I will admit that I've heard "mogging" only sparingly in my time around my high school basketball team. Definitely has been used once or twice within earshot of me, but not to a level where I thought it was commonplace, and certainly not on the level of "bro," "low key" or "aura farming."
I saw the post above on IG from @everyonesinvited and went through the slides to educate myself on what the term was, its origins, etc. And apparently, it's become common enough that Collins Dictionary named it their 2026 Word of the Year.
What I found, and what I think is relevant to our blog, is WHERE it comes from and what it can expose your players to online. In short (because I think laying it all out in writing here prevents you from engaging with the original post and takes away from the author's work), the term has roots in male dominance and appearance-ranking culture, eventually finding a home in manosphere and incel spaces.
And while the word has now become mainstream slang for simply outshining someone, its origins are worth understanding. Especially when engaging with content around it can lead young men toward looksmaxxing, appearance hierarchies and manosphere ideology around women and dating.
That doesn't mean every kid saying "mogging" is consuming incel content. But it DOES mean there's a connection worth examining, especially when so much of what our guys encounter online is designed to keep them scrolling toward more of the same.
So, in my own program, I'm not going to treat "mogging" as a four-letter word. But it IS going to be an automatic interruption from me, and a second use after we've established our expectations is going to trigger our consequence-to-accountability process.
I'm going to build a lesson for early season around manosphere terminology (as we discussed in last Friday's blog) and how we will address its usage in our team spaces. I would encourage you to do the same.
It is ALWAYS easier to hold young men to expectations you've stated clearly than to suddenly claim you're against something they've never heard you address before.
And if the language our players are using is changing faster than we're willing to learn about it, that's not solely a problem with THEM.
Coach Prompts
How many words or phrases have your players used in the last month that you didn't fully understand? What did you do when you heard them, and what might your response have communicated?
When language originating in the manosphere becomes mainstream, how do you determine whether it warrants an interruption, a conversation or a consequence? What factors influence that decision?
What expectations have you established around language in your team space BEFORE the season begins? How will you help players understand the reasoning behind those expectations rather than simply memorizing prohibited words?
Player Prompts
Agree, Disagree or Unsure: If a word becomes popular enough that everyone uses it, its original meaning and history no longer matter.
Have you ever used a word or phrase without knowing where it originated? Would learning that it came from a community promoting harmful beliefs change whether you continued using it? Why or why not?
When a coach interrupts language you consider harmless or funny, what would help you understand their concern? What responsibility do YOU have to examine the words you use, even when you don't intend to hurt anyone?
