24 | New Scientist | 27 July 2019
M
Y TEXTING style is
pretty salty. I curse
a lot, generally in
a friendly way, but my phone’s
autocomplete functionality is
really cramping my style. No,
I didn’t mean “duck”. I wasn’t
typing “fick”, “five”, “dock” or
(when my poor algorithm gets
desperate) “Fuchs”. You know
what I wanted to say, dear reader,
and it’s one of the most commonly
spoken words in English. And
yet I have to correct my phone’s
autocorrection to write it.
I’m not the only one with this
problem. Linguist Gretchen
McCulloch, whose new book
Because Internet is a fascinating
exploration of how the internet
is changing our language, points
out that spellcheckers have quite
literally divided nations.
Although the spellings
“accessorize” and “accessorise”
are both technically correct
in British English, localized
spellcheck programs had to settle
on one, and so programmers
chose the “ise” ending. Writing
this in the US, I’m getting an angry
red line under “accessorise”
because my localized spellchecker
was programmed to prefer “ize”.
As a result, says McCulloch, people
in the UK are now convinced there
is only one proper spelling of any
of a number of words that end
in “ise”, even though that’s not
grammatically true.
McCulloch has tracked the
evolution of internet language
across generations, starting with
“Old Internet People” who came
of age in 1980s forums like Usenet,
and ending with “Post-Internet
People” whose parents had
Facebook before they did. Despite
everything that has changed,
one thing has remained steady:
“lol”, which started as all-caps LOL
(laughing out loud) in 1980s chat
forums, and has now taken onso many subtleties that several
linguists have subjected it to study.
Ultimately what they found
was that young internet users
add “lol” to sentences where they
want to indicate a second layer
of meaning. Sometimes it signals
sarcasm (studying is fun lol), but
at other times it is meant to soften
what could seem like an insult
(don’t be a git lol) or for half-
serious flirting (u r cute lol). “Lol”
has come to stand in for what
McCulloch calls “nervous laughter,
social laughter, and polite smiles”.
The thicket of meaning that has
grown up around “lol” is nothing
compared with the complexity ofemoji. What does the exploding
head emoji mean? How about the
X-eye face? Is it dead or drunk or
both? And let’s not even start on
the eggplant, the upside-down
red triangle and clapping hands in
between every word in a sentence.
Chinese artist Xu Bing wrote
an entire novel in emoji and
international symbols called
Book from the Ground, which he
claimed anyone can understand.
Meanwhile, cultural critics worry
that emoji limit our ability to
express emotion by forcing us
to use symbols of consumer
capitalism (high-heeled shoes,
men in suits, purses, cocktail
glasses) to say how we feel. Even
if you don’t buy that, there’s nodenying that emoji paralysis – that
uncertain feeling as you hover
between picking the super smiley
face and the semi-smiley face – is
real. Emoji sometimes trap us into
expressing feelings we aren’t sure
we have.
These issues are heightened
on social apps like TikTok, which
allows users to shoot 15 seconds
of video and set it to pop music.
With its parent company claiming
a billion users, TikTok is one of
the world’s fastest growing social
media fads among people under- TikTokers communicate
entirely by sharing videos, usually
with music as a major component.
For people without TikTok,
though, there’s an old-fashioned
version of the same thing. Gifs,
or short animations on loop, have
become the flashier version of
emoji everywhere from Slack to
instant messaging apps. Some
Twitter threads consist entirely of
people posting gifs at each other.
One firm, Giphy, provides most of
the gifs that pop up helpfully when
you’re searching for the perfect
vid to express your emotions.
Although many of us use Giphy
every day, few realize what its
ultimate goal is. Eventually it
wants to monetize gifs, and the
easiest way to do it will be to
supply branded ones. So the next
time you are texting your friends
and you search for an animation
of Iron Man raising his eyebrows
and expressing your dubious
feelings, you may wind up
inserting an ad for Disney’s Marvel
Studios into what you thought was
just a funny exchange with a pal.
So far, no firm has been able
to turn chat into an advertising
platform like Facebook, but Giphy
is hoping to. Now your emotions
won’t just be turned into little
smiling faces, or wacky videos
set to music. They will be branded
and monetized. ❚
This column will appear
monthly. Up next week:
James Wong“ What does the
exploding head
emoji mean? And
let’s not even start
on the upside-down
red triangle”You’ve been monetized lol We are free to express our emotions
online using animations and wacky videos set to music, but there
are costs ahead, writes Annalee NewitzThis changes everything
What I’m reading
Mike Chen’s moving
and action-packed
novel Here and Now
and Then, about a
stranded time traveller.What I’m watching
I just saw the pilot of the
new Batwoman TV show
at San Diego Comic-Con
and it was delightful.What I’m
working on
Making my first
TikTok video.Annalee’s week
Annalee Newitz is a science
journalist and author. Her
novel Autonomous won
the Lambda Literary Award
and she is the co-host
of the Hugo-nominated
podcast Our Opinions Are
Correct. You can follow her
@annaleen and her website
is techsploitation.comViews Columnist