MEMES BECOMING LIFE

In April 2018, a series of memes where the letters ck were replaced by cc took the Internet by storm, starting from websites like Reddit and 4chan and soon reaching mainstream level. This was a parody of how Crip gang members avoided the letters ck because they were slang used by Bloods to mean crip killer. It wasn't the first time a meme like that had surfaced; in early 2017, internet users began ironically supplanting the letter c (and soon, many other consonants) with the 🅱️ emoji, like the Bloods did to avoid contact with the sign of their mortal enemies. That first meme had died out and this was the next installment... but there was a difference. The cc spelling of words became so popular that more people than ever started unironically using it, especially in a sexual context, and now a sizeable amount of people are seriously spelling thick as thicc and suck as succ. Just an interesting example of how both gangs and the Internet are influencing linguistic development, I thought.