Is the language of internet gonks actually helpful?

[The Mollusk]

The 'hard no' / how can you be so stupid? / it's only the internet oh noes replies (as ably demonstrated by Mister Six and The Mollusk in this thread) are also a bit fascinating. Although I am not sure if Mollusk is being serious or not in this quoted one.

Not trying to cause a fight here or anything like that but in some places they would generate a 'I bet you're fun at parties' or 'would you say that in real life'.

I would have thought bemoaning the apparent degradation of a language which is constantly evolving would more likely warrant the "I bet you're fun at parties" response. But maybe that's because of the company I keep. I find this stuff interesting at least and amusing at best. Some of the stuff like "bussin" and "no cap" that came about recently, I have no idea of the etymology, I don't care to find out, I just think it's great. Seeing it appropriated as Tears For Fears lyrics in this meme was hilarious to me.

I just find this pearl clutching over the preciousness of things which simply mustn't be changed to be a classic sign of losing touch with younger generations and thinking they're stupid and don't know what they're on about, when it's very apparent this isn't the case. There has never been a broader understanding of the meta-ness and irony of constantly destroying something until it no longer resembles the original thing whilst retaining an inherent understanding of why those things existed in the first place. Language, like everything else, reflects the precise time in which we exist. If it didn't change it would be shit. The meanings remain the same, almost all of the old stuff still exists, so I don't see what the problem is.

[Brundle-Fly]

Quite a lot of these are things that were funny a few times, but are badly overused.

Not funny words, fine words in fact, but seem a bit overused at the moment to the point you can play CaB bingo whenever there is a discussion:

'cognitive dissonance', 'grifter', 'emboldened', 'bad faith', 'milquetoast', 'melt', 'pearl-clutching', but 'beige', 'straw man' and 'classic whataboutery' seemed to have gone out of fashion of late.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

people on twitter say "discourse" too much when the likes of "talk" or "chat" would suffice i reckon

it's like that bit in the simpsons when the writer says that proactive and paradigm are words dumb people use to sound clever

[H-O-W-L]

I just find this pearl clutching over the preciousness of things which simply mustn't be changed to be a classic sign of losing touch with younger generations and thinking they're stupid and don't know what they're on about,

I'm part of the generation that talks like this and I think it's fucking stupid and actively destructive toward personal development and growth and encourages a negative kind of group thinking that leads to miscommunication and damaged personal relationships. By talking in platitudes and well-known phrases we end up becoming more distant and losing the meaning of what we're about.

This has been a problem since time immemorial really but it's never more present than the social media age, a lot of which is constrained to Twitter, with its bollocks character limits literally and malevolently designed to engender this kind of barrier-building shortform soundbyte bullshit, literal tabloid newspaper engineering designed to divide and profiteer. It's absolutely sinister and if you don't think it's the case then I genuinely advise you take time to self-analyze social media and the trends which it ferries people through in order to encourage certain, divisive manners of thinking.

And I don't even mean a right-wing bias especially, it just exists purely to divide you along some form of line. It will find your sacred cow and lock you in the stable with it. It is an actual, real problem for my generation -- several of us are fucked up and stupid (myself included, being both neurodivergent and socially inept and poisoned by this shit) and can't communicate physically outside of these soundbytes sometimes and it's a result of being literally programmed by years of beardy-white-man media backed by monstrous, faceless suits that wanted to encourage division in the lower class and repetition of their mistakes in the middle and upper classes in order to secure their money and power.

You can't keep people illiterate anymore, so you just divide the language and spin it into a thousand appendices so that ultimately we end up speaking the same language and meaning none of the same things, fostering nothing but bitterness and isolation and hatred and dependence on short-form media and consumer gratification that exists not to nourish the consumer, but merely to keep them hooked. Like a nineties kids drama drug dealer, the first hit's free. But the rest they'll make you pay for in fire and brimstone and a hell of a lot of tears.

It ain't evolution like we know it. It's devolution and it is intentional. Memes are a new form of collar and chain etc etc.

Please proceed to tell me how I'm some kind of outlier who's wiser than my years or whatever. I've heard it all before and all I can say is I'm fucking sick of being told what young people think by old people.

[Cuellar]

IANAL

[Brundle-Fly]

I'm part of the generation that talks like this and I think it's fucking stupid and actively destructive toward personal development and growth and encourages a negative kind of group thinking that leads to miscommunication and damaged personal relationships. By talking in platitudes and well-known phrases we end up becoming more distant and losing the meaning of what we're about.

This has been a problem since time immemorial really but it's never more present than the social media age, a lot of which is constrained to Twitter, with its bollocks character limits literally and malevolently designed to engender this kind of barrier-building shortform soundbyte bullshit, literal tabloid newspaper engineering designed to divide and profiteer. It's absolutely sinister and if you don't think it's the case then I genuinely advise you take time to self-analyze social media and the trends which it ferries people through in order to encourage certain, divisive manners of thinking.

And I don't even mean a right-wing bias especially, it just exists purely to divide you along some form of line. It will find your sacred cow and lock you in the stable with it. It is an actual, real problem for my generation -- several of us are fucked up and stupid (myself included, being both neurodivergent and socially inept and poisoned by this shit) and can't communicate physically outside of these soundbytes sometimes and it's a result of being literally programmed by years of beardy-white-man media backed by monstrous, faceless suits that wanted to encourage division in the lower class and repetition of their mistakes in the middle and upper classes in order to secure their money and power.

You can't keep people illiterate anymore, so you just divide the language and spin it into a thousand appendices so that ultimately we end up speaking the same language and meaning none of the same things, fostering nothing but bitterness and isolation and hatred and dependence on short-form media and consumer gratification that exists not to nourish the consumer, but merely to keep them hooked. Like a nineties kids drama drug dealer, the first hit's free. But the rest they'll make you pay for in fire and brimstone and a hell of a lot of tears.

It ain't evolution like we know it. It's devolution and it is intentional. Memes are a new form of collar and chain etc etc.

Please proceed to tell me how I'm some kind of outlier who's wiser than my years or whatever. I've heard it all before and all I can say is I'm fucking sick of being told what young people think by old people.

If it's any consolation, speaking as an old person, I only wish I could be as eloquent as you.

[Pink Gregory]

These are pretty much all Redditisms and that site and its arsehole upvote system have been disastrous for global communication much like Facebook has.

Reddit reminds me of a games forum that I used to post on when I was 16 (that incidentally became a very receptive site for those G*G* types) and the idea of anyone continuing to communicate like that does turn my stomach.

It's like a house style.  Generic white urban american or something like that.  I associate it with the wholesale adoption of 'Y'all'.  Can't stand the cunts.

It feels like someone who quotes films too much but that's their entire language and it'a far past the point of being cute or endearing.

In addition I'm assuming that the popularisation of 'autistic' as an insult would - while probably originating ultimately from cunt's hive 4chan - have found a lot of fertile ground on Reddit.  Another crime.

[Kankurette]

I HATE it when Brits say 'y'all'. You're not Texan. Shut up. I saw a video of John Terry saying it and it sounded ridiculous in his Essex accent.

Can't stand these pantaloons lads march round in these days. So terribly serious! Wither the knee breeches? Wither the foppish mincing? You can take that beaver hat off when you talk to me too, you syphillis-tier Beau Brummell cunt.

La, Bernice, what a cad that Napoleon is! He's #cancelled

[finnquark]

that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened because 'everybody was confused dot com'.

In all seriousness, a 17 year old made this suggestion in a lesson last year.

'So, X, after 4 hours of work on the topic and having read the homework chapter, how would you explain the organisation of the Missile Crisis?'

'I guess... I mean everyone was just confused dot com weren't they?'

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I just find this pearl clutching over the preciousness of things which simply mustn't be changed to be a classic sign of losing touch with younger generations and thinking they're stupid and don't know what they're on about, when it's very apparent this isn't the case.

The people who use this talk are even older than me! They're fossils. Its not really language issue here so much its the repetition of idioms and their application to absolutely everything.

Mocking the lolrandom!!! talk of kids is different more difficult when its people over thirty doing the mocking. We all did ten years ago or more but most of that stuff I think was a product of kids trying to translate the way kids talk into text when they were the first generation of "digital natives" or whatever the proper term for that is.

If anything we're seeing the slowing of changes of language, homogenisation and the end of real generational differences in favour of one big cultural blanket, one that talks like Whedon/TVTropes/MCU. I like HOWLs post.

I HATE it when Brits say 'y'all'

I strongly dislike "folks" as an inclusive term by middle class people people from London and the south (seems to be specifically these, don't hear many Welsh or northerners use it) when its use as an inclusive nod is so specifically tied the South of the USA. You're not signalling anything good swapping "people" for "folks" with "disabled folks" or "poor folks" unless you're talking to a room of posthumanists who don't want their lines of flight disrupted.
 
No wonder folx is the joke because English people saying "folks" because they read it online is condescending as hell. Poor folks. Why not poor folk instead? Because adopting more working class or provincial language from your own nation doesn't have the exoticism and excitement than adopting the same from working class people with a different skin tone half a world away?

[TrenterPercenter]

I'm part of the generation that talks like this and I think it's fucking stupid and actively destructive toward personal development and growth and encourages a negative kind of group thinking that leads to miscommunication and damaged personal relationships. By talking in platitudes and well-known phrases we end up becoming more distant and losing the meaning of what we're about.

This has been a problem since time immemorial really but it's never more present than the social media age, a lot of which is constrained to Twitter, with its bollocks character limits literally and malevolently designed to engender this kind of barrier-building shortform soundbyte bullshit, literal tabloid newspaper engineering designed to divide and profiteer. It's absolutely sinister and if you don't think it's the case then I genuinely advise you take time to self-analyze social media and the trends which it ferries people through in order to encourage certain, divisive manners of thinking.

And I don't even mean a right-wing bias especially, it just exists purely to divide you along some form of line. It will find your sacred cow and lock you in the stable with it. It is an actual, real problem for my generation -- several of us are fucked up and stupid (myself included, being both neurodivergent and socially inept and poisoned by this shit) and can't communicate physically outside of these soundbytes sometimes and it's a result of being literally programmed by years of beardy-white-man media backed by monstrous, faceless suits that wanted to encourage division in the lower class and repetition of their mistakes in the middle and upper classes in order to secure their money and power.

You can't keep people illiterate anymore, so you just divide the language and spin it into a thousand appendices so that ultimately we end up speaking the same language and meaning none of the same things, fostering nothing but bitterness and isolation and hatred and dependence on short-form media and consumer gratification that exists not to nourish the consumer, but merely to keep them hooked. Like a nineties kids drama drug dealer, the first hit's free. But the rest they'll make you pay for in fire and brimstone and a hell of a lot of tears.

It ain't evolution like we know it. It's devolution and it is intentional. Memes are a new form of collar and chain etc etc.

Please proceed to tell me how I'm some kind of outlier who's wiser than my years or whatever. I've heard it all before and all I can say is I'm fucking sick of being told what young people think by old people.

Great post.

[The Mollusk]

Mm soz HOWL and VGF2000 I think I have too much of a flimsy absurdist/nihilist view of the world to ever give that much thought to this or any other situation really. Most of the time I can't be arsed and just try to enjoy the ride if it doesn't seem to be doing any harm to me or the people around me. That probably sucks. I am at least extremely eco conscious in my actions and a strong empath so fuck it, balance is probably fine.

Also have to keep adding the disclaimer that I'm tweaked as fuck from steroid insomnia and completely beleaguered with last minute stuff for my wedding reception this weekend so my opinions might come across even more fucked than they usually do. Soz.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I do feel bad about having mocked "scene" talk back when that was a thing since it was the genuine humour of teenage girls, but I think what's called gonk language in this thread is different. Maybe wonk language would be more appropriate

Oh I typed "was a thing" I've been infected, kill me before I turn I'm already dead

[Brundle-Fly]

Americanisms also subtly creep up on you. Looking out the window last night, I commented, "We so need this rain." rather than "We really need this rain."  I never would've said it like that ten years ago. It's quite insidious.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

There's probably a lot of class issues (I hate the Americanism of 'classism!' its clearly not like racism or sexism argh Steptoe and Son isnt Love Thy Neighbour is it) at play in the fact that I use slang I've picked up from Achewood, Simpsons and reading/listening to hundreds of hours of interviews with American punks and theorists but more popular Americanisms uniformly sound like Live Love Laugh to my ears. yet no problem if the group of people are cool and the music swings or bangs or gos. but it better not slap

questions of taste and all that.

[Pink Gregory]

Americanisms also subtly creep up on you. Looking out the window last night, I commented, "We so need this rain." rather than "We really need this rain."  I never would've said it like that ten years ago. It's quite insidious.

Can't be dealing with the NHS posters that talk about 'blood in your pee'.  Or any reference to  'poop'.  We've got so many foibles but the queasiness around the body that the Americans have is something else entirely.

It's poos and wees, willies and fannies, blood, pus, bile, miasma and the effing consumption!

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Did you know in America they have a dozen words for cheeseburger but no word for Showaddywaddy

[pcsjwgm]

"iS tHe lAnGuAgE oF InTeRnEt gOnKs AcTuAlLy HeLpFuL?" - literally you rn.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

not me laughing at some of the posts in this thread

[Video Game Fan 2000]

its the appropriation for me

[TrenterPercenter]

Mm soz HOWL and VGF2000 I think I have too much of a flimsy absurdist/nihilist view of the world to ever give that much thought to this or any other situation really. Most of the time I can't be arsed and just try to enjoy the ride if it doesn't seem to be doing any harm to me or the people around me. That probably sucks. I am at least extremely eco conscious in my actions and a strong empath so fuck it, balance is probably fine.

I don't think your post is "fucked" it is just a bit of a tiring take that always gets thrown out when anything modern is critiqued.  Not everything that happens in modern culture is progressive, it can't be and why should it be? Reducing things down just old people don't understand, whilst is going to be true in some cases isn't true in all cases.  I have these arguments with people all the time around music generally; I lived, as a young person through the demise of hip hop, voiced this at the time as a young person but now due being old I can't have that opinion.  Things are paradoxically "subjective" but criticisms for some reason are not.

Convincing arguments are ones that address the criticisms of something, everybody has a moan and its up to everyone really to be honest about where reasonable criticism ends and personal bias begins, but it's not a one way street.  Neutrality that critiques only one way isn't the nihilist statement some people think it is, it's basically just supporting the status quo. 

Arguments and critiques are also essential for progress, but it is the quality of these arguments that should be considered and just calling someones sensitivity to an issue into question doesn't stand up too much.  It actually rather underlines what HOWL is saying in their post that actual discussion and arguments have been replaced and dressed up with character based insults which is just a version of DESTROY culture.

"Can discuss if there are problems with modern culture?"
"No because you are old, just get a life dude!"

[TrenterPercenter]

I'd also add being dyslexic the over preoccupation with correct grammar and prose is exclusionary, as is using terms and internet abbreviations as if everyone knows or understands what you are going on about. 

Personally I think bothering to help whoever you are talking to understand what you are saying should be the main consideration when communicating with someone (I know I'm terrible at this sometimes but that is dyslexia and very rarely trying to put wit before comprehension).  There are elements of this with internet language where if you don't get it then that says something about you bro with just screams insecurity and inner bitterness imo.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

some syphilitic old dead german said we won't get rid of god if can't we can't get rid of grammar, he didnt mean it that way but i think dyslexics can appropriate that for our internet activities

[Brundle-Fly]

I don't think your post is "fucked" it is just a bit of a tiring take that always gets thrown out when anything modern is critiqued.  Not everything that happens in modern culture is progressive, it can't be and why should it be? Reducing things down just old people don't understand, whilst is going to be true in some cases isn't true in all cases.  I have these arguments with people all the time around music generally; I lived, as a young person through the demise of hip hop, voiced this at the time as a young person but now due being old I can't have that opinion.  Things are paradoxically "subjective" but criticisms for some reason are not.

Convincing arguments are ones that address the criticisms of something, everybody has a moan and its up to everyone really to be honest about where reasonable criticism ends and personal bias begins, but it's not a one way street.  Neutrality that critiques only one way isn't the nihilist statement some people think it is, it's basically just supporting the status quo. 

Arguments and critiques are also essential for progress, but it is the quality of these arguments that should be considered and just calling someones sensitivity to an issue into question doesn't stand up too much.  It actually rather underlines what HOWL is saying in their post that actual discussion and arguments have been replaced and dressed up with character based insults which is just a version of DESTROY culture.

"Can discuss if there are problems with modern culture?"
"No because you are old, just get a life dude!"

^^^ Thank you. 

[Video Game Fan 2000]

.  There are elements of this with internet language where if you don't get it then that says something about you bro with just screams insecurity and inner bitterness imo.

i think the difference is that the "random" or "shitpost" humour of younger people is meant to include, where if you get the reference and understand the way of speaking you're signalling your willingness to understand or be cool with people other than yourself. i don't feel excluded by this sort of stuff, like the "bussing" memes that Mollusk posted that I've seen before and I'm not sure I understand them, but i think i did feel excluded by similar things in my mid-20s when i was insecure about now being an adult and being in situations where where I was an "old" person at a show or in a seminar. now i'm a lot older  its no big deal if young people have idioms that aren't meant for me. its funny when i dont get stuff and also funny when younger people dont get jokes or references i think are hip and cool and contemporary

whereas the bad kind of internet language this thread is now about is definitely exclusive and more about stuff where someone could mark themselves out as someone who "doesn't get it" and therefore a chud or boomer or libtard depending on the group. stuff that has the form of an in joke, but isn't meant to be funny rather to make out who does and doesnt get it. the endless rote repetition of the same jokes beyond any kind of humour or even ironic value has to count as this "let's go brandon" "feral hogs" "corncob" oh fuck off

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i thought i was going to go spare about ten years ago, pre-Trump pre-Brexit and pre-Q, when any criticism of social media and Facebook in particular was met with "you just think that because you're old, generational change is always good" arguments

then progressivism and presentism had a fucking eraserhead bady uWu

[canadagoose]

LOL NO lolz! For the win! All your base are belong to us! Purple monkey dishwasher spork penguin of DOOM!

This was me in 2001. To be fair, I was 12 at the time.

[canadagoose]

people on twitter say "discourse" too much when the likes of "talk" or "chat" would suffice i reckon

it's like that bit in the simpsons when the writer says that proactive and paradigm are words dumb people use to sound clever

See also certain internet leftists and "dialectic". I find the whole Marxist-Leninist jargon pretty cringey in general. Nobody talks about "Hitlerism" except that bunch, and "proletarian class consciousness through dialectics" is the most opaque way of explaining that particular concept, but they always use those words. In-group membership signifiers, or something.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

See also certain internet leftists and "dialectic". I find the whole Marxist-Leninist jargon pretty cringey in general. Nobody talks about "Hitlerism" except that bunch, and "proletarian class consciousness through dialectics" is the most opaque way of explaining that particular concept, but they always use those words. In-group membership signifiers, or something.

"Praxis"

[Video Game Fan 2000]

ok lets no go crazy now