Charisma has been quantified, ranked, and turned into a skill you can train. The training is sold online.
Literal meaning: Rizz — derived from “charisma” — describes natural charm, attractiveness, and the effortless ability to attract romantic or sexual interest through personality and social fluency. Oxford University Press selected it as Word of the Year for 2023.
Origin: The term originated in Black American slang in New York City, associated with streamer Kai Cenat who used it frequently from around 2021. It spread rapidly through TikTok and became mainstream through its adoption by younger internet users globally. Oxford’s selection in 2023 marked its passage from subcultural vocabulary to general lexicon.
Charisma repackaged as a learnable skill — where the effortless quality that defines it is immediately undermined by its commodification.
The Appeal: Rizz names something real and widely desired: the ability to connect easily, attract naturally, and communicate charm without visible effort. The concept resonates because social fluency matters and varies between people. For young people navigating social situations, a word for what they observe in others and want for themselves is useful.
The Friction: The term’s circulation in SMV (Sexual Market Value) contexts transforms it from a descriptive term into a metric and a trainable skill. Once rizz is a skill, there is a content ecosystem to sell its development: dating coaches, conversation scripts, confidence coaching. Looksmaxxing addresses the physical dimension; rizz addresses the social one. Both are positioned as improvable assets. The irony is structural: rizz specifically describes effortless natural charm — the quality that disappears when you are consciously trying to perform it.
Why This Matters: Rizz is a useful reminder that subcultural vocabulary travels with its original context stripped away — and that the new context it enters shapes what the word becomes. In its original register, rizz was descriptive. In the self-improvement ecosystem, it became a product.
Related terms: Looksmaxxing · Hypergamy · Incel · SMV (Sexual Market Value) · High Value Man · Manosphere · Top 1% Man · Comparison Culture · Podcast-bro
Read more:
- Rizz — Oxford Word of the Year 2023 — Oxford University Press (2023)
- What Does Rizz Mean? All About the Slang Term and Where It Came From. Bellusci, A. (2025). People.