yassification

English

Etymology

From yass +‎ -ification. Attested on Twitter from August 2020 with a now-deleted reply by Twitter user @puppyoveralls.

Noun

yassification (countable and uncountable, plural yassifications)

1. (Internet slang, LGBT, neologism) The process of making something relevant to or suggestive of LGBTQ+ culture.
   • 2020 August 26, @puppyoveralls, “I’m choking on the yassification gas”,^[4] in Twitter, retrieved March 7, 2022.
   • 2022 February 15, Sian Bradley, “The Best Wordle Alternatives”, in Huddersfield Daily Examiner:

     Referring to itself as the “yassification” of Wordle, this take on the original puzzle game asks you to guess words which have relevance to the LGBTQIA community.

   • 2023, Abbie Levesque DeCamp, Queer Memes: Forms and Communities of Composition (PhD dissertation), Northeastern University, →ISBN, page 114:

     Earlier I outlined the way “yaas” functioned as in-group slang, and then as a meme in the form of yassification. Meme aggregate pages post this kind of content to boost their own profile, making money off ads and merchandise. Eventually, the commodification is so far reaching that it is disconnected not just from QTPOC, and not just from queerness, but disconnected from any community meaning at all. This can be seen with Yaasification shirts available on AliBaba and other mass merchandise sites.

2. (Internet slang) The act of beautification; (originally) applying several beauty filters to a picture using a photo-editing application.
   • 2021 November 16, Harrison Brocklehurst, “Okay So What Is the ‘Yassification’ Trend on Twitter and How Do You ‘Yassify’ Yourself?”, in The Tab‎^[5]:

     To yassify yourself and get stuck in with the yassification trend on Twitter, it’s kind of up to you on your best photo editing method. The most commonly used one, though, is FaceApp.

   • 2021 November 22, Stephen Yang, “Yassification: Contestation of the Extremes and the Binaries”, in The Cornell Daily Sun‎^[6]:

     The Twitter account takes “yassification” requests and transforms people’s photos in the same glamorized fashion.

   • 2021 November 24, Shane O’Neill, “What Does It Mean to ‘Yassify’ Anything?”, in The New York Times‎^[7]:

     All memes have a shelf life, and yassification fatigue has already set in. On the day the YassifyBot joined Twitter, one user tweeted: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by yassification.”

   • 2021 November 24, K-Ci Williams, “Yassification Memes Have Taken Over Twitter, Thanks Greatly to Yassify Bot”, in Teen Vogue‎^[8]:

     The term "yassification" has been circulating in LGBTQ+ spaces on social media since 2020. However, it wasn't until a still of Toni Colette in Hereditary received the yassification treatment that the meme aspect went mainstream, spreading mainly on TikTok and Twitter.

   • 2021 November 25, Tom George, “Like Frankenstein and His Nonster, @yassifybot Regrets Yassification”, in i-D‎^[9]:

     The idea that pop stars such as Lady Gaga would even need to go through yassification felt misogynistic to them.

   • [2021 December 31, Kalhan Rosenblatt, “The ‘Yassification’ of the Internet, Feminine Urges and Feeling Cheugy: Here Are the Best Memes of 2021”, in NBC‎^[10]:

     The meme that perhaps best embodies 2021 is the "yassification" of the internet.

     "Yassifying" refers to beautifying something, typically something that is unappealing or heteronormative.]

   • 2023 November 10, Clarisse Loughrey, “A marvellous, funny sequel”, in The Independent, London, page 31:

     [The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is] the origin story of Panem’s chief sociopath, president Coriolanus Snow (played by Donald Sutherland in the original films), that instead feels like the yassification of a future monster.

Related terms

• yassify