

That Way We’re All Writing Now - bayonetz
https://medium.com/message/that-way-we-re-all-talking-now-49e255037f15

======
Jimmy
>It makes your feeling seem universal

It universalizes the feeling of the writer, not the reader. Much like religion
or the Effective Altruism movement, the rise of homogenized communication
(image macros, rage comics, the "that moment when..." style of writing), is
yet another way of obtaining the pleasant feeling of subjugating your
individuality to the Great Universal. This style of communication emphasizes
what is common and easily digestible about an experience, rather than what is
unique, particular, peculiar. The fact that the token experience varies from
communication to communication - Tinder swipes one moment, getting your class
canceled the next - is irrelevant. The only emotion communicated is one that
has been felt a million times before by a million people.

The Culture Industry [1] no longer needs to be imposed upon us from above. Our
private communications have become the Culture Industry, and we are the army
of laborers that keep it running.

[1]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry)

~~~
raziel2p
This is a point sorely missed in the article - these types of texts do give
room for interpretation and reflection, but often make for polarised
reactions. Suddenly you're not just disagreeing with someone's thoughts on
something, you feel annoyed at them imposing their way of thinking onto you
(and the rest of the reading audience).

------
duncanawoods
I liked this. Particularly:

 _I’m a fan of all the betentacled linguistic lifeforms that have emerged from
our cambrian explosion online. These days, people write insanely more text
than they did before the Internet and mobile phones came along. So the volume
of experimentation is correspondingly massive and, for me, delightful. One joy
of our age is watching wordplay evolve at the pace of E.coli._

and

 _Most of these syntax-morphing memes consist of us trying to find clever new
ways to express our feelings._

The effect of image boards really is fascinating. What at first seemed to be
childish screwing around is proving to be an amazing engine of new culture and
language. such wow

~~~
justathrow2k
I'm not convinced its not any less childish screwing around just because it
generates a shared vocabulary for people. It's not progress of culture or
language, simply an increase of quantity of slang and in-jokes.

~~~
eropple
I'm curious, have you ever read Shakespeare?

Because Shakespeare's slang and in-jokes _are normal English today_.

~~~
justathrow2k
That's not a very compelling argument.

edit: The comparison to Shakespeare just seems kind of off, but beyond that, I
never argued that the vernacular / slang being generated today wouldn't be
used or become accepted by society at large.

~~~
jasode
To me, the follow 2 sentences look like they contradict each other:

 _> It's not progress of culture or language, simply an increase of quantity
of slang

>, I never argued that the vernacular / slang being generated today wouldn't
be used or become accepted by society at large._

If those 2 sentences are not contradictions, can you clarify your comment?

Isn't "accepted by society at large" part of what culture __is__ ?

~~~
justathrow2k
Something being accepted by society does not imply progress.

~~~
jasode
You're using "progress" as a judgement of something that's "better" or
"improved" ... like "technological progress".

A "language progress" is a movement in usage and meaning. We "progressed" from
"thy" "thee" to "your" "you" etc. It doesn't mean the words starting with "y"
are "better" or "clearer" (in fact, they are the opposite of the previous
formal/informal distinctions.) Nevertheless, language/culture has moved on.

~~~
justathrow2k
I agree with the example of the macro usage of thy->thee->you/your as being an
instance of progression, but I don't see the current trends in internet slang
as a parallel example of something that will have such a long lasting effect
on our language as a whole, but instead, well, just what I said, I see it as a
trend that will eventually be a ghost. This is a prediction, of course.

------
jasode
I've been convinced by linguists (Steven Pinker, John McWhorter, etc) that it
looks like evolution of syntax to convey meaning and emotions.

Syntax evolution isn't just introduction of old ideas like
lowercase+uppercase, Capitalization rules, punctuation (spaces between words,
periods & commas to mark rests & beats, etc). Syntax evolution _also includes_
new strange word reorderings, deliberate word omissions, and deliberate word
misspellings.

I disagree with the other comment about The Culture Industry as an
explanation. That's not relevant. Instead, people are trying to share extra
meaning (emotion, irony, etc) through extra channels of new syntax
manipulation.

Let's say a writer wants to be sarcastic when writing out bad reasoning.
Examples:

Congress keeps buying tanks the Army does not need. Why?

1) explicit labeling of concept with backreference:

 _" It's good because it maintains jobs. (That was sarcasm.)"_

2) HTML tag inspired syntax:

 _" <sarcasm>It's good because it maintains jobs.</sarcasm>"_

3) /s (inspired by Unix command line switch?)

 _" It's good because it maintains jobs. /s"_

4) grammar incorrect because of missing words

 _" Because jobs."_

(It's as if the general public is creating syntax options in English to
parallel the computer language verbosity of Objective-C and Java EE to
terseness of Perl and Haskell.)

That type of word subtraction creates an interesting abruptness that conveys
to the reader a meaning of idiocy or lunacy. Similar phrases can be
constructed like "because freedom" or "because science".

Why is the TSA now performing mandatory cavity searches of preschoolers?
"Because freedom."

The substraction of words may have been motivated by the mechanics of 2 thumbs
typing on smartphones or the Twitter 140 char limit but I think even desktop
users with 100wpm typing speed have adopted it.

~~~
spb
/s is inspired by CP/M or DOS command switches. If it were Unix, it would be
-s or --sarcasm.

------
vatys
> It makes your feeling seem universal.

Rage comics, subordinate clauses, FML postings, tweets, anonymous comment
threads, etc. The internet makes it easier to share the kind of tiny moments
you'd never speak of. Then, suddenly, we all realized that we could all relate
to them. Secret micro-shame revelation becomes a commonplace part of the
modern human experience. Isn't the internet wonderful?

~~~
jacobolus
One of my favorite things about XKCD is how willing Randall Munroe has been to
share these kinds of trivial but intimate moments. I don’t think he would have
been able to do it as a comic strip in any venue before the internet.

For instance, [http://xkcd.com/245/](http://xkcd.com/245/)

~~~
visakanv
"Trivial but intimate moments" – you'll enjoy a lot of novels written by old
French and Russian authors. Check out Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground)

------
Dewie2
> Usually you can quickly deduce what the missing part would be. Maybe it’s
> something like You, sadly, always know what to do when she’s holding a dog
> on her Tinder and you’re like, “cute dog.” Or maybe the full sentence that
> emerges in your head is more convoluted, like Nothing is more bittersweet
> than reflecting on the challenges of dating someone who is superficially
> attractive but owns a pomeranian and thus, you worry, has all sorts of
> dog/partner priority issues, which you can instantly intuit when you’re
> using a dating app and see someone when she’s holding a dog on her Tinder
> and you’re like, “cute dog.”

Or: "That dog is cute (which is more than I can say for the owner)".

------
SethMurphy
It seems to me we are all learning to write click bait headlines. We are all
morphing into personal SEO experts.

~~~
visakanv
Martin Luther effective did a tweetstorm with his 95 Theses:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-
Five_Theses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses)

[http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm](http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm)

------
ArekDymalski
I'm not an linguist but I got a feeling that 1337 speak wasn't created in last
15 years. Also it seems that the author got the historical parallel wrong
because there's nothing puzzling about the complete phrase " _Chapter IV_ In
Which Our Protagonist Meets A Dashing Strange".

~~~
mytochar
Often people separate the first half of that, though.

Chapter IV, titled, "In Which Our Protagonist Meets A Dashing Strange." is how
I imagine many read that, especially when Chapter IV is in big letters, or
even without the word "Chapter", like a title, with the rest of it in what
would be recognized as a subtitle.

~~~
icebraining
"In which (something happens)" was a common form when chapter titles were
descriptions of the events in it, so it's fair to assume it was meant to refer
to the chapter itself.

Later works often lampooned and subverted those tropes, of course.

[http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chapter-
history](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chapter-history)

------
JasonFruit
That feel when people who learned your language later in life can't understand
you because you don't follow the rules they were taught.

Also, when you sound really dumb in about ten years.

~~~
matt4077
That feeling when s/o thinks you can't grammar just 'cause you're no native
speaker :(

No, seriously, English was my second language and I have no problems
understanding most of these innovations.

If you want to help a foreigner out, avoid the "could of / would of" mistake.
For some reason it seems to be much more painful for me than for most native
speakers.

------
father_of_two
When medium articles are too long to read.

That was just kidding, though.

