Slang terms are already hard to understand for some social media users, but this is compounded with the nebulous and fast-moving world of TikTok. The term “DYT” has continued to skyrocket in popularity, to the point that those out of the loop need some clarification.

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DYT is a slang phrase used often on TikTok, especially in the comments section. While you’re probably just trying to check in on trends or quizzes on TikTok, constantly seeing slang you don’t know the meaning of can get quite annoying. That’s why I went out, researched DYT, and laid out everything you need to know about it for your own clarity.

What is the meaning of the TikTok slang DYT?

While TikTok slang can be very confusing at times, this isn’t the case with DYT, once you know what the letters actually stand for. DYT is an initialism that means “do your thing” or more popularly, “do ya thing,” with either usage being seen as acceptable. The phrase is an encouragement of someone doing what is true to them, but it can have alternative meanings. Usually, the slang term is used to hype someone up, but other times the opposite is being conveyed. Sometimes, DYT can be used to express a slightly judgmental indifference, as if to say, “do whatever you want, I guess.” While it can be used as a slang term of discouragement, this secondary usage is more rare.

Where does DYT originate?

It can be trickier to track down a term like DYT (do ya thing), compared to a more well-known slang term like slay. While DYT has grown in popularity immensely across TikTok videos and comment sections, and is being used by many different types of people, it wasn’t always used so widely. Using Google N-gram Viewer, we can see that the phrase “do ya thing” began being used in the late 1970s/early 1980s. When I checked which sources the phrase was attached to, a clear pattern emerged.

The slang saying “do ya thing” emerged most prominently from African-American communities, and was popularized to larger society via music in the hip-hop genre. The term became more even more popular alongside increased usage of African-American slang, or AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) within internet spaces. For those who are familiar with the history of a lot of online slang terms, this will likely not be surprising. Proliferation of non-Black people using Black-created slang has been commonplace on the internet since it’s inception, and has only increased in recent years.