Learn to Yearn

To quote this article, “The internet has turned an emotion into both a verb and a TikTok trend.” It’s referring to #yearnposting - think LONG posts, with overly dramatic music that you might scroll through and then rewatch several times before going to sleep.

But it’s not the only emotion or noun that young people have morphed into a verb. The explosion of the term #delulu, any word with -mood or -vibe attached and even #thirsttraps or #rizz could fit into this category. But why?

Coming of Age

It could be because the first generation to consider social media and mobiles as akin to water and electricity is growing up and shifting emotions into verbs is a way of understanding what that all means. In other words, what anyone who remembers dial up internet sweepingly calls, ‘adulting’.

Well, Well, Wellness

This post says #yearnposting is, “a new kind of wellness”, and it very much feels symptomatic of the new, broader meaning of the word to encompass all things mental and emotional wellbeing, as well as physical. As one of the comments on the aforementioned post says, “It feels like a hug”. Perhaps making it a verb gives it more credence, more meaning than it simply being an ephemeral emotion?

Language for a Visual World

If you dig into what it means to yearn, to delulu and to rizz, they feel existentially deep and incredibly fleeting at the same time. They are ‘emoverbs’; the linguistic version of a song by My Chemical Romance or Jimmy Eat World. Taking an emotion and making it into a verb makes more sense in a world that prioritises pictures and videos because verbs are visual; you see them in action.

In summary, brands should mirror this language where appropriate, to reflect what’s happening online. And perhaps even take an emotion that has yet to be turned into a verb and use it as part of the next campaign to be one step ahead of culture.