Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

On the internet, real laughter calls for a representation that hasn’t become trite through overuse. In my survey of 2017, people favored the ever-increasing repetition in “hahahaha” or expanded, ad hoc phrases such as “I actually just spat water on my keyboard from laughing.” But, by necessity, the way we express genuine laughter keeps changing.

the weak ties introduce the new forms

At a societal level, it’s a case of bias-laundering through technology

hashtag or funny video going viral is an example of the power of weak ties—when the same thing is shared only through strong ties, it ends up merely as an inside joke.

America despite the millions of people who already lived there.

At first glance, this kind of repurposing might seem like a purely internet invention, and it is, insofar as people weren’t peppering their speech with code snippets or hashtags before we had any such thing. But English has a long history of verbalizing punctuation: think of “that’s the facts, period” or “these quote-unquote experts.”

In the plain text of late 1990s and early 2000s instant messenger status messages, sparkle punctuation would range from ~ just one ~ of each all the way up to ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~so many sparkles~~~~~~ ~~~~~~; ~ ~ ~ ~alternating~ ~ ~ ~ or ~ ~~ ~~in combination~~ ~~ ~~; mixed with wOrDs iN mIxEd cAPiTaLiZaTiOn, e x t r a s p a c e s, and ✧･ﾟ: ☆ ✧･ﾟ: ★ extr

And yet the most commonly used sets of emoji are the faces and hands, like the smile, the face with tears of joy, the thumbs up, and the crossed fingers. We use emoji less to describe the world around us, and more to be fully ourselves in an online world.

Our deep wells of enthusiasm for internet dialect quizzes give us a clue about why: talking in particular ways reinforces our networks, our sense of belonging and community.