very good reason. Neopronouns, in simpler terms, are a subcategory of pronouns used in place of ones such as the typical he/she/they and such. Examples could include "Xe" as in "Xe laughed" or "Ze/Zie/Zir" as in "Ze likes zirself''. If you're confused, don't worry...I was as well. I've seen them referenced before in pop culture like Star Wars, but I never knew there was an established term for this (and I found that out just a few hours ago). Of course, being the person that I am, I always try to respect someone's pronouns no matter how unfamiliar I am with them so I was fairly unbothered.
Now, the problem is that there are some really wacky neopronouns I've been seeing. Recently, I've been reading some bios on TikTok and seeing pronouns like "Moth" or "Doll" or "Bun". At first glance, I'm like "wait, that's not a pronoun!" but the comments in that person's videos say otherwise. Super weird, but I felt as if it was none of my business. However, I realized that those aren't even the WEIRDEST of the bunch. The more I stumbled into it, the worse it got. I've been seeing some people in the comments refer to themselves as "BLM/BLMself", "Star/Starself", and even emojis (yes, I'm 100% serious).
It wasn't long until l saw someone in the comments point out that "it's Tumblr" all over again. And if that's going by anything, I'm guessing this is where the awful "Attack Helicopter" originated from. I'm going to be honest, I just don't see how these are practical at all. Let's take away the internet from the conversation. In real life, respecting pronouns isn't even normalized upon the average person. I can't even imagine how the average person will react to someone referring to themselves with an emoji (seriously, how would that work?), especially when the "common" neopronouns are already foreign to about 99.9% of the population. There's already a lot of infighting about what's valid and what's not valid. I just know that this infighting is not going to go so well. Just my thoughts.
Now, the problem is that there are some really wacky neopronouns I've been seeing. Recently, I've been reading some bios on TikTok and seeing pronouns like "Moth" or "Doll" or "Bun". At first glance, I'm like "wait, that's not a pronoun!" but the comments in that person's videos say otherwise. Super weird, but I felt as if it was none of my business. However, I realized that those aren't even the WEIRDEST of the bunch. The more I stumbled into it, the worse it got. I've been seeing some people in the comments refer to themselves as "BLM/BLMself", "Star/Starself", and even emojis (yes, I'm 100% serious).
It wasn't long until l saw someone in the comments point out that "it's Tumblr" all over again. And if that's going by anything, I'm guessing this is where the awful "Attack Helicopter" originated from. I'm going to be honest, I just don't see how these are practical at all. Let's take away the internet from the conversation. In real life, respecting pronouns isn't even normalized upon the average person. I can't even imagine how the average person will react to someone referring to themselves with an emoji (seriously, how would that work?), especially when the "common" neopronouns are already foreign to about 99.9% of the population. There's already a lot of infighting about what's valid and what's not valid. I just know that this infighting is not going to go so well. Just my thoughts.
Last edited:
