Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch

When Facebook and Twitter started letting you post status updates, their appeal was explained in terms of ambient awareness of what your friends were doing, which could lead to spontaneous encounters or being able to pick up a conversation later as if no time had passed, without needing to catch up first. Facebook status updates in 2006 came with a few dropdown options meant to reflect typical college activities, like “is sleeping,” “is studying,” “is in class,” or “is at a party.” Even when you typed in your own status message, the “is” was obligatory and a period was automatically inserted at the end, clearly trying to push people in the direction of a particular genre of update. While early tweets didn’t have the same grammatical constraints, they still tended to be about the here and now, such as “walking on the sunny side of the street,” “digesting a burrito,” and “just setting up my twttr.”