A review by ajb24
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch

4.0

A lot of the ideas discussed in the book are very interesting and the book provided academic insight/intellectual analysis of internet culture in a way that was intriguing/thought-provoking. I didn't give this 5 stars because there's just something about it that feels overly casual to me? I think I would have liked it more if there were visible citations instead of the "Notes" section where key phrases are bolded. It's a frustrating way to fact-check and leads me to just having to accept the narrative McCulloch puts forward. The book has more anecdotal evidence than a typical "research" book, so perhaps that's why she chose this reference format, but there's also quite a bit of data taken from academic papers. The way this is written without citations made me question her logic at times because there was no easy way for me to double-check, say, the results/methods of a linguistic survey that she uses to make her argument. I found that she was good at explaining the possible limitations of the data she was sourcing, but overall I felt it was a bit too narrative-y and doesn't lend itself to critical analysis.