Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch

For young people, context collapse is a collective problem: they need space to figure out who they are, where they aren’t being constantly supervised by authority figures.

First, things should disappear more, the

Second, not all social networks need to be all things to all people.

Some statements are direct; others wrap their meaning in layers. Including “lol” indicates there’s a second layer of meaning to be found, telling the recipient to look beyond the literal words you’re saying.

One study of natural conversations found that only 10 to 20 percent of laughter was actually in response to humor.

Like children of the offline kind of immigrants, second-generation internet kids do grow up fluent in the communication styles of their peers, but no generation anywhere has ever mastered the skills of adulthood without mentorship.

we can bend the functional and technical tools of hypermediated text to a more social purpose, indicating that we’re the type of people who understand a particular tool so well that we can play around with it.

a successful communication of irony in writing between two complete strangers.

Irony is a linguistic trust fall. When I write or speak with a double meaning, I fall backwards, hoping that you’ll be there to catch me. The risks are high: misaimed irony can gravely injure the conversation. But the rewards are high, too: the sublime joy of feeling purely understood,

ironic typography is

When asking about the future of technolinguistic tools, like speech to text or predictive smart replies, we need to ask not just how they can be used, but how they can be subverted; not just how designers can help users communicate their intentions, but how users can help them communicate more than the designers intended.

Perfectly following a list of punctuation rules may grant me some kinds of power, but it won’t grant me love.

In the twenty-first century, we’re going a step further: emoji and the rest make us not just readers of mental states, but writers of them.

The greetings popular in the 1800s were based on knowing who you were addressing and when you were addressing them: “Good morning, children.” “Good afternoon, Doctor.” But when you pick up a ringing telephone, you have no idea who’s calling (during the many decades before caller ID), and you can’t even be sure whether you share a time of day with them. The teleconnected world desperately needed a neutral option. The two most prominent solutions were “Hello,” championed by Thomas Edison, and “Ahoy,” championed by Alexander Graham Bell.

To the Right noble, and Valorous, Sir Walter Raleigh, knight, Lo. Wardein of the Stanneryes, and her Majesties lieftenaunt of the County of Cornewayll. [text of letter] So humbly craving the continuance of your honorable favour towards me, and th’ eternal establishment of your happines [sic], I humbly take leave. 23 January. 1589. Your most humbly affectionate.

phatic phrase,

What does explain the appeal of posts in their various formats is thinking of them as a third place.

It’s often observed that social media is taking on the functions of a hangout place for teenagers.

Like how expressive typography and co-text doodles predate the internet, in-joke replication has a multigenerational cultural history.