askchapo

I used to say "(...) be like" regularly, but eventually I figured that it probably wasn't quite right to use the habitual be exclusively as a snowclone for memes and jokes and shitposts, as if that grammatical feature is inherently humorous, rather than just the way that some people talk. When I started thinking about that, saying "(...) be like" started to feel as phony to me as pulling a Huey Freeman impression and saying "that's some ol' bo'-shit", or rapping along to Black artists and replacing every instance of the slovo na bukve N with the word "brotha" or even just a second of awkward silence, instead of just choosing something else for karaoke night.

That aside, I might use some words or phrases originating in AAVE here and there. Sometimes these terms have just passed into general usage and I grew up with them, sometimes these terms are ""Gen Z slang"" that I'm using in tandem with my own terms, and sometimes terms originating in AAVE just fill a semantic gap.

All in all, the number one rule is that if you're specifically trying to sound Black, then you're probably being a bit cringe; and if you're trying to sound "hip with the youths", then you should be acutely aware of the ways in which Black culture including language are commodified and alienated from its creators in a perpetual cycle for white chelly-vecks to fill in the gaping emptiness in their souls created by their alienation from their own cultures with the culture of a marginalized group... But I also wouldn't necessarily hold it against you to say things like "lit fam" or "based", just, be aware of and acknowledge the history and origins.

Though there are always going to be edge cases for these sorts of things.