updated 5h ago
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
What’s cool about informal writing is that, once we had the technology to send any image anywhere, we used it to restore our bodies to our writing, to give a sense of who’s talking and what mood we’re in when we’re saying things.
from Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
young internet people’s social savvy is also no guarantee of technological skill.
from Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
Fittingly, the internet has come up with a word for this: columbusing, or white people claiming to discover something that was already well established in another community, by analogy with how Columbus gets credit for discovering
from Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
- The study provides an interesting way of teasing apart the effects of age and peer groups, suggesting that people are more open to new vocabulary during the first third of their lifespan, regardless of whether that’s an eighty-year lifespan in an offline community or a three-year “lifespan” in an online one.
from Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
We no longer accept that writing must be lifeless, that it can only convey our tone of voice roughly and imprecisely, or that nuanced writing is the exclusive domain of professionals. We’re creating new rules for typographical tone of voice. Not the kind of rules that are imposed from on high, but the kind of rules that emerge from the collective p
... See morefrom Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
There’s not that much difference between a late-1990s teenager constantly sending mundane but vital updates via AOL Instant Messenger and creating social drama about who was in their top eight friends on MySpace and a mid-2010s teen who’s constantly sending mundane but vital updates via Snapchat and creating social drama about who liked whose selfi
... See morefrom Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
They don’t remember the first time they used a computer or did something online, the way that earlier generations don’t remember when they first watched a television or used a telephone, and they can talk about the social implications of following and liking even if they don’t personally have an account on a given platform or even use social media
... See morefrom Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
It’s not just that we make patterns. It’s that even when we’re not trying to make patterns, when we think we’re just a billion monkeys mashing incoherently on a billion keyboards, we’re social monkeys—we can’t help but notice each other and respond to each other.
from Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago
think it’s disingenuous to follow formal tradition at the expense of regular usage in a book that’s entirely about regular usage, so I’ve made the stylistic decision to write social, internet acronyms in all-lowercase, while often keeping technical acronyms in uppercase, because people on the internet primarily reserve LOL and OMG for when they’re
... See morefrom Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
Keely Adler added 9mo ago