Editorial policy

Every page on GenZHype has to meet these rules before it can go live. They are not aspirations: a page that fails them is not published, or stays off search engines until it is fixed.

What a page must prove

No origin story without an artifact. A page may only describe where a term or trend came from if we hold a dated, linkable artifact for that origin (the original post, an archived page, or a documented first appearance). If no artifact exists, the page says nothing about origin. It never says “origins are debated” as filler.

Citations must exist. Quoted social posts are checked against the platform itself before they count: a post that does not resolve is rejected, however plausible it looks. Press quotes are copied verbatim from the article and carry the article’s own publication date, never a guessed one.

Real reporting, not glossaries. Dictionary sites, slang glossaries and crowd-sourced definitions can inform a draft, but they never count as evidence. A page needs independent published sources that actually use or report on the subject.

No invented specifics. We never publish a name, handle, date, view count or follower count that our sources do not state. Shorter and grounded always beats longer and padded.

Allegations are framed as allegations. Unproven claims are attributed to who made them and marked as alleged, with a right of reply for anyone featured.

A person reads the gravest stories. A new story about a death, sexual violence, abuse of minors or domestic abuse is held until a person has read it, and the page then names who reviewed it.

More about the desk

See about & editor for who runs the desk, how we source for our sourcing rules, corrections to report an error, and right of reply if a story features you.

When we get it wrong

We publish corrections, retire pages that cannot meet the standard rather than leaving them up, and answer every contact.