
Hell Is Other Internet People - clydethefrog
https://thebaffler.com/latest/hell-is-other-internet-people-thaddeus-johns
======
pjc50
> By using informal writing to convey the regular dramas of human life, they
> also started reshaping informal writing into something that could deeply
> convey the full range of human emotions,” writes McCulloch. When we need a
> method of expression, language—or perhaps Lockwood’s abyssal portal—figures
> it out.

Exactly. Text doesn't _quite_ have enough bandwidth for the emotional
subcarrier, unless you're a superlative writer. So people need to hang some
neon signposts on it.

Not to mention the role of in-jokes as group bonding. In my circle of friends
one of the choice GIFs for frustration, especially with anything musical, is
[https://tenor.com/view/eric-morecambe-frustrated-
gif-4687881](https://tenor.com/view/eric-morecambe-frustrated-gif-4687881) ;
not just referencing Eric Morcambe's expressive comic acting, but the entire
"Grieg's piano concherto by Grieg with him and him" sketch. We've gradually
accumulated more of these from TV shows watched together and kibitzed over the
Internet, so the reference is not just to the show but the time we watched it
and reacted to it together.

Shaka, when the walls fell indeed.

(Referencing Patricia Lockwood is a positive to this essay, you might enjoy
reading her work too, in the role of interlocutor between the literary world
and the Extremely Online world.)

~~~
PavlovsCat
> so the reference is not just to the show but the time we watched it and
> reacted to it together.

But you're talking about actual friends and actually shared experiences, and I
think internet memes are something else.

Often enough there is no "together" there at all: when someone reproduces an
internet meme, they may mean something they can't or are too lazy to put into
words, but it _may_ get interpreted completely differently, or not at all (yet
may still get "agreed to" for the sole reason of others also knowing the
reference, or at least having it seen used a lot... as in " _I don 't
understand this or know the origins, but I know it's 'official' and roughly
know how to use it_"). The point is, nobody cares enough to even follow up to
check if the message was received, and generally many people just suddenly
start saying things because everybody says them now, like a rash.

Sometimes, the message isn't even fully formed in the mind of the sender
though, and " _oh, you know what I mean_ " actually means " _don 't make me
reflect on what I'm trying to say here, and if it makes any sense_". That's
not particular to interwebs memes, but there it's considered almost uncouth to
call nonsense out, being a spoil-sport, or proving lack of humor by not
finding funny what has been decreed objectively funny by the invisible hand of
the hive mind.

> _The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has
> taken place._

\-- George Bernard Shaw

Picture me in front of a diagram: "People are _so_ lonely, they mindlessly
repeat things _this_ stupid just to belong." Harsh and obviously not 100%
true, but _sometimes_ it's really just that. Even just YouTube is a giant
abomination of a testimony to people talking and listening on auto-pilot, if
you just care to cast a cold enough glance.

I don't think language is solely a social phenomenon: the ability to reflect
on it, and to use it precisely when thinking, when using it "between oneself
and oneself", is just as important.

------
avsteele
I think it was Ken White who I saw observe that the plot of the TNG episode
"Darmok" seemed somewhat ridiculous until he observed modern twitter. When 50%
of the replies to a tweet are those reaction gifs...it suddenly doesn't seem
so crazy that a whole language would be built around cultural metaphors.

~~~
noonespecial
I've also gained a much deeper appreciation of hieroglyphs thanks to this.

I used to wonder how much meaning could really be encoded in them. It's a huge
body of shared cultural knowledge that makes them work.

~~~
mentat
Also makes it so there are harder cultural edges to distinguish groups and
people can't move between them as easily either.

------
narag
There's a basic weapon that many people seem to forget: ignore what doesn't
matter. That useless trendy language/tool/methodology that sometimes fills
half of HN front page? Don't even click the link, of course don't go to the
comments page, much less write a comment because _someone 's wrong in the
Internet_.

A community with strong ideas about how you should write? Don't even go there.

Respect people, other than that, write with your own voice and _ignore
everybody_.

~~~
nkozyra
The point is these things reach a saturation and acceptable point such that
you can't ignore it.

Because ubiquity.

~~~
pjc50
Well, you can ignore it, and people can ignore you. Non participation works
both ways.

~~~
nkozyra
What I'm saying is at a certain saturation it's impossible to ignore.

It's nice in theory but if something becomes ingrained in language you'll
either use it or communication will suffer.

~~~
PeterisP
The fact that it's impossible to ignore it without consequences doesn't mean
that it's impossible to ignore. Yes, communication with some people is likely
to suffer. So be it.

------
sethammons
> As I was reading this chapter of Because Internet, Joe Biden announced his
> candidacy on Twitter. The tweet read: “The core values of this nation . . .
> our standing in the world . . . our very democracy . . . everything that has
> made America—America—is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my
> candidacy for President of the United States. #Joe2020.” Those pauses! So
> pregnant, so stressful, so Semi Internet, I thought. More likely, it
> signaled the perilous record-skips in Biden’s own thought. As if we didn’t
> already know, this message was targeted at a certain demographic of Pre or
> Semi Internet people.

I disagree that this is part of the evolution of internet speak. This is not
lol vs LOL. I have done a fair bit of low level editing. The ellipse for pause
is a generational thing that older (gray hair) types use who are otherwise bad
at grammar. Commas work here, but I think it would be more internet-like to
use whitespace like a newline or a gif to create tension and cadence.

~~~
ambicapter
I don't know when ellipses started signalling an old person, I used to use
ellipses in my teenage years all the time (25-38 demo here).

~~~
dictum
I'm in the same demo, and I wasn't aware of ellipses being seen as an habit of
old people.

Biden's (or likely, his team's) usage is atypical; ellipses are usually only
used when you're citing somebody, to indicate unintelligible segments or
sentences that are not crucial to the thought being relayed, and when you're
voicing some degree of surprise, doubt or reticence about the forthcoming
sentence (e.g. "She thought I was ready... maybe I wasn't.")

(If they ever come for my semicolon, I'll take up arms.)

~~~
homonculus1
The example is correct usage... not perceived as old at all... but when
grandpa replaces all punctuation... peppered in between disjointed fragments
of thought... LOL! Very difficult to read!

------
alex_young
Hmm.

I remember the thing we used to do before this always-on-internet-in-your-
pocket epoch.

Vocal communication.

Both more spontaneous and edited by fewer humans (zero in fact), it was also
unrecorded and subject to interpretation by both parties.

Perhaps hell is the surveillance system we live in where a small misstep can
be broadcast endlessly, or even changed or quoted out of context.

What we need here is to take a step back.

We are all human.

We are all fallible.

We are all changing and learning.

Allow those around you to make mistakes, and for the sake of all of us, allow
people to move on.

I edited this message about a dozen times and it's still not right. I don't
care.

~~~
thatoneuser
You're spot on. To me this seems like an inevitable future caste system. Did
you grow up anywhere less than pleasant (ie lower income)? You're probably
going to have more "bad" things to say online when you're younger (or maybe
even overall.) Because when you don't grow up with two high earning parents in
a nice community odds are you're gong to be exposed to that stuff more and
likely even have to adapt some of it to fit in. So then we'll see what we see
now - elites raining down on the rest of society saying certain language is
unacceptable - and strong arming a moral perspective to make opponents the bad
guys.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not talking outright racism or threatening speech, im
talking general fowl language, bitter truths that the privileged would rather
not consider, etc. If you doubt this consider how much backlash trump gets for
saying something like - Baltimore is a shit hole - and how the left spins it
to say that makes him racist. Imagine that fire power directed at some humble
small time politician in the future who could maybe actually solve local
poverty issues because they know the reality of it, only to be pulled off the
stage for using "bad language".

Maybe we'll collectively get over it on the individual basis but when major
economies are hedging the behavior, I just see this as yet another tool for
the haves to control the have nots and limit their ability to usurp power.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
>Because when you don't grow up with two high earning parents in a nice
community odds are you're gong to be exposed to that stuff more and likely
even have to adapt some of it to fit in.

Even if you did, racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, anarcho-
capitalism, etc. are very natural or intuitive things to fall into and then
advocate.

That's why stupid people often advocate them; they're obvious, knee-jerk,
simple explanations of reality. Why is every white country wealthy and every
black country poor? Oh, simple: the races are inherently unequal. It takes
some wisdom or observed context and thought to climb your way out of them. Oh,
environment is actually a major determinant of IQ (insofar as that's an
impartial standard). Oh, tropical environments are hell to live in (yet they
look so pretty). Oh, there's a rich history of colonial exploitation that I
never knew about.

Education helps, but, initially, you come into reality as a machine that tries
to solve complicated problems impatiently and heuristically, not as a nuanced
encyclopedia of knowledge. Therefore, you will inevitably enter (and perhaps
never leave) a phase of boneheaded and harmful beliefs.

Embrace and encourage anonymity/pesudonymity. It's nice to have adults
accountable for what they say, but it's misguided to hold kids to the same
standard.

~~~
wruza
I like how complex relationships between many people with a rich history and
daily awareness of their surroundings are nailed down to simple stupidity in
your comment. A guy just tries to tell that a harsh language doesn’t define a
person.

“nice to have adults accountable for what they say”

As an eastern bloc citizen, I don’t even.

------
jancsika
Define "internet people":

1\. sock puppet 1 sends meme X to sock puppet 2

2\. bot 1...10000 send meme X to various other bots, sock puppets, and
possibly human recipients

3\. human 1 reads meme X from bot 1337

4\. human 2 reads repost of meme X from human 1

Do the researchers have a methodology to keep these separate in their
analyses?

Here's a simple example-- what would keep the researchers from counting "Samy
is our hero" as an example of lightning speed message syncronization of social
media users? If the answer is that a third party told them it wasn't that,
their methodology seems quite brittle and subject to error.

Especially considering that today's manipulation is vastly more sophisticated,
insidious, and weaponized.

------
nixpulvis
I'll only chime in to say that the idea of when someone "joined social media"
being an indicator for their language is a bit over simplistic, and won't hold
up as a model over the test of time. Social circles and the development of
culture is not a fixed thing. Nature vs nurture, and the rest.

------
charlesism
I figure, if I avoid leaning new linguistic trends, after enough years pass,
my writing will suddenly seem sophisticated. What's the payoff for mimicking
internet slang and turns of phrase? A decade from now, you either sound like a
has-been, or a person who can't let go of their youth.

~~~
Pfhreak
Being able to code switch is important for many people. For example, the way I
speak to my parents, my friends, the queer community, coworkers, and online
are very different.

Language is a ingroup signifier. If you know the lingo, you will be more
respected in that community.

You do have to keep up a bit, but maintaining in group status can make a lot
of social interactions easier.

~~~
gdy
I, for one, would greatly respect a person who always speaks in the same way
to everyone.

~~~
noir_lord
You would need to see that person communicate in at least two of their
communities to begin to respect that person.

~~~
gdy
Hearing him talking to his boss and to a waiter would be no less informative.

------
dang
The book in question was also discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496643)

I hope everybody knows that the title is a Sartre reference.
[http://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2010/07/most-famous-
thing-...](http://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2010/07/most-famous-thing-jean-
paul-sartre.html)

~~~
ThinkingGuy
The author was also interviewed on the latest episode of Slate's "Lexicon
Valley:"

[https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/07/john-mcwhorter-
and-...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/07/john-mcwhorter-and-gretchen-
mcculloch-on-because-internet.html)

------
datpuz
> She imagines, for example, her future grandchild asking her why people
> called each other “binch.” “How could you explain it?” she asks
> rhetorically.

It's not that hard to explain "binch." Urban Dictionary managed to do it
sufficiently in one sentence:

> What you call someone when you don't want to say the B-word.

------
reedx8
Where are the examples? I skimmed the entire article and only found the veins
example. What language in particular is the author even referring to? My own
set of examples are the hand clapping emoji in between every word, “Im here
for it” when you like something, the ubiquitous hold my beer meme in so many
YT comments, “stanning”, and of course how could you forget using “toxic” or
“cancer” for anything you vehemently disagree with.

------
daphneokeefe
If you rush over to Amazon to download the book on Kindle, you may find that
it is broken on all Apple Kindle apps. (See the reviews there.) I found that I
was able to get past the fatal error by going to the Table of Contents and
clicking on the first page of text.

Surely, Amazon is going to fix this soon. I'm surprised that they seem to do
no testing at all of their product on even the most common devices.

~~~
rikroots
If the eBook is broken on Kindle, then it'll be up to the publisher (Riverhead
Books) to fix it, not Amazon.

Though as the bookseller Amazon should (in theory) offer refunds to people who
bought the defective eBook?

------
mitchtbaum
I've heard life on the internet called an acid trip..

[https://www.google.com/search?q=brown+acid](https://www.google.com/search?q=brown+acid)

..and if you run into a Himalayan guy with a funny focus on first letters, and
vaguely a discreetly stored "Pinkadellic" something or another, who eyes a
specific divot, hand-to-hand, say whatsup.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=ymmv](https://www.google.com/search?q=ymmv)

,NAMASTE;

------
Der_Einzige
My github name is "Hellisotherpeople" which ideally would be lengthened as
"Hell is other peoples code". Yet, I like the alternative variation in the
title of the article

------
wruza
How come that our circa 35 group of guys text without these emoji, ellipsis,
stop/nostop things, and yet we still understand each other perfectly?

~~~
CharlesW
TFA suggests "how [you] talk online is determined by [your] linguistic
community, which in turn is largely determined by where [you] were when [you]
first encountered social media".

So, I'd guess you and your group were online relatively early, and the places
where you did that probably had a relatively straightforward, text-only
communications culture.

It's likely that people in that group code-switch and use newer tools and
embellishments in other places where they communicate.

