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A review by sara_shocks
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
4.0
4/5 stars
This was so full of facts and thoughtful analyses that gave me new views and ideas to ponder in relation to the internet! McCulloch has an infectious sense of delight and wonder for the internet and how people communicate on it/through it. I'm feeling unashamed of emoji use now! More emoji for all! She has some really great metaphors and similes for discussing internet phenomena that I never would have considered.
Not quite a 5/5 for me because I found the endnote style a little frustrating (how to know if something discussed has an endnote without pausing to flip to the endnotes to check!), and because I find her view of the internet to be a little rosy. She does touch on, say, toxic subreddits briefly, but generally there's not much engagement with how the deviant population uses internet language or how misinformation is spread; those topics are somewhat outside her scope but ultimately tied (the medium is the message).
If you enjoy learning about linguistics and want to see that framework applied to Internet language, run, don't walk.
This was so full of facts and thoughtful analyses that gave me new views and ideas to ponder in relation to the internet! McCulloch has an infectious sense of delight and wonder for the internet and how people communicate on it/through it. I'm feeling unashamed of emoji use now! More emoji for all! She has some really great metaphors and similes for discussing internet phenomena that I never would have considered.
Not quite a 5/5 for me because I found the endnote style a little frustrating (how to know if something discussed has an endnote without pausing to flip to the endnotes to check!), and because I find her view of the internet to be a little rosy. She does touch on, say, toxic subreddits briefly, but generally there's not much engagement with how the deviant population uses internet language or how misinformation is spread; those topics are somewhat outside her scope but ultimately tied (the medium is the message).
If you enjoy learning about linguistics and want to see that framework applied to Internet language, run, don't walk.