What Does “Rizz” Mean? Here’s the Trend Broken Down By a Relationship Editor

“I have negative rizz,” one of my guy friends declared over pancakes one Saturday morning. It was a bleary-eyed brunch—the kind where you’re still half-drunk from the night before—when he threw out the term as casually as he was applying syrup to his silver dollars. “You have negative what?” I asked. Cue the saga: a painfully detailed play-by-play of his failed attempt to pick up a “smoke show” at the bar last night.

First came the forced small talk. “Wow, you’re from Oregon? I’ve always wanted to visit.” (Blatant lie.) Then came a desperate pivot to astrology—he’d abandoned his very vocal stance that “astrology isn’t real.” Until finally, after a $40 round of tequila shots, she offered a polite, “nice to meet you!” before promptly turning her back to talk to the guy on her opposite side.“Basically, rizz means having game,” he summarized. “And I have zero of it.” 

Since then, I’ve seen the term thrown all over TikTok. People writing, “he’s the rizzler” or “rizz is unmatched” in the comments section of videos where men pick up women on the street. But I couldn’t help but wonder (Carrie Bradshaw style), is “rizz” just a passing language fad, or does our rhetoric have deeper ties to toxic masculinity and the way men are approaching women these days? 

Let’s get into it below. 

The term ‘rizz’ is basically just slang for having charisma. It’s most commonly used to describe someone who can effortlessly flirt, charm, and, eventually, seduce. As my guy friend aptly pointed out, it’s shorthand for “having game.” 

But a good pickup game wasn’t always the original intent of rizz…

The term was coined by a Twitch streamer and YouTuber named Kai Cenat (and his friends). Yet, according to Cenat on the No Jumper podcast, “TikTok has butchered the word.” He explains, “The official definition of rizz is when you’re talking to a girl and, at first, things aren’t going your way… It's looking bad for you. [But everything changes when] you start spitting game. It’s when you’re ‘rizzing’ (or rising) the girl up.” Meaning, rizz was never meant to describe someone who’s naturally suave or effortlessly charming. In Cenat’s words, it was always about “the art of the comeback.”

Despite its original intent, rizz has morphed into a catch-all for anyone with undeniable charm. Today, Gen Z defines it as anyone who can pull—and keep—the attention of a romantic interest without breaking a sweat. (If you can make her blush by simply existing, mazel tov: you’ve got rizz.)

That said, it’s worth noting how the term has evolved online. On TikTok, there are high schoolers who practice their rizz in Walmart aisles. On Reddit, there are extensive threads that name “rizzionaries,” from Barack Rizzbama and Franklin D. Rizzevelt to Rizz Hendricks and Alvin and the Rizzmunks. Not to mention the think pieces that dive into celebrity relationships. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll remember the controversy over Pete Davidson with Kim Kardashian or Barry Keoghan with Sabrina Carpenter. 

So, of course, as it continues to gain traction, Gen Z has created its own rizz taxonomy. Now we’ve got “unspoken rizz,” “negative rizz,” “W rizz,” “L rizz,” even the elusive “rizz god.” All new spins on what it means to have—or painfully lack—game.

Let’s start with the holy grail. Unspoken rizz is when someone can attract attention without saying a word. (Just pure seductive energy.) Think: Timothée Chalamet standing in a corner, doing absolutely nothing, while somehow radiating I could ruin your life energy. (For the record, Kai Cenat hates this term. He insists real rizz requires talking. Gen Z disagrees.)

The “W” stands for win. W rizz is when your flirting actually lands—be it a smooth pick-up line or the way you catch her fork before it falls. It’s TikTok’s way of handing out gold stars for game. You shot your shot, and it works.

The opposite of a win. L rizz is when your flirting flops—badly. Think fumbled conversations, cringe pick-up lines, essentially “please leave me alone” energy. In some cases, it’s so bad it circles back to being funny. Mostly, it’s just painful.

The top of the food chain. A rizz god is someone who doesn’t chase; they attract. It’s that one guy at the party who says nothing but somehow leaves with everyone's number. Most of the time, it’s not taught or learned. You either have it or you don’t. 

Regardless of its usage, the general connotation of rizz seems to have mushroomed into a hyper-masculine, Brad and Chad version of let’s go hunting in the woods. Comments all over TikTok span from “Bro majoring in rizzology” to “professor rizz,” which speak to a collective camaraderie over ‘bagging’ women, for lack of a better term. It’s essentially become the dating equivalent of Tom Brady scoring a touchdown.

In fact, after Cenat offered the official definition of rizz on the aforementioned podcast, host Adam Grandmaison jumped on the idea, “To meet a girl who says it’s a no—she's not [going to go home] with you—and then to turn the no into a yes by showing her more of your personality (or the game you got)…that's an incredible thing. That's the beauty of being a man.” Whatever Grandmaison’s intentions, lauding men for changing a woman’s “no” to “yes” not only disregards consent, but makes a game of it. Plus, it feeds pre-pubescent boys (i.e., one of TikTok’s most engaged audience) an impression that manhandling a woman without consent is OK. 

The alpha male sentiment behind rizz coincides with ‘Sigma,’ another trending slang term that’s used to describe highly self-reliant and independent men “in masculinist subcultures,” per Dictionary.com (and spoiler: it’s ten times worse than rizz). Ruchira Sharma, a writer for British GQ, says now, young males on TikTok are glorifying American Psycho's Patrick Bateman for “his hustle mindset,” greed, aggressive gym routine and contempt for women, missing the satire underlying all of it. “[It’s] an unsurprising amalgamation of TikTok's most popular trends, packaging together self-care and self-help for men with buzzy pop-culture references,” Sharma explains. 

Consent inherently can’t be forced, and it can be revoked at any given point. Life’s too short to humor Patrick Bateman wannabes (and it’s probably best to make a graceful exit before you become a human skin suit). If someone denies your advances, respect those boundaries.