It’s lit, fam. You’re the best, fam. There’s no better fam than my fam. Oh, I’m sure there is and I’m also sure that there’s a better word to describe those we refer to as family. Fam is a word I despise and every time I hear it, I cringe. It’s like hearing styrofoam rub against a cardboard surface, ever, so, slowly, making me shudder and causing the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. Fam strips away the elegant characteristics and harmony of the beautiful painting created by the word family, and transforms them into a disarray of ugly browns and greens.
Being the artistic catastrophe it is, the word is quite a hideous one. It can be understood that in a world drowning in technology and shortcuts to an easier, simpler life, people would want to shorten their speech. But to shorten words that carry importance and value? I don’t think so. Family, as a word, dances with grace and poise over those who know the word well. It makes us feel loved, supported, at home. Fam, on the other hand, is a lump of mystery meat handed to us by the lunch lady at school. Disgusting.
People want to show love and acceptance by those they hold close to them, but calling them fam is throwing them the weak, brittle twig to grasp onto when they’re waist deep in a bottomless pit of quicksand. Calling them fam is being the querulous toddler tugging constantly on his mother’s jacket at the grocery store, whining for his favorite chocolate bar. Calling them fam is being the person that won’t stop asking, “Are we there yet?” on a never-ending road trip. Calling them fam is finishing the bowl of popcorn while watching the big Sunday night football game and not having the “energy” to get up and go get more. Using this word makes a person sound uneducated and lazy because the word itself sounds lackadaisical, aggravating, and straight up ridiculous.
Then again, after a long day at school, when I’m feeling drained, I might turn to the more slothful side of me. When I trudge in through the front door I’ll greet my fam, tell my fam how lit my day was, and then head upstairs to make a dent in my pile of homework. Sounds like a plan? Absolutely not! The people I call family and the people I call friends deserve a more beautiful word, and a beautiful word like family deserves to be used for the people I cherish in life. Our friends and our families mean much more to us than an atrocious three-letter word, so we should use a more righteous word to demonstrate that.
