Because Internet

by Gretchen McCulloch

  “lit” or “bae” . . . “on fleek”: Renée Blake and Mia Matthias. 2015. “‘Black Twitter’: AAE Lexical Innovation, Appropriation, and Change in Computer-Mediated Discourse.” Presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 44, October 22–25, 2015, Toronto.

  columbusing: CollegeHumor. July 7, 2014. “Columbusing: Discovering Things for White People.” YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWeFHddWL1Y. Rebecca Hotchen. October 12, 2015. “Update: What Happened to ‘Columbusing’?” Oxford Dictionaries blog. blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/10/columbusing-update/.

  participants in the study commented: David Palfreyman and Muhamed Al Khalil. 2007. “‘A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use’: Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging.” In Brenda Danet and Susan C. Herring, eds., The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford University Press. pp. 43–64.

  Egyptian Twitter users: Zoë Kosoff. 2014. “Code-Switching in Egyptian Arabic: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Twitter.” Al-‘Arabiyya: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic 47. Georgetown University Press. pp. 83–99.

  Our @mentions: Jacob Eisenstein. 2018. “Identifying Regional Dialects in Online Social Media.” In Charles Boberg, John Nerbonne, and Dominic Watt, eds., The Handbook of Dialectology. John Wiley & Sons. Kelly Servick. February 15, 2015. “Are yinz frfr? What Your Twitter Dialect Says about Where You Live.” Science. news.sciencemag.org/social-sciences/2015/02/are-yinz-frfr-what-your-twitter-dialect-says-about-where-you-live. Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein. 2015. “Audience Modulated Variation in Online Social Media.” American Speech 90(2). pp. 187–213.

  The inverse was less common: Dong-Phuong Nguyen, Rudolf Berend Trieschnigg, and Leonie Cornips. 2015. “Audience and the Use of Minority Languages on Twitter.” Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. AAAI Press. pp. 666–669.

  informal language in Indonesian: Claudia Brugman and Thomas Conners. 2016. “Comparative Study of Register Specific Properties of Indonesian SMS and Twitter: Implications for NLP.” Presented at the 20th International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics, July 14–16, 2016, Melbourne, Australia. Claudia Brugman and Thomas Conners. 2017. “Querying the Spoken/Written Register Continuum through Indonesian Electronic Communications.” Presented at the 21st International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian Linguistics, May 4–6, 2017, Langkawi, Malaysia. Moti Lieberman. January 26, 2016. “Writing in Texts vs. Twitter.” The Ling Space blog. thelingspace.tumblr.com/post/138053815679/writing-in-texts-vs-twitter.

  favors a few elite languages and dialects: François Grosjean. 2010. Bilingual. Harvard University Press.

  One method of bridging: Su Lin Blodgett, Lisa Green, and Brendan O’Connor. 2016. “Demographic Dialectal Variation in Social Media: A Case Study of African-American English.” Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. pp. 1119–1130. arxiv.org/pdf/1608.08868v1.pdf.

  “15-year-old users”: Ivan Smirnov. 2017. “The Digital Flynn Effect: Complexity of Posts on Social Media Increases over Time.” Presented at the International Conference on Social Informatics, September 13–15, 2017, Oxford, UK. arxiv.org/abs/1707.05755.

  textisms might interfere: Michelle Drouin and Claire Davis. 2009. “R u txting? Is the Use of Text Speak Hurting Your Literacy?” Journal of Literacy Research 41. Routledge. pp. 46–67.

  Several studies show that people: Jannis Androutsopoulos. 2011. “Language Change and Digital Media: A Review of Conceptions and Evidence.” In Nikolas Coupland and Tore Kristiansen, eds., Standard Languages and Language Standards in a Changing Europe. Novus Forlag. pp. 145–160. Christa Dürscheid, Franc Wagner, and Sarah Brommer. 2010. Wie Jugendliche schreiben: Schreibkompetenz und neue Medien. Walter de Gruyter.

  only 2.4 percent: Crispin Thurlow. 2006. “From Statistical Panic to Moral Panic: The Metadiscursive Construction and Popular Exaggeration of New Media Language in the Print Media.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(3). pp. 667–701.

  What the teens were doing: Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis. 2008. “Linguistic Ruin? LOL! Instant Messaging and Teen Language.” American Speech 83(1). pp. 3–34.

  A paper analyzing the effects: Tim McGee and Patricia Ericsson. 2002. “The Politics of the Program: MS WORD as the Invisible Grammarian.” Computers and Composition 19. Elsevier. pp. 453–470.

  I’m also not alone: Lauren Dugan. November 11, 2011. “Twitter Basics: Why 140-Characters, and How to Write More.” Adweek. www.adweek.com/digital/twitter-basics-why-140-characters-and-how-to-write-more/. Patrick Iber. October 19, 2016. “A Defense of Academic Twitter.” Inside Higher Ed. www.insidehighered.com/advice/2016/10/19/how-academics-can-use-twitter-most-effectively-essay.

  Chapter 3. Internet People

  In 1984, a researcher: Naomi S. Baron. 1984. “Computer-Mediated Communication as a Force in Language Change.” Visible Language 18(2). University of Cincinnati Press. pp. 118–141.

  “basically alienating and unfulfilling”: James E. Katz and Ronald E. Rice. 2008. “Syntopia: Access, Civic Involvement, and Social Interaction on the Net.” In Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite, eds., The Internet in Everyday Life. John Wiley & Sons.

  over a third of couples: John T. Cacioppo, Stephanie Cacioppo, Gian Gonzaga, Elizabeth L. Ogburn, and Tyler J. VanderWeele. 2013. “Marital Satisfaction and Break-ups Differ across On-Line and Off-Line Meeting Venues.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (25). pp. 10135–10140.

  15 percent of American adults: Aaron Smith. February 11, 2016. “15% of American Adults Have Used Online Dating Sites or Mobile Dating Apps.” Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/2016/02/11/15-percent-of-american-adults-have-used-online-dating-sites-or-mobile-dating-apps/.

  The first year that marriages: Michael J. Rosenfeld. September 18, 2017. “Marriage, Choice, and Couplehood in the Age of the Internet.” Sociological Science. www.sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-4/september/SocSci_v4_490to510.pdf.

  But a whole lot of people: Simon Kemp. January 30, 2018. “Digital in 2018: World’s Internet Users Pass the 4 Billion Mark.” We Are Social. wearesocial.com/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018.

  Linguists call this “the founder effect”: Salikoko S. Mufwene. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge University Press.

  Most families who immigrate: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. 2000. “Ancestry.” Chapter 9 of Census Atlas of the United States. www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/censusatlas/pdf/9_Ancestry.pdf.

  The distinctive accents: Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling. 2015. American English: Dialects and Variation, 3rd ed. Language and Society, vol. 25. John Wiley & Sons.

  The vowels of Raleigh: Robin Dodsworth and Mary Kohn. July 2012. “Urban Rejection of the Vernacular: The SVS Undone.” Language Variation and Change 24(2). pp. 221–245.

  Cockney has been replaced: Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox, and Eivind Torgersen. 2011. “Contact, the Feature Pool and the Speech Community: The Emergence of Multicultural London English.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2). pp. 151–196.

  writing yourself into existence: Jenny Sundén. 2003. Material Virtualities. Peter Lang.

  “some explanation”: DFWX and Guardian of Eden. 2006. About DFWX.com. DFWX: Dallas - Fort Worth Exchange. www.dfwx.com/about_us.htm.

  “us old Internet people need”: User DirigoDev. June 13, 2011. Reply to thread titled “Facebook Still Growing but Losing Users in Countries It Was First Established.” Webmaster World forum. www.webmasterworld.com/facebook/4325404.htm.

  “Looks like it’s really hitting”: Dave Delaney. May 15, 2018. twitter.com/davedelaney/status/996241627717959680.

  A website version of the Jargon File: Eric S. Raymond, ed. December 29, 2003. “Chapter 3. Revision History.” The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.4.7. catb.org/jargon/html/revision-history.html.

&
nbsp; The oldest version of the Jargon File: Steven Ehrbar (archivist). August 12, 1976. The Jargon File Text Archive: A large collection of historical versions of the Jargon File, version 1.0.0.01. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.0.0.01.dos.txt.

  Other terms in the file: Steven Ehrbar (archivist). (No date cited.) The Jargon File Text Archive: A large collection of historical versions of the Jargon File, versions 1.0.0.01 to 4.4.7. jargon-file.org/.

  between March and April 1977 . . . This version: Steven Ehrbar (archivist). March 11, 1977, and April 24, 1977. The Jargon File Text Archive: A large collection of historical versions of the Jargon File, versions 1.0.0.9 and 1.0.0.10. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.0.0.09.dos.txt and jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.0.0.10.dos.txt.

  a version in December 1977: Steven Ehrbar (archivist). December 29, 1977. The Jargon File Text Archive: A large collection of historical versions of the Jargon File, version 1.0.0.16. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.0.0.16.dos.txt.

  When the Jargon File resumed: Emoticons and “lol” first added in: Guy L. Steele and Eric S. Raymond, eds. June 12, 1990. The Jargon File, version 2.1.1. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-2.1.1.dos.txt. All caps as shouting first added in: Guy L. Steele and Eric S. Raymond, eds. December 15, 1990. The Jargon File, version 2.2.1. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-2.2.1.dos.txt.

  “these are not used at universities”: Guy L. Steele and Eric S. Raymond, eds. June 12, 1990. The Jargon File, version 2.1.1. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-2.1.1.dos.txt.

  “IMHO, ROTF, and TTFN”: Eric S. Raymond, ed. March 22, 1991. The Jargon File, version 2.8.1. jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-2.8.1.dos.txt.

  the acronym UTSL: Eric S. Raymond, ed. December 29, 2003. “UTSL.” The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.4.7. www.catb.org/jargon/html/U/UTSL.html.

  online role-playing games in Germany: Sonja Utz. 2000. “Social Information Processing in MUDs: The Development of Friendships in Virtual Worlds.” Journal of Online Behavior 1(1). psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-14046-001.

  “A friend of mine who went”: Wayne Pearson. 2002. “The Origin of LOL.” University of Calgary webpage. pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~crwth/LOL.html.

  The first known citation: Vince Periello, ed. May 8, 1989. International FidoNet Association Newsletter 6(19). www.textfiles.com/fidonet-on-the-internet/878889/fido0619.txt. John Brandon. November 7, 2008. “Opinion: FWIW—The Origins of ’Net Shorthand.” PCWorld. www.pcworld.com/article/153504/net_shorthand_origins.html.

  The first year that over half: Andrew Perrin and Maeve Duggan. June 26, 2015. “Americans’ Internet Access: 2000–2015.” Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/2015/06/26/americans-internet-access-2000-2015/.

  In 1995, a mere 3 percent: (No author cited.) October 16, 1995. “Americans Going Online . . . Explosive Growth, Uncertain Destinations.” Pew Research Center. www.people-press.org/1995/10/16/americans-going-online-explosive-growth-uncertain-destinations/.

  “What a difference a year makes”: Rob Spiegel. November 12, 1999. “When Did the Internet Become Mainstream?” Ecommerce Times. www.ecommercetimes.com/story/1731.html?wlc=1226697731.

  The dominant narrative: Marc Prenksy. 2001. “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” On the Horizon 9(5). pp. 1–6. Don Tapscott. 1998. Growing up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. McGraw-Hill.

  Even as this narrative was being proposed: Ruth Xiaoqing Guo, Teresa Dobson, and Stephen Petrina. 2008. “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: An Analysis of Age and ICT Competency in Teacher Education.” Journal of Educational Computing Research 38(3). pp. 235–254.

  “the academic equivalent of a ‘moral panic’”: Sue Bennett, Karl Maton, and Lisa Kervin. 2008. “The ‘Digital Natives’ Debate: A Critical Review of the Evidence.” British Journal of Educational Technology 39(5). pp. 775–786.

  An article reminiscing: Melissa McEwen. November 13, 2017. “The Teenage Girl’s Internet of the Early 2000s.” Medium. medium.com/@melissamcewen/the-teenage-girls-internet-of-the-early-2000s-ffa05702a9aa.

  virtual-pet websites: Melissa McEwen. May 14, 2016. “Petz: A Lost Community of Mostly Female Coders/Gamers.” Medium. medium.com/@melissamcewen/petz-a-lost-community-of-mostly-female-coders-gamers-2eb0e1a73f42.

  “a mix between Tamagotchi”: Nicole Carpenter. October 23, 2017. “‘Neopets’: Inside Look at Early 2000s Internet Girl Culture.” Rolling Stone. www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/neopets-a-look-into-early-2000s-girl-culture-w509885.

  There were waves: (No author cited.) October 7, 2017. “AOL Is Shutting Down Its Instant Messenger and 90s Kids Are Reminiscing.” The Irish Examiner. www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/technow/aol-is-shutting-down-its-instant-messenger-and-90s-kids-are-reminiscing-808938.html. Madeleine Buxton. October 6, 2017. “AIM Is Coming to an End & 90s Kids Everywhere Can’t Deal.” Refinery 29. www.refinery29.com/2017/10/175504/aol-instant-messenger-discontinued. Adrian Covert and Sam Biddle. May 16, 2011. “Remember When AOL Instant Messenger Was Our Facebook?” Gizmodo. gizmodo.com/5800437/remember-when-aol-instant-messenger-was-our-facebook.

  archivists scrambled: Olia and Dragan. (No date cited.) One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age. blog.geocities.institute/. (No author cited.) December 4, 2017. “GeoCities.” Archive Team. www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=GeoCities. Dan Fletcher. November 9, 2009. “Internet Atrocity! GeoCities’ Demise Erases Web History.” Time. content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1936645,00.html. Dan Grabham. November 26, 2009. “GeoCities Closes: Fond Memories of Free Sites and Terrible Web Design.” Techradar. www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/geocities-closes-fond-memories-of-free-sites-and-terrible-web-design-644763.

  When AIM shut down: Taylor Lorenz. March 1, 2017. twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/837032527219068928 [inactive].

  Similarly, a 2000 survey: Elisheva F. Gross. 2004. “Adolescent Internet Use: What We Expect, What Teens Report.” Applied Developmental Psychology 25. pp. 633–649.

  A study of myths: R. Kvavik, J. B. Caruso, and G. Morgan. 2004. ECAR Study of Students and Information Technology 2004: Convenience, Connection, and Control. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research. Sue Bennett, Karl Maton, and Lisa Kervin. 2008. “The ‘Digital Natives’ Debate: A Critical Review of the Evidence.” British Journal of Educational Technology 39(5). pp. 775–786.

  Later surveys: Anoush Margaryan, Allison Littlejohn, and Gabrielle Vojt. 2011. “Are Digital Natives a Myth or Reality? University Students’ Use of Digital Technologies.” Computers & Education 56(2). pp. 429–440. Gregor E. Kennedy, Terry S. Judd, Anna Churchward, Kathleen Gray, and Kerri-Lee Krause. 2008. “First Year Students’ Experiences with Technology: Are They Really Digital Natives?” Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 24(1). ASCILITE. pp. 108–122. Hannah Thinyane. 2010. “Are Digital Natives a World-Wide Phenomenon? An Investigation into South African First Year Students’ Use and Experience with Technology.” Computers & Education 55. pp. 406–414.

  A 2007 survey of internet users: Ellen Helsper and Rebecca Eynon. 2009. “Digital Natives: Where Is the Evidence?” British Educational Research Journal 36(3). pp. 1–18.

  In the years after 2007: Michelle Slatalla. June 7, 2007. “‘omg my mom joined facebook!!’” The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/fashion/07Cyber.html. Hadley Freeman. January 19, 2009. “Oh No! My Parents Have Joined Facebook.” The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jan/19/facebook-social-networking-parents.

  In 2017, Pew Research: (No author cited.) January 11, 2017. “Who Uses Social Media.” Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/chart/who-uses-social-media/.

  xkcd comic: Randall Munroe. August 24, 2009. “Tech Support Cheat Sheet.” xkcd. xkcd.com/627/.

  In 1995, Pew found: (No author cited.) December 16, 1996. “News Attracts Most Internet Users: Online Use.” Pew Research Center. www.people-press.org/1996/12/16/online-use/.

  email use remained saturated: Kristen Purcell. August 9, 2011. “Search and Email Still Top the List of Mos
t Popular Online Activities.” Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/2011/08/09/search-and-email-still-top-the-list-of-most-popular-online-activities/.

  As early as 2001: David Crystal. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press.

  “We should change ‘lol’”: ThatGuyPonna. September 9, 2015. “We should change ‘Lol’ to ‘Ne’ (Nose Exhale) because that’s all we really do when we see something funny online.” Reddit. www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/3ka70x/we_should_change_lol_to_ne_nose_exhale_because/.

  Old, Full, and Semi Internet People: In 1995, Pew reported that only 20 percent of American internet users had ever visited a website but that 53 percent sent or received email at least once a week. (For younger folks, this was in an era before “webmail” existed, when you would check your email by opening a specific email program, not by going to, say, the Gmail website.) (No author cited.) October 16, 1995. “Americans Going Online . . . Explosive Growth, Uncertain Destinations.” Pew Research Center. www.people-press.org/1995/10/16/americans-going-online-explosive-growth-uncertain-destinations/.

  But that number rose: Andrew Perrin and Maeve Duggan. June 26, 2015. “Americans’ Internet Access: 2000–2015.” Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/2015/06/26/americans-internet-access-2000-2015/.

  Pew also found: Aaron Smith. January 12, 2017. “Record Shares of Americans Now Own Smartphones, Have Home Broadband.” Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/12/evolution-of-technology/.

  They might only use: Gretchen McCulloch. February 6, 2017. twitter.com/GretchenAMcC/status/828809327540654083.

  West periodically documents: Jessamyn West. November 2, 2016. storify.com/jessamyn/highlights-from-drop-in-time [inactive].

  between 2015 and 2018: Monica Anderson, Andrew Perrin, and Jingjing Jiang. March 5, 2018. “11% of Americans Don’t Use the Internet. Who Are They?” Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/05/some-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/.