\n<\/p>\n
At his job at an apparel store in SoHo, Thomas Lanese uses phrases that he would never utter outside of a work setting, like, \u201cI\u2019ll shoot this email to you by end of day.\u201d Sometimes, he said, it feels like he is living two separate lives.<\/p>\n
It is something fans of \u201cSeverance\u201d might relate to. In the buzzy show that concludes its second season on Apple TV+ next week, the characters literally live two distinct lives.<\/p>\n
Their \u201cinnies\u201d (no relation to belly buttons) are their work selves. Their \u201couties\u201d exist anywhere outside of work. They have chosen to work for Lumon Industries, a biotech company where they are \u201csevered\u201d from their personal lives, and their innies and outies have no idea what\u2019s going on in each other\u2019s worlds.<\/p>\n
The terms have now found a life outside the show, with innie used as a shorthand for being at work. Your innie can\u2019t stop eating free candy in the office even though your outie is trying to cut back on sugar. Your innie wears unsexy clothes<\/a> like knee-length pencil skirts even though your outie wears crop tops and miniskirts. And your outie parties late at night because your innie has to deal with the hangovers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re at work, you kind of put on this different facade than you do at home or you do with your friends,\u201d said Mr. Lanese, a 26-year-old sales associate and game designer. In January, he posted a satirical video on TikTok remaking<\/a> a scene from the first season of \u201cSeverance\u201d that has received almost three million views. In it, his innie is visibly disgusted as he discovers cringe traits about his outie. For example, his outie has run three Disney 5Ks as Mickey Mouse. He captioned it \u201crealizing that your innie would not be friends with your outie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s almost a form of disassociating,\u201d Mr. Lanese said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The desire to separate work life from home life has long been a subject of discourse, with some, like Mr. Lanese, trying to compartmentalize the two. The show takes this sentiment to an extreme: Lumon presents severance as a way to free oneself from difficult emotions or experiences, seemingly granting employees a literal work-life balance. Mark (Adam Scott), for example, chooses to be severed so that he can escape the pain of his wife\u2019s death at work. (Ultimately, his innie and outie share core truths, and the pain manages to seep through in unexpected ways.)<\/p>\n But even beyond using the term as a shorthand for being at work, severance can apply to any form of compartmentalization of self.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s any kind of separation of self from something that\u2019s uncomfortable versus something that\u2019s not uncomfortable,\u201d said Adam Aleksic, a linguist who wrote a book called \u201cAlgospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was on a very uncomfortable, choppy boat ride with some friends and they were joking that the innie version of ourselves have to experience this boat ride so that the outie version of ourselves can enjoy the island later,\u201d Mr. Aleksic said. \u201cIt\u2019s a way of coping.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Mr. Aleksic, the second season of the popular sci-fi drama has created \u201ca cultural moment that we haven\u2019t had in a while,\u201d with innie and outie joining a list of pop culture expressions that come from various forms of entertainment. For instance, the term \u201cfriend zone\u201d came from the show \u201cFriends.\u201d \u201cDebbie Downer\u201d came from \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d \u201cGaslight\u201d came from the 1944 film \u201cGaslight.\u201d Even going back to Shakespeare, phrases like \u201cwild goose chase\u201d and \u201cin a pickle\u201d came from the poet and have become ingrained in our vocabulary.<\/p>\n \u201cOur language really is built on this broad tapestry of intertextual connections ranging from Shakespeare to the show \u2018Friends,\u2019\u201d Mr. Aleksic said, citing the role of media in shaping our language.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very, very possible that we could internalize the phrases \u2018innie\u2019 and \u2018outie\u2019 at a point where a hundred years from now, people are still using it, drawing from this media reference that was culturally important at one time,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He said he thought these phrases had staying power because they described compartmentalizing selves in a colloquial way that had not existed before. Though there is language like \u201ctrue self\u201d and \u201ccode switch,\u201d those phrases sound more clinical.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cUsually, in linguistics, when something applies well to an idea that we haven\u2019t had before, those words are more likely to stick,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s the best way we have of describing compartmentalized versions of ourselves, which are more and more important in a society where we\u2019re discontent with who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n Zo\u00eb Rose Bryant, a writer from Elkhorn, Neb., said that now more than ever, the disassociation inherent in the innie and outie dynamic was appealing \u201cbecause it feels like the world is on fire most days, and there\u2019s definitely a desire to turn all of that off and tune it out entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Bryant, 25, had shared a post on X<\/a> about having separate social media accounts for the public and for friends that read, \u201cSwitching between main and priv kinda feels like i\u2019m in severance transitioning from my innie to my outie.\u201d<\/p>\n Some companies have already adopted the language on social media as well.<\/p>\n On X, the Denver International Airport posted a photograph of an airplane taking off with a message that read<\/a>: \u201cThis is a sign for your innie to book your outie a vacay. You both deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n