Sodapoppin tried to avoid using AAVE phrases—and he didn’t last long

The use of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) has quickly become a hot-button topic on Twitch following Valkyrae’s recent apology for using the language during a gaming stream. 

Some streamers of color like Nick Polom and Kai Cenat have come out saying that Valkyrae had no reason to apologize for reiterating the phrase “no cap on a stack” when someone said it to her.

But upon reviewing a list of AAVE words, Sodapoppin was quick to claim that he doesn’t use any of the words or phrases that could lead to accusations of appropriation—and he just as speedily failed to follow up on that assertion.

“Truth be told, I don’t say any of this stuff,” Soda said. “So I’m like really woke… oh fuck.”

Soda is known for the way that he delivers dry sarcastic humor, so it’s impossible to truly tell if he was genuinely trying to avoid AAVE or if he was poking fun at the way that some words and phrases on the list were so commonly used by the general population.

Yesterday, Cenat was quick to point out that many words on a list of AAVE phrases published two years ago were so commonly used in the mainstream that he found it perplexing. He couldn’t get past the first four words on the list before taking issue with telling someone that they can’t say “chill” or “bae.”

Particularly with the phrase “woke,” while it has its origins in AAVE, it has since evolved to mainstream use and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. As Soda’s use of it suggests, the term is an adjective that means, “alert to injustice in society, especially racism.”