Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch

Someone commented that they’d been about to send me something that I’d actually written myself before they put two and two together and realized we were the same person. I replied, without thinking too much about it, “my Brand is Strong”—a few people acknowledged the humor, and that was that. Later, I got to thinking about it. I realized that I’d replied from my phone, but I’d had to go to extra effort in order to do so. If I hadn’t been able to override my phone’s default formatting—if I’d had to type “My brand is strong.” rather than “my Brand is Strong”—my irony could have been read as sincere arrogance. I can’t see that phrase with default capitalization and not want to wipe that smarmy grin off someone’s face: there’s no way I’m going to let it issue from my own. Of course, I could have typed something else that was sincere and non-smarmy using formal typography. But the irony gains me something here: with ironic capitals on the “brand” part, I align myself with internet people, all facing the same weird pressures of social media on our self-presentation. With minimalist lowercase at the beginning, I make myself approachable: like a self-deprecating joke at the beginning of a public speech, I remove myself from the position of being able to lecture others about their writing style by preemptively adopting features that someone else might lecture me for. At one level, I acknowledge that it’s true, the other person has heard of me, but at the same time, I defuse the awk...