68 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
If it strikes my fancy, I pass it down the editorial food chain. If after
passing through all the editor’s [sic] hands it hasn’t been given the
ax, I assume it’s interesting and useful enough to get a shot in the
magazine. I fancy myself a sort of slang impresario. If a term
passes the editorial audition, I push it out onto the stage provided
by the magazine. If it bombs, it gets the hook and its career is
finished... If it’s a big success, it ends up making the rounds of
email boxes, water coolers, and office cubicles, from Silicon Valley
to Silicon Alley^9 and beyond. The words that made it into the
column and this book are just a fraction of the terms submitted.And he lists some of what he calls the ‘scarier’ submissions, by way
of illustration:e-gasm,javangelist,pornetgraphy, andWebference.
These he does not include. But there is no way of knowing, of
course, whether they will eventually enter the Internet lexicon
through some other door, or whether they will be included in some
other word-book edited by someone with different linguistic tastes.
Internet situations display a surprisingly large number of guide-
lines, principles, rules, and regulations relating to the way people
should linguistically behave once they engage in computer-
mediated communication. These are both prescriptive and pro-
scriptive in character – helpful and informative insofar as they re-
flect real usage preferences, but needing to be viewed with caution
insofar as they represent a partial or prejudiced view of the online
userworld. Prejudices are widespread, in fact. Those who espouse
a particular technology, or a particular chatgroup or virtual world,
may scorn the terms belonging to another. And all hackers scorn
non-hackers:^10
As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold
their culture together – it helps hackers recognize each other’s
places in the community and expresses shared values and
experiences. Also as usual,notknowing the slang (or using it
inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst
of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even asuit.(^9) ‘An area of lower Manhattan that has a high concentration of computer and multimedia
10 firms. [entry from the dictionary]’.
Introduction to theJargon File(see fn.7).