How Can Everything Hit Different?

Somebody is lying.

By Ashwin Rodrigues April 18, 2025

• Cultural Studies

• Memoir & Essay

THE FRAME IS from the point of view of a man behind the wheel of a car. You hear a voice: “Sup fellas, it’s your boy threedirty5. It hits a little bit different when you’ve got a spliff, Fast & Furious on, and a single turbo M4,” says Instagram user @threedirty5. It’s February 21, 2025, and this man is speeding down a New York highway in a tuned-up BMW, wielding a joint, and playing The Fast and the Furious (2001) on his dashboard-mounted display.

Several concerning behaviors are on display here, not the least being @threedirty5’s eyes straying from The Fast and the Furious. You cannot half-focus on the importance of family. But what was most jarring, to me, was his phrasing.

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In 2012, Michael Specter issued a warning in The New Yorker. “Monoculture is dangerous in any form—and that needs to be acknowledged,” he said. “Here’s what the hysteria is really about: corporate control of seeds.” Specter was addressing the (still present) fearmongering around crops of genetically modified organisms. But he’s right—monoculture is dangerous in any form. And the seeds of language that we encounter every day are under monopolistic corporate control.

The grayish goo of monoculture is inescapable. The phrase that wakes me up from the deafening hum of its nothingness, without exception, is prevalent. It is ubiquitous. It is … “hit(s) different.”

Hearing—or, increasingly, reading—this phrase truly hits different to me. I am in awe of the number of sodas, vapes, chicken sandwiches, software programs, and processed foods that claim they are hitting at a frequency never before observed in the natural universe. The phrase follows me in a way that makes me believe in gang stalking.

If everything hits different, then nothing hits different, because it’s all a series of Xerox copies that degrade with each iteration, and the source material wasn’t particularly inspirational in the first place. And yet, everything apparently hits different.

Five years ago, Mel Magazine’s Magdalene Taylor explained why Sprite from the McDonald’s fountain machines hit different. I still remember the “discourse” around this, such as it was. McDonald’s Sprite feels extra carbonated. Perhaps even spicy, to a sensitive palate. That’s fair play. It’s a soda from the fountain of America’s favorite fast-food restaurant. Not that serious.

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Two years later, Mr. Logan Roy himself, Brian Cox, in his other capacity as official voice-over artist for McDonald’s, said that “the ketchup that falls from the [Quarter Pounder with Cheese] just hits different.” That doesn’t make much sense. Does it hit the tray different? I guess, if enough ketchup hits the protective layer of paper to make it stick to the tray, forcing the McDonald’s customer to touch ketchup-soaked paper when bussing their table, which you’re supposed to do. In 2021, upon its creation of a breaded chicken sandwich product called the Ch’King, Burger King boldly declared that its new product hit different. Three years later, not to be outdone by a hamburger monarchy, McDonald’s said no—it is actually our offering of chicken products that hits different.

Redefine Foods, a company that offers protein-stuffed versions of beloved bodega staples, declared that “snackin’ on the moon just hits different” in their caption for an AI-generated astronaut riding a longboard while holding a box of their protein-rich MoonPies. (Questionable.) Back here on Earth, PepsiCo’s Starry soda uses the tagline “Starry Hits Different,” which you might have heard Bill Simmons say in the soda’s extensive podcast advertising campaigns. I would venture to say it hits exactly like Sprite, Sierra Mist, or 7 Up, but I’ve never tried it. And let us remember that Sprite is on the record as hitting different—a conclusion decided by democratic process, not as top-down marketing decree.

In an ad campaign that plastered MTA vehicles and trash cans across New York City, the Mets declared that “baseball hits different here” at Citi Field. It’s in their 2024 media guide. (A Mets game was the first place where I saw a fistfight in the stands, so I’ll rate this one a solid “Yeah. Sure.”)

The Mets aren’t the only team capitalizing on this overcooked phrase. While baseball hits different in Queens, the entire sport of tennis hits different in Australia, according to the 2024 Australian Open promotional campaign. (In Los Angeles, the Kings have decided that hockey hits different there too.)

After I told a friend I was looking into the different-hitting virus, he sent me an Instagram screenshot from the official account of Tajín, the beloved blend of salt, chili, and lime. It was an ad for its mouth-watering Chamoy sauce. The phrase “Hits Diferente” crowds the frame. (Points for making it global. I take no issue with Tajín claiming to hit diferente. Eso es un hecho.)

It’s the name of a now-defunct restaurant in Jersey City, whose website lists its phone number as (555) 555-5555. Recent Jaylen Brown trade rumors, following the sale of the Boston Celtics to a private equity guy for $6.1 billion? Those rumors hit different, Newsweek claims. And what about the Word of Christ? It hits different, according to Bible.com.

This specific phrase and its ubiquity drive me mad, if you couldn’t tell.

For one, it shows that advertising executives and people who use “creative” as a noun are not being creative (adjective). The brands declaring that their products have a unique-hitting quality are all unified by their generic enormity: Burger King, McDonald’s, Starry soda, a Virginia-based Chevrolet dealership, the collectibles platform StockX, and Gold Peak Iced Tea all promise that one product or another hits different. Copywriters used to dictate the conversation instead of baby-birding TikTok phrases (that did not originate on TikTok but propagated on the platform) back to TikTok users’ parents.

On X, the Everything App (™) and mouthpiece for the DOGE-run state, McDonald’s constantly affirms us that its nuggets, all-day breakfast, McGriddles, and other products hit different. When one angry customer threatened “count your fukn days” because he’d received 10 McNuggets without any sauce, McDonald’s responded, “That pain hit different! Help us fix this,” with a link to a contact form. The McDonald’s X account relied on this exact response often until 2021, maybe because the social media professional behind the fast-food company then realized that “hit different” is cooked.

I am not myopically singling out the McDonald’s Corporation, whose stock has increased by roughly 50 percent in the past five years. Congratulations to it for getting to the grease-covered bag while delivering results to the most important people in the world: the shareholders. The examples go far beyond the Golden Arches, and when you notice them now, they will hit different.

But the phrase endures within the company. In 2022, the most brazen use of the phrase by this hamburger company appeared in an advertisement for drinks. Just drinks, in general. “Sipping on a delicious drink from McDonald’s may have you thinking: What makes these drinks just … hit … different? Don’t overthink it. Just enjoy it,” says the narrator.

That’s what it means when a brand says its products “hit different.” What does it mean? Don’t think about it too much. Just consume it. Or you can figure it out, genius. Interpret this phrase in a way that is favorable to Brand and relatable to you.

Even the dependable elixir for dulling the pain of existence, light beer, is not immune to this grating phrase. On a Friday night, I went to a friend’s house for dinner. The host gracefully set out drinks, and I grabbed a beer. “They just hit different,” read the text near the opening. It was a can of Friday Beers, a product launched by two brothers, Max and Jack Barrett, in 2023. The beer is an extension of Almost Friday Media, an extensive content operation launched off the strength of an Instagram meme page by Max, Jack, and a third Barrett brother, Sam, in 2019. (Some of the videos are very funny.) But all light beer hits exactly the same; it’s the marketing and brand perception that makes it hit different. Ideally, this would be said in a creative way.

Getting mad at advertising copy is never a good sign. Whisking yourself into a cyclone of rage because an advertisement was “bad” supposes that an advertisement can be “good,” in which case, when is your wedding with the Monopoly Man? But obviously, advertisements can be good, like that Spike Jonze–directed IKEA commercial about an abandoned lamp.

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I cannot escape this phrase, which seeped from subway advertisements and Instagram meme pages into more formal areas of my life. In the summer of 2023, it made it into Pete Wells’s review of the standout East Village vegetarian spot Superiority Burger. The veggie burger—made with real ingredients like quinoa and carrots instead of marvels of science and technology that are really just ultra-processed animal flesh alternatives—hit different, argued the renowned former New York Times restaurant critic.

I’ve moved Arnold Schwarzenegger’s morning newsletter from the “updates” folder to my primary Gmail inbox as a way to wake up with some morning positivity and maybe something interesting about health. I usually end up leaving the emails unread.

But on January 16, 2025, the former governor of California told me something. “The Early Morning Protein Hits Different,” read one of the newsletter’s subheadings. I usually skip breakfast, so this message—which said research suggests that a protein-rich breakfast might be ideal for building and maintaining muscle gains—upset me in both style and content.

Even at Peak Hit Different—which will be a different time according to your media diet and advertisement targeting profile—I never heard people readily describe experiences as hitting different, outside of one particularly logged-on group chat that deployed it ironically. (But I also don’t like to learn new terms by watching younger people testing out slang on TikTok.) Yet this description remains a durable raisin in the trail mix of language used to grab a reader’s attention, either for a click or a monetary purchase.

You might see “hits different” deployed on an ad when you’re getting a Duolingo lesson in on the train and you won’t spring for the paid version. (Sometimes they’ll give you three days for free if you open enough of those prize chests.) If you look up from your phone, you might see a subway advertisement asking you to go be a teacher in Maine, because the morning commute hits different there.

Our monoculture seems to be running at hyperspeed, where slang/online speak makes its way from genuine use to TikTok to ad-copywriter handbooks in record time. This is how Hawk Tuah Girl went from a forgettable but funny viral TikTok posted in June 2024 to throwing out the first pitch at Citi Field (where, mind you, baseball hits different) just two months later. At the stadium, the announcers never explained what she was famous for. Before the year was over, Ms. Tuah was accused of participating in a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme.

These kinds of arcs used to take time! Obviously, I applaud Hawk Tuah Girl for making a ton of money (and a podcast) built upon a Vine’s worth of drunken riffing.

It’s difficult to tell the exact difference between the usage of “hits different” and “hit different,” though the latter seems to be a bit more enunciated. Let two bona fide pop stars explain the difference.

Many people, particularly her fans, were introduced to the phrase by Taylor Swift’s 2022 song “Hits Different.” When Swift’s 10th studio album, Midnights, first dropped, “Hits Different” was only available on the Lavender Edition of the CD, sold exclusively at Target. (That series of words does actually hit different.)

Before Target got into the game, another musician had a similarly named track.

The beloved Top Dawg Entertainment artist SZA dropped “Hit Different,” featuring Ty Dolla $ign, on September 4, 2020. Before the end of the year, Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz offered their own interpretation of the track on the third edition of Lil Wayne’s No Ceilings mixtape series. And of course, the crisp melodies of Ty Dolla $ign hit different today, now that he has become a serial collaborator with Kanye West in his Nazi Hypebeast era.

And speaking of such things, this February, President Trump tweeted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” apparently channeling his inner Napoleon. The Washington Post reported that, while Trump has made antidemocratic statements before (remember that field trip he organized?), “his use of this quote hits different.”

As the country’s infrastructure and essential programs are gutted by a chain saw–wielding redditor in a perpetual K-hole—no disrespect to ketamine—I am hoping we survive to see a time when things actually hit different. But there must be a better way to say that.

The origins of the “hits different” phrase are unclear. But some of the written histories of its origin are almost definitely incorrect.

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A couple years ago, I reached out to Dictionary.com. I did not have a writing assignment or even a pitch in mind yet. Back then, my anger was pure. I wanted answers. My anger is still pure. I still want answers.

I thought I might be able to uncover some insight, something that would help people acknowledge the slang hot potato that makes every other person sound like an undercover cop. The now-former head of lexicography Grant Barrett told me that the online dictionary is keeping an eye on this term, as it was “having something of a moment.” The expression has been in the mix since at least 2010, he said.

The genesis of “hit(s) different,” Barrett said, is “shrouded in mystery,” which might be part of its attraction. He noted that the phrase was nominated as a Phrasal Template of the Year at the 2022 American Dialect Society Word of the Year awards, but it placed second in that category.

Applying his linguist and lexicographer expertise, he explained that the phrase has “several curious features.” He expounded: “One is that its verb, ‘hit,’ usually has an object, which makes it transitive—hit a ball, hit a note, hit a high. But with ‘hit different,’ it’s just a verb and an adverb with no object, making it intransitive.”

Making an estimate of how it came to be, Barrett guessed that maybe the transitive-to-intransitive transformation occurred when people went from “it hits my mind/eyes/mood/tongue different” to simply “it hits different.” Using the adverb “different” instead of “differently” is grammatically correct, Barrett noted, but is more informal. “It has a chips-and-dip flavor to it, whereas ‘differently’ is a bit more cheese and crackers.”

The verb in the phrase, hit, is also peculiar. He pointed out that “it seems to be a combination of several senses, as defined at Dictionary.com: ‘to have a marked effect or influence on; affect severely,’ ‘to come or light upon,’ and ‘to agree with; suit exactly.’ That kind of generalization of meaning is very common in language change.”

The verb also overlaps with the definitions of its synonym, “strike,” which can mean “to reach or fall upon (the senses),” “to enter the mind of; occur to,” “to catch or arrest (the sight, hearing, etc.),” “to impress in a particular manner,” or “to come across, meet with, or encounter suddenly or unexpectedly.”

Barrett’s breakdown made it all make sense. The phrase of my linguistic hell is a succinct way of saying a lot, but also not that much. Brands are telling us their products will have a marked effect on us, or perhaps they’ll suit us exactly. Maybe the products will have a multisensory grip on our very being, and really, the only way to find out is to try the product today.

Dictionary.com originally attributed the phrase’s popularity to white British YouTuber gaming duo Dan and Phil, as do multiple Urban Dictionary definitions. This spiritually does not seem to be correct. (Dan and Phil did not respond to a request for comment.)

I wanted another linguist’s take on it. Someone I knew. I emailed the most famous linguist I could think of. Unfortunately, Noam Chomsky did not reply to my email. I understand he might have better things to do. He’s probably not concerned with what does and does not hit different.

Everything technically hits in a different way. In the same way that no two snowflakes or fingerprints are allegedly alike. But not everything can hit different.

The rage has unlocked memories I did not know were still being stored. But some of them were good memories.

My high school gym teacher, who was also the health teacher, a gleeful man named Mr. Laporta who drove a red Jeep Wrangler with a “Life Is Good” cover on the spare tire, would write one nice thing at the top of the chalkboard every day. Things like “An ice-cold Coca-Cola from the bottle.” Or “the first bite of watermelon on a summer day.” Two things that surely hit different. But that’s not how he prefaced it. I forget what he called it, but it was something related to the Life-Is-Good ethos, which he promoted. But I remember his tire cover, which is pretty good.

I understand that some copywriting professionals think bad stuff is actually good. I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain why this is. But in short, everything now is like Family Guy (1999– ): the reference itself is the joke. And they’re trying to write an Inside Joke that Scales. People have heard “hit different” somewhere, even if the first time they heard it was from one fast-food brand and the next time they heard it was from another.

Thanks to a slimming media landscape and social media, the conveyor belt that plucks slang from the wild and places it into “Internet Culture” reporting, which then moves on to processing for ad copywriting, is a fixture. But it’s going faster than ever before. Before you know it, the phrase you first heard in a viral TikTok street interview might be heard weeks later, uttered by Rashida Jones in a Capital One ad.

Much of this is a (somewhat) benign symptom of monoculture. Everyone is a creative. Everyone saw that thing on TikTok, and yes, it was hilarious. Unless you’re old.

It is clear that you are being lied to. Unless you believe, deep down in your heart, that “birthday letters via #Gmail hit different,” as the official account for Google’s email product posted on X last August.

I don’t have a solution to this. I just want people to realize it’s happening. What you do after that, I don’t know. That’s not my job.

When people say they’re “built different,” that makes sense. An athletic specimen. One with that “dog in them.” Sometimes it’s just simply “I’m different,” as 2 Chainz rapped on a track of the same name in November 2012.

Those who have become very good at punching in two-factor authentication codes to log in to X are probably familiar with the post that set this phrase into amber: “rip to ur grandma but im different.” Maybe I am that grandma, and I am not different. But I am alive, for now.

It’s nice when you can tell someone’s age and media diet based on their language. But now you have right-wing demons emulating the slang of people they don’t want in their government, workplace, or country.

What’s most confusing about the different-hitting epidemic is that both tremendously uncool corporations and cool people are using the term at the same time. Case in point: “$60,000 round my neck, that shit hit different,” Los Angeles hip-hop artist Lefty Gunplay rapped on his single “Can’t Get Right,” featuring JasonMartin. Imagine wearing roughly one year’s tuition at NYU. Wow. That makes sense. The song is from 2024. The music video just dropped this January.

Last year, Kendrick Lamar introduced Lefty to the world beyond the L.A. hip-hop scene on his album, GNX, released six days before Thanksgiving. The 30-year-old’s contribution was a concise, hypnotic repetition that encapsulates my reaction to the “hits different” plague: “crazy, scary, spooky, hilarious.” Fittingly, the song is titled “tv off.” It may be the only way to get right.