Reflection on Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch

               This is a really cool book for the way that it analyzes things that we all do without realizing we do them. Because Internet explains the ways in which the internet has changed our communication, whether through the introduction of emojis as gestures, meme culture, or instant messaging. One of the most important themes of the book is that language is always changing and that the internet and instant messaging technology have given us for the first time to write informally, the same way that most people talk.

               There are really cool and weird facts in this book, like the patterns that you can find in a keysmash, AKA “asdfhasdkhfa,” that show that people usually start with “A” and have their fingers in the standard typing position. I also learned that young women are a powerful source of language disruption. They tend to invent tons of new words and McCulloch tells us that while men tend to learn language as boys from their mothers, women tend to learn it as girls from their peers as well. I also learned that apparently emojis and anime figures from Japan tend to have bigger eyes where as emoticons and cartoons from the United States tend to have bigger mouths because apparently Eastern cultures associate emotions more with eyes where as Western cultures do that more with the mouth. I also learned that “emoji” is a Japanese word coming from the combinations of the words “picture” and “character in Japanese. Also, there was an interesting transition when chat services stopped showing if someone was online or not and started showing if they had read the message or not, illustrating the change to a society where everyone always had their phone on them. It is from 2005, when Blackberry introduced the “read” indicator to 2011, when it went mainstream with Apple. Another interesting fact is that when Reddit banned subreddits that participated in high amounts of hate speech, the same users who had participated in those subreddits reduced their own hate speech by 80%. McCulloch points out that users tend to comment in sync with those who comment before them, so banning forums designed around hate and anger reduced the amount that users sent messages in that emotional state.

               The book concludes by reminding us that the English language is constantly changing, so we shouldn’t be surprised if we become the crotchety old folks who today get upset when you say “no problem.” But hopefully we will not be so upset about it if we learn about the fact that changes that will happen beforehand (by reading this book). McCulloch writes that “The changeability of language is its strength: if children had to copy exactly how their parents spoke in order for language to be transmitted, language would be brittle and fragile. It would be losable, the way that ancient techniques for art or architecture can be lost. But because we remake language at every generation, because we learn it from our peers, not just our elders, because we can make ourselves understood even though we all speak subtly different personal varieties, language is flexible and strong.”