%run _help_reading.py
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv(
'https://github.com/MrGeislinger/victorsothervector/raw/main/'
'data/reading/all_reading-clean.csv'
)
book_name = """Because Internet"""
one_title = one_title_data(df, book_name)
one_title_summary = get_summary_by_day(one_title)
generate_plot(one_title_summary, book_name);
Overview
Because Internet is for anyone who’s ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It’s the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that’s a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are. Language is humanity’s most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What’s more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer “LOL” or “lol,” why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.
Reminder that language continues to evolve
I’ve been listening to Gretchen McCullough’s (and Lauren Gawne’s) Lingthusiasm podcast for years but I’ve been meaning to read Because Internet for years! I’ve come across Gretchen’s work to a general audience over & over again so it was great to finally see their style in book form!
In short, the book does a great job in being approachable to how language usage evolved on the internet due to it’s technical limitations and challenges as well as the community who uses it. It’s great to see parallels made between less modern analogues of similar behavior. It emphasizes that the internet is new and allows novel forms of communication but it’s still just a bunch of humans communicating with each other.
A good reminder that the internet is a ‘real place’