If you chat with Indonesian friends on social media or messaging apps, you will notice they use a lot of unique words that you cannot find in a standard dictionary. It’s called bahasa gaul, Indonesian slang used in everyday online chats.
It often involves borrowing foreign words, changing spelling, adding local prefixes, or reshaping meanings through TikTok and X trends. Below are some of the most searched Indonesian slang words, what they mean in real use, and how they appear in everyday chats.
What is Bahasa Gaul?
Bahasa gaul is the term Indonesians use for informal language or social slang. The word bahasa means language, and gaul refers to socializing or hanging out.
In digital chats, Indonesian Gen Z and millennial users rarely use formal Indonesian (Bahasa Baku). If you want to blend into an Indonesian chat group or understand local memes, learning these specific slang words is necessary.
Tobrut
The term tobrut is one of the most searched phrases on the Indonesian internet. The word is actually a crude Indonesian acronym formed by combining toket (a vulgar slang term for breasts) and brutal (meaning extreme). It originally started within niche, adult-oriented online forums, but around 2024, the term leaked into mainstream TikTok and X comment sections.
This word should not be used to refer to or describe anyone, as it is highly objectifying and may be considered verbal sexual harassment.
About sexual harassment: https://imo.im/blog/guides/online-sexual-harassment
Bulshit
Yes, it sounds exactly like the English 'bullshit,' but online chats have given it a localized, phonetic twist: bulshit. It means lies, fake promises, or complete nonsense. Indonesians use this specific spelling in text chats when they want to call out someone who is bragging or lying. It is shorter and feels more casual to type on a mobile keyboard than the full English phrase.
Example, if a guy says he will buy his girlfriend a car tomorrow but has no money, their friend might say, “Ah, omongan cowok itu cuma bulshit aja.” (Ah, that guy’s words are just total lies.)
Karbitan
Karbit is a substance often used to speed up the ripening process of fruit. Local football fans turned this chemical hack into the ultimate sports metaphor. Slap on the suffix '-an,' and you get 'karbitan', which means a fake fan or a bandwagon supporter.
If a football or esports team suddenly wins a major tournament, thousands of new people will instantly claim to be their biggest fans. Real fans who have supported the team for years will mock these newcomers as suporter karbitan because their loyalty did not grow naturally over time.
Example: “Lu baru nonton kemarin udah sok tahu, dasar suporter karbitan.” (You just watched them yesterday and act like you know everything, you bandwagon fan.)
Nge-ghosting
Why use a word straight out of the box when you can give it a local upgrade? Just mix 'ghosting' with the local prefix 'nge-' and you get 'nge-ghosting.' This means the act of suddenly cutting off all communication with someone you are dating or talking to without any warning.
If someone suddenly stops replying to your messages and vanishes from your chat list, they are actively nge-ghosting you. If you are the one left behind wondering what went wrong, you would tell your friends that you are dighosting. It is a very common topic of discussion in long distance relationship chats.
Fomo Artinya
Indonesia has one of the largest and most active social media populations in the world, which is why fomo (Fear of Missing Out) became a massive cultural word here. It describes the deep anxiety of feeling like your friends are having fun or experiencing something trendy without you.
Young people use it to describe the social pressure of following online trends. For example, people use it when they buy a trendy drink, line up for hours for a TikTok-viral food stall, or join a new social app just because everyone else is doing it.
Mager vs Gabut Artinya
If you ask a friend to hang out, there is a very high chance they will reply with either mager or gabut. They both mean 'doing absolutely nothing,' but the vibes behind them are completely different.
Mager is a mashup of malas (lazy) and gerak (to move). It’s that pure, unfiltered physical laziness where your bed has a magnetic pull." If a friend says, "Aduh mager banget, titip aja ya," they want to eat but are too comfortable in bed to go buy it themselves.
On the other hand, gabut is an acronym for gaji buta, which translates to "blind salary"—originally meaning getting paid without doing any actual work at the office. Today, youth use it simply to mean being completely bored with absolutely nothing to do.
The main difference lies in choice and mood: 'mager' is a choice to be lazy when you actually have stuff to do. 'Gabut' is when you're dying to do something to kill time, but your schedule is a total blank. If someone texts you, "Lagi gabut nih, temenin chat dong," they are looking for entertainment, whereas a mager person probably will not reply at all.
Staying Connected with the Trends
Slang like this is most often seen in real conversations on messaging apps like imo. In group chats or private messages, words such as gabut, mager, and others tend to appear naturally when people are joking, reacting, or just talking casually. It’s less about learning definitions and more about noticing how these words are actually used in everyday chat flow. Using a bit of local slang usually makes conversations feel more natural from the start.