The newsletter is a day late this week because this post was partly inspired by Shogun, and I wanted to watch a few more episodes before I hit send. I’m loving the show for lots of reasons (the perfectly paced Games of Thrones-meets-Sopranos political intrigue, the gorgeous Japanese landscapes, the big questions it asks about the line between duty and loyalty). But the best part about the show, sadly, is that it forces me to pay attention, because more than half of the dialogue is in subtitled Japanese. Any second-screening results in missing critical story developments.
The subtitles are more than just a translation tool—the language barrier is a central plot device. Various characters scheme and conspire while relying on the honesty of interpreters. The confluence of Portuguese, English, and Japanese languages and cultures in 16th century Japan mirrors the language upheaval we’re hearing as part of the new media world we live in.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Facc9acfa-81b2-4e48-9f36-ae24a402335c_1920x1080.webp)
Shogun couldn’t exist even ten years ago. A foreign language show made for American viewers would be untenable in a linear TV world. But the insanity of the streaming ecosystem calls for daring prestige bets like this. And as streamers are increasingly reliant on global growth while reigning in content costs, we’ll see more and more programming designed for multi-national audiences. This means more exposure to different languages and cultures. Squid Game is still Netflix’s all time biggest hit, by a wide margin.
It’s not just “foreign” language that is becoming more common in the streaming era. It’s the dirty words too! You will hear way more fucks, shits, and bitches on Netflix and (now that they’ve incorporated Hulu) Disney+ than you would hear in a lifetime on linear TV. While technically cable TV was not required to adhere to the FCC’s language guidelines, most media companies held firm to the long-held norms of what constituted acceptable language. The move to streaming has essentially made everyone HBO, the original place you could hear dirty words on TV.
It’s most apparent in streaming reality shows, where “real” people without the benefit of writers or censors default to the linguistic shorthands we all use to cut straight to the point.
Will a word like fuck be fully de-stigmatized in a few short years? (I’m not complaining; in my agency days I was a give a strict “one fuck allotment” for my stage presentations).
At the same time, the natural evolution of language, where regional or sub-cultural slang grows into common parlance over time, is accelerating every day as media consumption skyrockets and more of that consumption time is spent with individual creators instead of scripted shows featuring with intentionally neutral accents and scripted language designed for maximum relevance.
No cap, Generation Alpha is creating more new slang than any previous generation, simply because it can spread so fast. The term “hip” was born in the jazz age but didn’t reach mainstream usage or understanding for several decades. Now everybody knows what “rizz” means just months after its introduction.
The globalization of content driving exposure to more language, curse words coming out of the shadows thanks to streaming, and the social media-fueled acceleration of linguistic evolution means that language is rapidly consolidating and re-fragmenting simultaneously.
What Does It Mean for Brands?
Why aren’t there more swear words in commercials? Now that you can advertise on Netflix, where are the spots that use the same tone and language of the content they run in?
Even without dropping F-bombs, how well are brands adjusting the words they use to the new reality. If the Stepfordly-perfect diction of the broadcast TV era is giving way to a more real, more colorful language that better reflects how we really speak, when will brands follow suit?
Most of the thrust of “personalization” has focused on the meaning of what we’re saying—different benefits or reasons-to-believe—instead of the diction, accent, or slang.
I’m not suggesting brands start awkwardly throwing around Gen Z slang like “sigma” or “gyat,” but I do think there’s significant opportunity to diversify the way we talk in commercial assets now that the content we hear sounds more like real people.
Otherwise, we risk getting lost in translation.
The Weekly Prompts(s)
If we were the first brand to swear in a commercial, what would we say?
How can we lean into the increase in consumption of subtitled content?
This Week’s Whimsies
This interview with Jerry Seinfeld has a lot of insightful tidbits from a creative person, but I love this line: “The throw-away culture of our childhood was not throw-away to us. We deeply love these things and they were meaningful in their meaninglessness.”
This quick read argues against the idea that TikTok is the new Open Mic for musicians.
Whenever I get a massage at some fancy spa, I usually make up some story in my head about things happening outside the room. Usually, they’re set in the world of Indiana Jones. My wife thinks I’m nuts for doing this, but I think there is real potential for storytelling in these extremely passive moments (massages, haircuts, dentist visits) that could be fueled by technology. Now Meow Wolf is launching an immersive spa and it turns out I’m not nuts.