2023 was the year Gen Alpha came online and made Gen Zers and millennials worried they were falling out of touch

• Gen Alpha's "Skibidi Toilet" and "Fanum tax" memes startled older internet users.
• Many Gen Zers and millennials panicked that they were losing track of what's hip.

Gen Alpha, the generation of kids born after 2010, made their presence known online this year. While they didn't totally dominate the internet, they startled the older generations with their surreal memes and baffling slang, making some feel like they were losing touch.

It all began with Skibidi Toilet, an absurd video series that started with an animation of a man's head coming out of a toilet, which spiraled into a viral meme. The series was created by Alexey Gerasimov, who runs the YouTube account DaFuq!?Boom! and has over 36 million subscribers.

The series — which follows a war involving mega-toilets with massive weapons — is incredibly popular among kids on YouTube Shorts, where the videos rack up dozens of millions of views.

Over the summer, Skibidi Toilet seemed to spike in popularity as it leaked onto mainstream TikTok and puzzled a mass of uninitiated viewers who didn't understand its appeal. Its prevalence started trickling upward in May and then peaked around October, according to Google Trends.

When Skibidi Toilet hit TikTok, a slew of Gen Zers made videos worrying they were getting old and were about to be replaced by Gen Alpha.

"Guys gen alpha is starting to make their own memes… it begins… we are the next cringe generation on the chopping block," one TikToker wrote in a clip with nearly 10 million views.

The same thing happened a few months later when a slang term associated with Gen Alpha went viral. "Fanum tax" was coined by the streamer Fanum to describe how he would sometimes "tax" his friends, like the influencer Kai Cenat, by taking their food.

In October, the phrase started taking over TikTok videos and comment sections as a mass of Gen Zers said they had no clue what it was and panicked about being out of touch.

The term went viral along with "Sticking Out Your Gyat For The Rizzler," a meme song that combines a bunch of Gen Alpha slang into a potpourri of funny nonsense. The viral soundtrack parodies Suicidal-Idol's "Ecstasy" with lyrics like "you're so skibidi, you're so fanum tax."

After hearing the song, the 26-year-old creator Nathan Freihofer said he had "never felt old" until now.

Other users despaired about wanting to be cool but not understanding any Gen Alpha slang.

Instead of lamenting, some older users took the opportunity to ridicule Gen Alpha humor and behavior for being ridiculous or cringeworthy. Others hit back at that and tried to remind their fellow twenty-somethings of the absurd memes they enjoyed as kids, like montage parodies.

Another sign Gen Alpha was rising came after a millennial woman got schooled by her younger Gen Alpha sister and her best friend in a video that's been viewed over nine million times.

In the clip, Simone Pellegrino informed her older sister Nicole that "slay" was out of fashion and explained how to use certain emojis correctly. She also introduced the word "GYAT" to her.

The discussion stunned some commenters who said the video "aged" them, while others defiantly claimed that words like slay were still appropriate to use.

"I'm 24 going on 100 APPARENTLY," one person said.

No matter what new memes are invented and old slang is discarded in 2024, it'll be fascinating to see what happens as Gen Alpha grows increasingly online and culturally influential.