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It was on the social-media platform some call X that I first encountered the slang term tea, an expression that originated in Black drag culture to mean "gossip" or "secret biographical information"--as in, "She said she didn't get fillers, but her boyfriend spilled the tea."
我第一次遇到俚语"茶"这个词，是在一个被一些人称为X的社交媒体平台上，这个词起源于黑人变装文化，意思是"八卦"或"关于个人经历的秘密信息"，比如，"她说她没有做填充，但她的男朋友把茶弄洒了/泄露了秘密。"
As a middle-aged heterosexual, I shouldn't know any of this stuff. But I live under unnatural conditions -- conditions dictated by social media and its delivery system, the smartphone.
作为一个中年直男，我不应该知道这些东西。但我生活在非自然环境中----由社交媒体及其传达系统（智能手机）所决定的环境。
Because social media gives me access to conversations among people of all ages, from every place and subculture, I am exposed to a virtual fire hose of slang.
因为社交媒体让我能够接触到来自各个地方和亚文化圈的各个年龄段的人的对话，所以我就是在被虚拟的俚语消防水管喷射。
The discourse that produces new slang is not only publicly available online, but also amplified based on its ability to attract attention from outside its original context. We all stand before this fire hose now, and some of it gets in our mouths.
产生新俚语的话语不仅在网上公开可用，而且还会根据其出圈能力而被放大。我们现在都站在这条消防水管前面，其中一些俚语就进入了我们嘴里。
The situation has created a language crisis, in which Americans of all types and backgrounds use expressions of every provenance, destroying the power of slang to perform its basic function: to signal membership in a group.
这种情况造成了一种语言危机，即各种类型和背景的美国人使用各种来源的表达方式，从而破坏了俚语发挥其基本功能的能力：表明自己是某个群体的成员。
The incentives imposed by social media to develop and use slang are, of course, not new. Middle schools, skate parks, barracks, gay bars, locker rooms, and various music scenes have operated on the slang-for-esteem model for generations.
社交媒体为创造和使用俚语所施加的激励当然不是新鲜事。中学、滑板公园、军营、同性恋酒吧、更衣室和各种音乐圈子，已经在几十年里都是说俚语能得到尊重的模式。
But these milieus differ from social media in one crucial way: The wrong people cannot get in. On social media, there is no such exclusion.
但这些环境在一个关键方面与社交媒体不同：不属于这个环境的人无法进入。在社交媒体上，不存在这样的排斥。
Thirty-five-year-olds hear the slang of teenagers, college students are privy to the language of the urban underclass, and advertising consultants learn how to talk like self-diagnosed anxiety shut-ins. As a result, how someone talks is no longer a reliable indicator of where they're coming from.
三十五岁的人能听到青少年的俚语，大学生能了解城市底层阶级的语言，广告顾问能学会如何像自我诊断为焦虑症的宅男宅女那样说话。结果，一个人的说话方式不再是表明他们来自哪里的可靠指标。
The irony is that social media--the disembodied online spaces where what we post becomes the entirety of who we are--is where we most need the identity cues that slang used to provide.
具有讽刺意味的是，社交媒体----这个我们发布的内容就是我们的全部存在的无形在线空间----是我们最需要曾经由俚语提供的身份线索的地方。
These cues are an essential part of life offline, if only at a subconscious level. If I'm in a crowd and someone addresses us collectively, I immediately start assessing that person's background and orientation based on whether they say "ladies and gentlemen," "you guys," or "y'all."
这些线索是线下生活的重要组成部分，哪怕只是在潜意识层面。如果我身处人群中，有人称呼我们整个群体，我会立即根据他们说的是"女士们先生们""大家伙儿"还是"你们大家"来评估这个人的背景和取向。
