Martin Scorsese tried to guess the meaning of Gen Z internet slang and actually did pretty well
Francesca Scorsese/TikTok
- Martin Scorsese's Gen Z daughter asked him to guess the meaning of slang terms in a TikTok video.
- The director correctly guessed the meaning of "tea" and "ick," but struggled with "sneaky link."
- He has made several appearances on his 23-year-old daughter's TikTok page.
Martin Scorsese tried to guess the meaning of Gen Z slang as part of a game with his daughter Francesca, which she posted on TikTok — and he didn't do badly.
Francesca, 23, is Scorsese's youngest daughter who is also following in her filmmaker father's footsteps after graduating from the NYU Tisch School of Arts where she studied film and TV production. She debuted her short film, "Fish Out of Water" at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
She has more than 87,000 followers on TikTok, where she has previously shared vlog-style snippets about her life and posted challenges and comedic videos involving her father.
On October 5, Francesca shared a TikTok in which she asked 80-year-old Martin to guess the meaning of several slang terms and shared an example of how to use each word in a sentence to help him decipher them.
In the almost five-minute clip, which was overlaid with a popular voice effect on the app, Francesca listed 12 slang terms, and on-screen captions overlaid on the video showed either an "X" or a tick depending on whether Martin answered correctly.
He accurately guessed that spilling tea meant to "tell all you know," and that getting the "ick" referred to being "thoroughly repulsed," gaining approval from his daughter.
The "Taxi Driver" director appeared to struggle with some of the other terms put to him, however. He incorrectly guessed that the term "sneaky link," which used to refer to a secret romantic or sexual relationship, meant "personal peccadillos that you may have," or "people who are close to you."
When Francesca informed her dad that the term actually referred to a "booty call," he responded, "Oh really?"
She added that it would be used to describe the specific person you were involved with.
"Oh no, I didn't get that no," he said in the clip. "We never saw specific people in my day," he added.
The director also incorrectly guessed the meaning of the term "ship," which is used when someone supports another couple's relationship or wants to see two people who aren't together enter into one, and "simp," which is typically used to describe fawning over someone.
The 80-year-old director managed to get eight correct answers, according to the captions on the clip.
Some commenters under the TikTok, which received over 695,000 views, expressed enjoyment at seeing the revered director on the app. Others said they were surprised to see him taking part in the slang challenge.
"Can't believe we live in a world where I get to watch Martin Scorsese become familiar with the term sneaky link. Blessings, " wrote one commenter.
Scorsese has been nominated for best director at the Oscars nine times over the years for critically acclaimed films like "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas," and "The Wolf of Wall Street." He won the award in 2007 for his Boston-set gangster movie "The Departed," which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.
His next project, "Killers of the Flower Moon," arrives in theaters in October. It follows the real-life series of killings of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma in the 1920s when oil was found on their land.
The director previously ignited a conversation online about the superhero genre when he criticized the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a 2019 interview with Empire magazine. The debate still occasionally rears its head, such as when actors like Chris Hemsworth and Kumail Nanjiani reacted to his comments.