A youth-camp weekend left a USA TODAY reporter shut out of kid talk until campers decoded Gen Alpha slang like “huzz,” “unc,” and “fries”, words minted on TikTok and Twitch that now police who’s real and who’s faking it.

Rachel Hale, a youth mental health reporter, spent a weekend volunteering with elementary, middle, and high schoolers at a youth camp and quickly hit a language wall. The kids were fluent in a dialect she did not speak.

She asked what the words meant. Then she wrote it down so parents, teachers, and anyone over 30 might keep up.

The slang did not come from textbooks. It came from TikTok, memes, and Twitch streamers, the same online world where these kids measure status and sort authenticity from performance.

“Fairs,” “huzz,” and the camp dad called “unc”

One of the first terms Hale heard was “fairs.” TikToker @thakiddsam laid it out in a June video with a simple story.

"I remember one time, like, I told a girl I liked her, and she said ‘ew’” and I was like ‘fairs,’"

Translation: fair enough. The kid accepts the hit and moves on.

Then came “huzz.” A camper told Hale her boyfriend was “huzz.” A counselor shot back a joke.

"you’re too young to have a husband!"

Not quite. Merriam-Webster ties the rise of “huzz” to streamer Kai Cenat around February 2023. In camp use, it flagged a crush or someone attractive, not a marriage license.

And “unc”? That one landed on the adults. Kids tagged a 50-something volunteer as “unc” and treated him as “camp dad.” They also taught him the new words.

Nineteen-year-old TikToker Dasha Sprinkle captured the vibe over audio about turning 35.

"When I remember my siblings are slowly reaching unc status,"

Merriam-Webster notes the term’s roots in African American Vernacular English and in rap and hip hop. On camp grounds, it meant older, kindly, or not.

Larping and fries: calling out the fake and the awkward

“Larping” is the sharper blade. Morgan Hurlock of Philadelphia has described it as calling someone out for putting on an act.

"It’s someone who is performative in the way that they're dressing or acting or doing something, and it's not actually authentic to who they are as an individual."

Hurlock added, “It's almost like you're calling someone out.” One example in the reporting: treating a day trip into Manhattan from Long Island as “larping New York City.”

Then there is “fries.” The lineage traces, via knowyourmeme.com, to a 2022 Facebook post from Andre Jamar Milburn. Someone wrote, “I AINT SEEN YOU SINCE HIGHSCHOOL.” His reply: “JUST PUT THE KETCHUP IN MY BAG BRO.” The meme evolved. Kids now deploy fries-talk for awkward, secondhand embarrassment, the moment you want to disappear.

Online reactions became their scoreboard

Don Grant, a media psychologist and National Adviser of Healthy Device Management for Newport Healthcare, has put the larger pattern in plain terms for USA TODAY before.

"We learn about ourselves and where we stand in the world only from the reactions and responses we get from others."

Grant’s point continues: for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that public sphere is online. “They grew up with everything online becoming their social currency and the litmus of who they are.”

That is the through-line under the jokes. The same platforms that invent “huzz” and “fairs” also train kids to scan for cringe, score authenticity, and punish anything that looks forced.

Hale’s camp weekend made the gap concrete. Counselors and a “camp dad” needed a living dictionary just to follow the banter. The kids were not trying to be cryptic for sport. They were speaking the language of the feed that raised them.

Parents can laugh at the glossary. They should also notice who writes it, and where the grading happens.