We are so buggin'.
That's because after over 20 years, a giant Clueless mystery has been solved.
When the teen flick came out back in 1995, it skyrocketed to instant fame, with youths everywhere instantly obsessing over everything those spoiled rich kids were doing. Cher's closet-sorting computer game? Dionne's hat collection? That mall? It was all magical.
And even more important, the movie so quickly became apart of our cultural fabric, with the vernacular of Bronson Alcott High School taking the top spot on the tip of America's tongue. Surfing the crimson wave. Jeepin'. Wearing polyester hair. It was all so fetch. (Oh wait, wrong movie!). So naturally we've been wondering for decades just who is responsible for creating this awesomely bad dialect that we still can't stop quoting.
And today we have our answer.
Amy Heckerling, the film's director, recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter as part of a larger piece on Hollywood's favorite movie quotes, and she so graciously decided to spill the beans on perhaps the most iconic phrase, "As if!" She first gave it the self-deprecating treatment by pointing out that the words can barely be considered a real line, she also explained that all the credit goes to...the Hollywood gay community.
"I am always compiling slang words because I am just interested in how people use language," she told THR. "At that time, which was like early '90s, 'As if!' was floating around in the gay community. and I thought it was really a multiuseful, multipurpose word. I thought it would be a good thing for teenagers to be saying."
And, if you want to feel even more uncool for still using this phrase today, Heckerling also admitted that by the time "As if!" made it into Clueless, a lot of her crew were already shortening it to "Zif!"
Because who has time for that extra syllable?