The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kids' Culture: What Does 'Let's Get Sendy' Mean?

I wish these kids would stay off my damn lawn.

Credit: @nothhaileycase, @dougdescendant, @jason.dom

A weekly deep dive into the current trends, slang, and viral videos of youth culture in terms that even the squarest can understand.

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Back in your day, slang made sense, trends were harmless, and young people didn’t go around painting their faces green and peeing on stuff. But those days are dead (and they never existed in the first place). Today’s kids and teens have a language, a culture, and a set of rituals that makes no sense, but only to you and I, because we’re old and washed-up. This column won’t bring back your youth, but it might help you be less offended if someone tells you to “start digging in your butt, twin.” 

What do “sendy” and “let’s get sendy" mean?

The hottest piece of generation alpha slang this week is “sendy.” It’s an adjective that describes a person who does bold and/or exciting things. The phrase "let’s get sendy” means something like “let’s do something big/crazy.” 

Or it doesn’t mean anything. Gen Alpha slang is brain-rot, so saying "let’s get sendy” especially when said in a sing-songy way, could be just a way to make your friends laugh/annoy everyone over 15. 

“Sendy” originally came from the phrase “send it,” slang that (probably) originated in the rock climbing community of the 1980s or 1990s, as a shortening of “ascend it.” When faced with a particularly difficult section, one climber might yell, “send it!” to encourage their bro/broettes to go for it, or you might say “send it” to announce that you are about to do something sketchy yourself. “Send it” went on to be used in the same way in other action sports like mountain biking, skateboarding, and snowboarding. 

“Sendy” as an adjective seems to have originated with The Nelk Boys, who have been posting mainly prank videos on their YouTube channel for over a decade. The Nelk Boys said/say “send it” a lot, and in this videos from 2023, one of them said, “let’s get sendy”:

This probably isn’t the first time anyone ever said “sendy” (it seems fairly obvious if you say “send it” a lot) but it might be the first time anyone ever said, “let’s get sendy.” If it is, it’s documented proof of the exact moment a piece of slang came into being—catnip for etymologists. Anyway, it took a couple years for “let’s get sendy” to make it from a podcast into every middle school in the country/world, but here we are in 2025, getting sendy.   

What does SDIYBT ("start digging in your butt, twin") mean

This acronym and phrase is growing very popular among the kids in Generation Alpha. SDIYBT stands for “start digging in your butt, twin.” 

What “start digging in your butt, twin” actually means is debatable. Some have suggested it means something like “dig deep,” or focus and access your inner strength, but it’s more likely that the phrase doesn’t mean anything, because words meaning things is becoming passé.

The origin of SDIYBT as a slang phrase is a meme someone made of SpongeBob Squarepants saying “start digging in yo butt, twin.”  (SpongeBob doesn’t say SDIYBT in the original cartoon; that was added by the memer):

Before long, people started lip-syncing the video:

or singing the phrase like this:

and this:

and this:

Before long, there were more than 26,000 videos in the SDIYBT hashtag on TikTok. 

Summary: SDIYBT doesn’t mean anything; kids say it because it's funny to them and annoying to you.

What does “Dih” mean?

“Dih” is algospeak for “dick.” It’s a way to keep internet content from being removed for using a word that might be flagged by censoring programs. 

(For more Gen Z and Gen A slang, check out my post, “'Clanker,' 'Dwerking,' and Other Gen Z and Gen Alpha Slang You Might Need Help Decoding.”) 

What is “the great lock in?”

Let us leave the world of annoyingly vague Generation Alpha slang to take a look at Generation Z, many of whom who have outgrown brain-rot and are trying to become better people. “The great lock-in” or “The September lock-in" is a collective, online self-improvement initiative where young people are vowing to devote September through December to achieving one’s personal goals, like eating healthily, exercising regularly, and otherwise building better habits. Think of it as a post-summer reset for bad habits. 

It can't be a thing online (particularly a thing that mainly women are doing) without people getting judgy, of course. Some are concerned that the trend could be an unhealthy part of a “major reversal of body positivity,” or evidence of a collapsing society, but I don’t see it. Having spent some time poking around popular videos in the great lock-in hashtag, all I’ve seen are people listing their own goals, offering tips on how to successfully stick to a plan, or just generally trying to motivate. None are focused on, say, starving yourself. As for this being evidence of society collapsing, I'm not seeing that either. Self-improvement/self-help trends in America date back to at least the 1800s, and there are a lot clearer indications that society is collapsing than this.

Hottest college trend: public urination

Gen Z isn’t only about wholesome self-improvement. There are also college students peeing on things in public. College students have always peed on things in public of course, but social media is making it into a trend. TikTok accounts like @brockport.pisser, @thesunycantonpisser, and @buff_state_pisser are getting thousands of views on videos of them letting loose near various landmarks at the schools they presumably attend. A pee-boy at The University of West Florida marked the UWF Welcome sign, and that sign reportedly cost the school over $2 million. Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and the University of Maine have all been victims of anonymous urinators, and there’s even been an arrest. Nicholls State University cops recently busted a dude who goes by “Nicholls Pisser” for violating an unnamed state law and city ordinance. Given how these videos are shot—a stream of liquid emanating from a source off camera—it seems like a tough case to prove. These videos could easily have been made with a water bottle, a fact that at least one “pisser” points out. 

Viral video of the week: TikToker paints face green

It’s a pretty safe assumption that all of the peeing-on-stuff accounts above are operated by dudes. Dudes are cool and all, but they can be a bit much. That’s the story behind today’s viral video.

TikToker Hailey was having a nice life, posting amusing slice of life videos, reactions to books, and lip-syncs to her 14k followers. But one day she posted this:

Whatever demon is in charge of TikTok’s recommend algorithm decided to spread the video, and nearly a million people watched it—but they were the wrong people. According to Bailey, that one video changed the demographics of her viewerships from primarily female to primarily male, and the change was not good. “Now my inbox and comments are littered with disgusting messages,” Bailey reports. But she came up with a unique solution for getting rid of all those creeps/men, as you can see in the below video:

Did Bailey painting her face green work? Sure seems like it. Her comment section is packed with women reporting in, and Bailey’s taken the idea further with a cool red face job too: