As part of the generation who define stages of our lives as pre- and post-Internet (email, instant messaging, mobile, Google, social media), it’s easy to imagine that the next shift in how we communicate linguistically will have a lot to do with the so-called post-Internet, post-truth era. Our awareness of native advertising (online ads customised to social media platforms), artificial intelligence and data mining has impacted trust levels in all forms of communication. In fact, digital and IRL subcultures are developing through ideas about the nature of ‘truth’ itself (see: Flat Earthers).
To better understand concepts that are unwieldy or intangible, we implement metaphors. As linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argued in their seminal 1980 text “Metaphors We Live By”: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” Evidence supporting this argument abounds. Take, for instance, the common associations between ‘happy’ and ‘up’, and ‘sad’ with ‘down’. In other words, most concepts with positive connotations are metaphorically described using ‘up’: ‘spirits rising’, ‘high morale’, ‘climbing the corporate ladder’, etc. Conversely, many negative concepts are metaphorically ‘down’: ‘feeling low’, ‘down in the dumps’, ‘sinking fast’.
Linguistic metaphors are almost always arbitrarily chosen over other ideas related to the same intangible concepts. ‘Happy’ could have been ‘expansive’, like a smile, for example, while ‘sad’ could have been ‘narrow’. We stick to the rule of directional metaphor when it comes to most ideas of positivity and negativity, if only to simplify. But with every simplification of our language, new complexities emerge. Slang, abbreviations, and new uses for words develop with parallel trends. This is where metaphors in language are called to task: our understandings of them must withstand the elasticity and evolution of everyday communication.
Early metaphors used in conjunction with the Internet were mostly inconsistent. We talked about it as ‘water’ to be ‘surfed’, with ‘torrents’ and ‘streams’; as a ‘grid’, ‘web’ or ‘net’; marked with ‘sites’; and as a ‘building’ with (chat) ‘rooms’, (message) ‘boards’ and ‘walls’ on which to ‘post’. We also compared it to ‘windows’, too. New uses for words are invented every year in terms of what we do on the Internet, and no one single metaphor seems to have become entirely pervasive so far. Lately, however, the vocabulary developed to describe new Internet-only behaviours seems to fear the Internet itself, likening it to a ‘horror story’ in which users ‘troll’, ‘ghost’ and go ‘viral.’
Modes of vocabulary change faster than the metaphors we use to describe concepts. We absorb the content that we can see and are influenced by its language. Yet, while academic, political, and journalistic languages have historically shaped various forms of argumentation, the phrasing used in social media rants and comment sections has started to influence these spheres, too. And since language isn’t a feedback loop, this inversion of influence has created a new vocabulary that’s evolved along with demand for specificity.
In the study of linguistics, it is considered dangerous to assume too much about the way words affect culture; despite this, it is also deemed normal to assume that culture affects words. For instance, we can assume that the newer definition of ‘viral’ was created in response to culture’s disdain for said behaviour; but assuming that the chosen word itself might influence the way we treat said behaviour is a stretch. We can easily describe the spread of sensational content as ‘virus-like’, but that does not mean that we will next be researching a cure for viral media.
This is generally the trajectory of these types of linguistic trends. But with the rise of trolling (which according to Google dictionary is listed as: ‘troll verb 1. informal: make a deliberately offensive or provocative online post with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them’) we have also witnessed the rise of the ultimate trolls, among them American President Donald Trump and his ever-shifting cabinet.
The president’s language in his speeches and on his Twitter account is outrageous, yet all too familiar: it’s also used by teenagers berating peers anonymously in comment sections, and by celebrity superfans defending their idols. The linguistics of online trolling has trickled down into the lexicon of real life (like in political campaigns and reportage). An entirely new set of standards applies to messaging when placed in the context of immediate validation. Additionally, the chance of a public encounter with a stranger encourages sensational behaviour. Celebrities like Donald Trump use emphatic language to reach the lowest common denominator – the rule of the simpler the message, the easier it is to agree with – in the same way protest chants and hashtags do. Celebrity followers, on the other hand, such as Beyoncé’s notoriously defensive ‘Beyhive’ fans, use the same sort of tone in order to gain status and attract the attention of their celebrity icons. Both types of trolling have descended into violent threats, personal attacks and bigotry in the name of reach. If a topic proves controversial enough, after a wave of shaming comes a wave of defending, and so on, until the topic is trending.
If, for visibility, all press is good press, a tornado of trolling is the best possible scenario. Although no publicity firms have admitted it, some commercials are themselves trolling. In March this year, a Heineken ad was pulled after Chance the Rapper called it out. In it, a cold beer slides past three people of colour and lands in front of a paler skinned woman, followed by the slogan “Sometimes, lighter is better”. “I think some companies are purposely putting out noticeably [sic] racist ads so they can get more views. And that shit is racist/bogus so I guess I shouldn’t help by posting about it. But I gotta just say tho. The ‘sometimes lighter is better’ Heineken commercial is terribly racist omg,” tweeted Chance. Now, when searching the slogan on YouTube, dozens of videos that play the full ad come up, including news coverage and late-night talk show jokes. The topmost repost has over half a million views.
With the naming of ‘call-out culture’ – essentially the trolling of the trolls – we’ve become confused about who tells the truth, since neither trolling nor calling out match the forms of discourse that we have traditionally credited with this role (e.g. word of mouth, or those employed by the fourth estate and the academy). This piece of prose that you are currently reading doesn’t have any special claim to truth, either. It’s a think piece, or an op-ed, or a rant, depending on who you ask. Or maybe it’s a work of fiction (have we now any need for fiction when nothing can be proven to be nonfiction?).
We know that the newest forms of communication we use impact our lives – the way we argue or how patient we are with the response to it – but we also know that the language we use in order to adapt to new forms of technology must eventually impact our lives as well. The term ‘ghosting’ was developed in parallel to the culture of constant communication. Before we became instantly available to anyone with our contact information, it wasn’t necessary to have a word denoting the idea of no longer communicating with someone. Now, ghosting is part of our dating culture, a key to understanding a certain type of relationship. Given how dating has changed since the advent of iMessage and WhatsApp, the term feels inseparable from this context.
We remember a time before the terms ‘cyber bullying’ and ‘gas lighting’ affected our reactions to everyday occurrences, and a time before these reactions produced their own new phrases and philosophies. Streaming services have made ‘binge watching’ a thing, as opposed to something less risky-sounding. We describe our ‘addictions’ to new media in all seriousness, taking hiatuses from online availability. While a ‘safe space’ isn’t necessarily offline, it is easier to imagine that most are. The nonchalance derived from a world of dating apps has perhaps created what we call a ‘fuckboy’ and ‘rape culture.’ Violent and melodramatic terminology is trending on social media, with abbreviations like ‘kys’ (‘kill yourself’) replacing the popular troll, ‘delete your account.’
Studies have shown that rates of depression in teens who do not remember a time before the Internet are skyrocketing. According to research published last year by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, between 2005 and 2015 in the US, rates of depression in children and teenagers aged 12-17 rose 12.7 percent. In addition, if we’re reading the texts correctly, teens and tweens may have more social anxiety than any that came before them, or, as a parent of a 10-year-old told me, “either they’re all suicidal or none of them are. Something’s got to give.”
If the idea of the internet-as-a-horror-story eventually displaces its comparison to water and architecture, then we will be left with a chicken-or-egg paradox to ponder. Does the language we use to simplify complex concepts shape them, or is that language derived from the functions we most often see adjacent to those concepts? The Internet, right now, is scary, and at the same time we might learn to swim through it instead of drowning. It is certain, though, that the particular mix of partial anonymity, constructed persona, lost privacy and proof of influence offered by the Internet has changed our culture immensely, putting trolls, ghosts, and bullies in charge of not only our government, but our attention.
This article was taken from our summer issue, SLEEK 58. Get your copy here!