>>717972307 (OP)
During the rebuilding after the collapse, Africa was largely untouched while America, Europe, and Asia lost roughly 1/3 of their population, so Africa became the main source of workers for all of the glimmering cities and Tech we see in the 2020s. Cyberpunk basically had a second wave african american population that brought their own slang and mixed it with slang worldwide. From that, we see "choombatta" pop up in the 2010s from these second wave African Americans intermingling and slowly begin to spread.
What really made Choombatta take off was the space race. Although Nasa was decimated during the collapse, the ESA managed to escape fairly unscathed and started doing what Europe does best: colonizing Africa, which became the world's new space hub- and the influence this had cannot be understated. What started as the world's first mass driver at Kilimanjaro spread into a continent based around space infrastructure. Naturally, when agencies wanted to start building things in space, their first choice for construction workers were the Africans who were already there with the infrastructure. Over time, this grew into a distinct culture and population of "Highriders"- Cyberpunk's own spacemen, mostly blue collar workers. In Cyberpunk, if you were to ask someone what an astronaut looks like, they'd likely respond with an African laborer in a jumpsuit.
So, how does this connect back to choombatta? Well, aside from American and African populations talking to each other, a lot of neo-african americans went back to Africa to pursue more lucrative space jobs- and they brought their slang with them. Heading into these construction jobs made them even more mobile than before, and this population literally descended into every city with a spaceport, spreading slang like wildfire. They brought other slang, but choom stuck on a global scale. It's less prevalent in places like Japan, but in America, you'd have a hard time finding someone who doesn't use it.
