Why are there so many English words in Portuguese nowadays?

I'm not sure if it's as much as it seems, maybe we just notice more when something becomes a meme or gets really popular on social media. But it's true that certain English words catch on because there aren't equivalents that work as well, like "feedback" or "trending," and others because they're cooler to say than the Portuguese equivalent anyway - that's a lot about generational identity and internet influence, gaming, social media. People who grow up consuming content in English naturally absorb this stuff, and some of these words end up being easier to use than constantly looking for a Portuguese synonym.

I think part of it has to do with the internet itself too. When you're in online communities, Discord, Reddit, everything's in English, so you end up absorbing slang and the way foreigners talk without even realizing it. Then when you get off the computer and talk to a friend, you naturally throw out a "vibe", "crush", "hype" because it's already become part of your everyday vocabulary. We're like exposed 24/7 to English content, way more than previous generations were.

Kids grow up with English content from a young age, not just now on the internet. Movies, series, games, music - all in English, subtitled or dubbed but with the original soundtrack. When you learn English words before you learn the Portuguese equivalent, or when the equivalent sounds weird because you've never heard anyone use it, it's natural that the English word stays in your vocabulary. Like, "download" we can all say in Portuguese, but "spoiler"? Most people say it in English because it's faster and everyone understands.

But this is where I kind of disagree with your points - I don't think it's just because equivalents don't exist or because you're on Discord absorbing slang. A lot of times we have perfectly valid Portuguese words and we still choose English because it sounds more modern or because it's lazy. "Feedback" is used every day when "retorno" or "resposta" do the same job. "App" when we have "aplicação". It's also a bit about status quo - people want to sound more international, more "cool", especially in professional contexts or on social media. In my time trucking, I hear my colleagues use "truck driver" when they could just say "motorista de camião", and it's because there's this association that sounding more internationalized is better.

The worst is when English words slip into Portuguese without any adaptation, and then we see kids writing "eu vou fazer um backup" like it's nothing. Personally, I like to mix it up - I use "photography" because it's shorter than "fotografia" in the context of the profession, but I'm careful not to become that person who can't have a conversation without throwing English around every five seconds. I think Portuguese can hold its own just fine.

The thing is, a lot of English words come in because they describe concepts or realities that were born out there and Portuguese didn't have time to develop an equivalent term that would catch on. I see this clearly in my own areas - in photography, for example, nobody actually says "profundidade de campo", everyone uses "depth of field"; in training it's the same thing with terms like "cardio", "core", "hypertrophy". What happens is these words already come loaded with very specific meaning and the translation always ends up sounding forced or imprecise compared to the original. Then there's the community effect - when you're constantly in spaces where English is the lingua franca, those terms are part of the shared vocabulary and putting them in Portuguese naturally just sounds more direct and efficient.