As each new generation comes of age, they’ll inevitably start to develop some new slang. And you’re wondering why that is, it’s hard to do that without asking why we did it when we were coming of age.
Nonetheless, a lot of parents, teachers and some of the kids’ less hip peers can often find themselves at a loss when trying to decipher what the new terms du jour mean.
So they’ll often find themselves turning to sites like Urban Dictionary to help fill in the blanks . And since anyone can really put anything on there, the results of an innocuous-sounding term can often get pretty wild.
For that reason, the site has developed something of a salacious reputation from the more colorful terms found on there. And this reputation likely made the common results of a new trend all the more surprising.
If you’ve spent time on Twitter or Instagram recently, there’s a chance you’ve seen an uptick in the number of people posting what they found when they searched their names on Urban Dictionary.
According to Mashable , some were compelled to do this after Instagram user @bymayuuu dared them to and the trend seemed to balloon outward from there.
But if that user was expecting to deliver a little mischief by making people discover that their names were linked to some sort of depraved act, they may be disappointed.
Because what people soon discovered was that if you enter your name into Urban Dictionary, you’re likely to end up with some very flattering results.
And while it would be misleading to say that all of the results are quite as G-rated as this, these wholesome descriptions of kind-hearted friends are closer to the rule than the exception.
Unless your name happens to be Karen, it seems that just about any name comes with a gushing description of someone the definition’s author clearly liked a lot.
For instance, one user found that the top entry for the name Lenny described, “A bright, intelligent, beautiful individual” who is also kind and able to make just about everyone happy.
Curiously, the name was also specifically associated with slightly long, curly hair, brown eyes, and immense attractiveness.
Of course, this definition becomes all the more hilarious if you immediately associate the name “Lenny” with the Simpsons character, as I do.
Given that Karen is a noted exception to this rule, one might expect the same to be true for other meme-associated names like Kyle.
But as one Kyle discovered , searching his name didn’t yield any of the blurbs about guzzling Monster energy drink, punching drywall and being angry at his stepdad that some might have expected .
Instead, it apparently described a person who acts happy around his friends, but has trouble feeling emotion when they’re alone and tries to put that issue aside to help others as much as possible.
It’s perhaps not as bright and ebullient as some of the others we’ve seen so far, but it still seems to put Kyles in a positive light.
And just to test how widely positive these name definitions seem to be, I decided to give my own name a whirl.
And before anyone gets suspicious, I had absolutely nothing to do with this description of my name as belonging to “the best guy in the whole entire world.”
After all, if I had the foresight nine years ago to know that I’d one day write about something like this, you wouldn’t be reading this because I would’ve used that gift to win the lottery instead.
