The Story Of Bestie, Social Media Slang That Is Currently A Trend

TikTok, the social media that first mentioned the word bestie, has now become very popular as a slang. (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Social media is buzzing with news that Persebaya has again released their local player, namely Samsul Arif, who will certainly not wear the green uniform again next season. There are many speculations circulating that netizens have tweeted, including: "Bestie warehouse wash edition," wrote the @ur.f *** account.

Examining slang is indeed endless. Especially in the era of social media that is booming today, new terms are flooding in endlessly. Like the term bestie, a word in social media slang that has been known since early 2021.

Generally, the bestie greeting is usually expressed between Twitter or Tiktok users to interact with each other, but on other social media such as Instagram it is also quite often used. Such as greeting or replying to comments. The bestie greeting is often used by female users, but not a few male social media users also say it.

Samsul Arif Munip, Persebaya's bestie who was released to Arema FC. (Instagram Persebaya)

What is the meaning of bestie, which is often used on social media? Bestie is a shortened form of best friend. Bestie is sometimes also written arbitrarily as besti.

If we look in the online language dictionary bestie/besti, it is an international slang term used to refer to a good friend or best friend. Slang is a slang term used by certain social groups.

In simple language bestie can be interpreted as best friend in English and good friend or best friend in Indonesian. According to This Interest me article, basically the use of the word bestie aims to greet other users as a form of affection.

However, the bestie greeting that is often used by netizens has no hidden meaning. The friendly and pleasant impression is the reason many people use it.

The Beginning of Bestie's Appearance

So why do many users use this greeting, especially on TikTok and Twitter?

The word popular bestie started from one TikTok user who uploaded his video with the word bestie, in January 2021, with the sentence repeatedly shouting the phrase "Bestie vibes only" in his video. @tiktoshh Bestie vibes only

The video went viral and other TikTok users started using the sound with their own videos. Simply put, the sound eventually became popular and was remade into the background for a number of other videos.

In the Talkwalker application, it was recorded that, within 1 week period from February 24 to March 2, 2022, more than 202,500 conversations mentioned the word bestie.

Generally, bestie-related conversations are positive. Only 19 percent of netizens uploaded bestie phrases with negative sentiments.

Illustration of a happy friendship. (Pixabay)

Female netizens dominated conversations about besties, which reached 58.5 percent, with details of teenagers aged 18-24 years 69.7 percent and young adults 25-34 years old with 69.8 percent.

Jakarta is the city where bestie is spoken, unmitigated, 91 percent of conversations about bestie are in Jakarta. Followed by West Java 1.7 percent, East Java 1.6 percent and Central Java 1.5 percent.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has also used the greeting bestie.

"Mimin is surprised that BMKG is trending, I thought there was an earthquake, but apparently it was because of Bestie's heart fluttering and pounding," tweeted the official BMKG account @infoBMKG on February 13, 2022.

Many netizens were surprised because official state institutions casually greeted their followers so that they seemed close. The tweet was shared with 14,600 retweets, 1,355 comments and 53,300 likes.

True Bestie

According to the Psychology Today website, the true meaning of a bestie is not an ordinary friend in general. Bestie is a figure who can understand all situations that are being experienced by his best friend.

Once we have a problem, we'll quickly find out who's a friend and who's a bestie. The character of a friend is to advise while bestie chooses to be a listener and accompany her best friend through difficult times.

So, have we become besties to our friends? Have we become good listeners? Or have we been just curious about other people's lives?

So how, is our bestie expression just a small talk for our followers or friends on social media? Hopefully we've all been good besties.