Julia Friese observes a cultural shift that would please Plato.
1. love it
When the dialogue was once written down, Plato had Socrates lament the loss of value of oral communication in “Phaedrus”. Now – just 2,400 years later – the written dialogue is either dictated briefly orally or spoken as long voice messages. You ask ChatGPT verbally what you don’t know, and instead of reading an article, you prefer to have it retold in an agitated manner on TikTok. Meanwhile, people complain about the loss of value of the written word.
This also results in a number of very nice new usages of language: In recent years, if you were at least a younger Millennial, i.e. you traditionally dress in sherbet colors, have colorful fingernails and wear your cell phone on a thick textile cord across your upper body, you always said “dear” in Insta-Reels – and by that you mean something in sherbet colors, probably fingernails, or just a too cute but very photogenic particle or other fast food object – that’s how you say in the same context: “love it”.
“But” has at least two meanings in German. On the one hand: “nevertheless”. So something is done despite a circumstance. So “love it” would mean that this month’s tenth food trend from another one-gimmick snack bar that was so hastily set up and empty – only real with a logo and a mirror foil display in front of the door – is STILL loved despite its obvious excessive greasiness and gimmickiness. Or this is about the second meaning of “yes”, that of pure emphaticism as in: I don’t care.
It’s definitely not possible to separate them, which is why you always have to hear both meanings of the word in “love it”. Especially since almost every “love it” comes in a context of guilt, like: “I love spending too much money on shit.”
2. relative score rating
The oral, previously purely digital, relative assessment has been virulent for a little longer. When you leave a customer review online, you usually give a few stars with a click: 4 out of 5, for example. This type of relative score evaluation has now become so anchored in language usage that it replaces the good old school grades. People no longer say, “I would give this dessert a B.” But: “The dessert is an 8 out of 10.” The fact that the evaluation is a subjective attribution, as can be seen in “I would give XY the following grade,” is now no longer applicable. The object being evaluated IS its relative score rating. Which is of course relatively sobering overall.
3. gossip radio play
A 0 out of 10, however, seems to be Lily Allen’s ex-husband, “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, who she worked off of in WEST END GIRL. An album from Taylor Swift’s playbook, in the sense that the virality of the album is not primarily due to the music, but rather to the gossip inherent in the lyrics.
While Swift processes her relationship in a metaphorically distorted way, Lily Allen has written a gossip radio play, WEST END GIRL, that tells the story of the end of the relationship from song 1 (Moving to New York together) to song 14 (You’re the problem, I’m still lovable) – including phone calls and intrusive thoughts. A narrative form that is new in pop music.
What is told orally from life is currently more binding in sung pop. Anyone who doesn’t do it (Dua Lipa, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus) risks a flop. Celebrities should confess. This is what we’re used to now from podcasts like “Call Her Daddy.”
Come on, star, tell us something raunchy! Speech! So are we going back to oral culture? For Plato it’s definitely a 9 out of 10. And what would Socrates say? Love it!
This column first appeared in Musikexpress issue 1/2026.