In his work at a Soho apparel store, Thomas Lanese uses the phrase “I'll film this email by the end” that he never speaks outside of his job setting. Sometimes he said, it feels like he is living two separate lives.
It could be involved with fans of “retirement.” In the hotly talked show that closes out next week's second season on Apple TV+, the characters are literally living two different lives.
Their “no relation to the belly button) is their job. Their “Outies” exist everywhere except for work. They chose to work for Lumon Industries, a biotech company “disconnected” from their personal lives.
The term is currently finding life outside of the show, and Inie is used as a shorthand for working. Even though your outs are trying to cut down on sugar, your Innie can't stop eating free candies in the office. Your Innie is wearing sexy clothes like a knee-length pencil skirt, even if you're wearing a crop top and mini skirt. And your out party takes place late at night as your Innie has to deal with the hangover.
“When you're at work, do you wear this different facade than you do at home, or you'll be with your friends,” said Lanese, a 26-year-old sales associate and game designer. In January he posted a satirical video to Tiktok, remakes scenes from the first season of “Retirement.” In it, his Innie is visibly tired as he discovers Cringe properties about his Outie. For example, his Outie runs three Disney 5ks as Mickey Mouse. He captioned it.
“It's almost a kind of separation,” Reine said.
The desire to separate work life from home life has long been the subject of discourse. The show draws this feeling to an extreme extent. Lumon appears to be giving employees a literal work-life balance by presenting retirement as a way to free themselves from difficult emotions and experiences. For example, Mark (Adam Scott) chooses to be cut off so that he can escape the pain of his wife's death at work. (In the end, his Innie and Outie share a core truth, and pain penetrates in unexpected ways.)
However, even using this term as a shorthand for being in the workplace, retirement can be applied to any form of self-contracting.
“It separates the self from something that is uncomfortable and something that is not uncomfortable,” said Adam Aleksic, a linguist who wrote the book “Algospeak: How Social Media Will Change the Future of Language.”
“I was on a very uncomfortable, choppy boat with a friend. They were joking that our own Iny version had to get on this boat. “That's how we deal with it.”
According to Alexick, the second season of the popular sci-fi drama created “a cultural moment we haven't been in for a while.” Innie and Out join a list of pop culture expressions that come from different forms of entertainment. For example, the term “Friend Zone” came from the show “Friends.” “Debbie Downer” comes from “Saturday Night Live.” “Gaslight” comes from the 1944 film “Gaslight.” Back in Shakespeare, phrases like “Tracking the Wild Geese” and “Pickle” come from the poets and seep into our vocabulary.
“Our language is built on a broad tapestry of this broad textual connection, from Shakespeare to the show “friends,” said Alexick, citing the role of media in shaping our language.
“It is very possible to internalize the phrases “Innie” and “Outie” 100 years from now.
He said he thought these phrases had sustainability because they explained that they compartmentalize themselves in colloquial ways that previously did not exist. There are languages like “the true self” and “code switch,” but these phrases sound more clinical.
“Usually, in linguistics, when something often applies to ideas we didn't have before, those words are more likely to stick,” he said. “I feel that this is the best way to describe a compartmentalized version of ourselves.
More than ever, Zoe Rose Bryant, author of Elkhorn, Nevada, said the separatism that sticks to Innie and Outie Dynamic is appealing, “Because most days it feels like the world is on fire and there's a desire to turn it all off and get it all right.”
Bryant, 25, had shared a post about having separate social media accounts for a friend who read, “Switching between Maine and PRIV makes me feel like I'm moving from Innie to my out.”
Some companies already adopt languages on social media.
At X, Denver International Airport posted a photo of the plane taking off. You both deserve it. ”
And on the Hilton Tiktok page it says, “My out can book a vacation in Mexico because my Innie does their stupid little work.”
Alexick said brands are inevitable these days that jump into social media trends.
“Sometimes you're going to kill that,” he said. “It's hard to tell in advance whether something is sticking or not.”
