Best meme in show: Unmediated thoughts on the internet and language

Angus Lang

My family owned a cat when I was growing up, but I think the internet has taught me that I’m a doge person.

LOLcats was an early iteration of an internet meme with some potential: amusing images of cats accompanied by intentionally ungrammatical text was a promising combination, but ultimately it didn’t hit the spot. This, for instance, is cute enough, but not actually funny:

Image by Misterjack, provided by CC licence via Wikimedia Commons

However, if you replace the cat with an image of a happily inane and easily impressed dog (a shiba inu), and instead of the half-baked misspellings use a mixture of eccentric noun phrases sprinkled with the occasional “wow”, the whole proposition becomes much more compelling.  This, for example, is doge’s take on the topic of 3D printing:

Image from The Daily Dot

It works best when there is an obvious gulf between the depth of the topic and the doge’s treatment of it. Here, for example, doge deals with the grey zone between terrorism and civil disobedience:

        

Image from FunnyJunk

The doge is undoubtedly inane, but like many fools, he has a certain wisdom about him. And, to my mind, it’s especially in the field of internet linguistics that he has a thing or two to teach us.  

Doge is a good example of the internet’s tendency to provide conditions for the development of new language varieties, at greyhound pace, and accompanied by multiple variations. David Crystal, writer on many linguistic things, thinks that the internet’s influence is unprecedented in this respect. 

The sort of riffing that produced doge out of LOLcats can be witnessed all over the place. For example, the orthodox spoken or written phrase “I can’t even begin to describe this to you” has produced the microblogging/texting/tweeting iterations “I can’t even”, “I have lost the ability to even”, and “I have lost all ability to can”.  

Now, I confess I don’t know enough about the field to explain the mechanisms at play, but I imagine it has something to do with the playful (“ludic”) way in which language is used in many popular forms of digital communication, the need for linguistic creativity to be expressed within tight confines in such contexts (eg Twitter/SMS character limits, or keeping it “micro” in the case of microblogging), and the impressive capacity of internet communication to spread: with immediacy; to a wide number of people; and over a geographically disparate population.

All of that is very cool, but if a variety of internet-language could venture out of its natural digital habitat and enter the spoken language, now that would really be something. 

So far, apart from a few bits and pieces here and there, it hasn’t really happened yet. Linguistic prescriptivists and other concerned citizens have, over the years, expressed their fears about the threat to standard spoken and written language forms posed by net- and sms-speak, but by and large they have not materialised. U dont eg omit pnctu8tn or abbrv8 or use pctgrms in 4ml wrtn work lk when u r txtng. 

My personal ambition for doge is that it will make this leap. The ingredients are all there: it’s catchy, has its own grammar, and it doesn’t even need the doge to work. 

This poem from the daysofstorm Tumblr, for example, is a fantastic rendition of Romeo and Juliet in doge-speak:

What light. So breaks. Such east. Very sun. Wow, Juliet.
What Romeo. Such why. Very rose. Still rose.
Very balcony. Such climb.
Much love. So Propose. Wow, marriage.
Very Tybalt. Much stab. What do?
Such exile. Very Mantua. Much sad.
So, priest? Much sleeping. Wow, tomb.
Such poison. What dagger. Very dead. Wow, end.

In my own conversations, I have been trying to deploy doge whenever possible, preferably when least appropriate. It’s quite addictive. But getting it right takes a bit of practice – it’s all too easy to lapse into grammatical correctness. Even “Romeo and Juliet” is not quite perfect: “much love” probably should have been “many love” and “such poison” maybe “so poison”.

I do, of course, realise that much of this is vanity. My doge advocacy doubtless has to do with wearing it as a badge of contemporariness and digital savoir faire. Never mind that the doge has, no doubt, already trotted off to the meme compost heap, tail between its legs. But that, too is the power of the internet. We can spend a disproportionate amount of our text-consuming lives on various forms of bloggery, either out of fun, wannabe funkiness or just because of the sheer volume of it. 

But I feel we should stay sensitised to the way in which the internet bestows prestige on certain forms of text. Naomi S Baron has observed that a great mass of netspeak is unmediated, ie produced spontaneously, and in the absence of reflection, drafting, redrafting, editing or peer-review.  There is, of course, a place for this, but the patterns of our consumption involve a risk that the mediated text may lose something of its cultural priority. It’s certainly an interesting point. And the doge meme is aimed squarely at this phenomenon: we like it because, like so many of us netizens, doge has no inhibitions about broadcasting its thoughts, moment to moment, with hilarious superficiality on topics undeserving of such treatment. 

My cat, now that I think of it, was a more reflective and introverted type. Perhaps I should be reconnecting with my feline side.

Around the world in 80 hashtags

Amanda Parks

Earlier this year, I decided to leave the safety and predictability of day-to-day life and embark on an undefined overseas adventure. I wanted absolute freedom to see, do, relax, reflect and absorb everything without a pre-determined expiration date staring at me like the stamp on a milk carton. Aside from some bookmarked dates and destinations, my slate was clean. Maybe I’d travel for 3 months or 4, or 6 or more, before growing up and returning to work. My approach was admittedly indulgent, but it was the one I needed to ensure my travel bug was sufficiently fed.

When I told various friends and colleagues about my plan I was surprised by how many asked if I’d write a travel blog. There were several reasons why my answer was no. For one, I’d always disliked the sound of the word blog and I didn’t want to be a blogger [Editor’s note: no offence taken]. More importantly, I had a sneaking suspicion that if I committed to writing a blog it would ultimately detract from, rather than add to, the experience I sought. I knew I’d feel pressured to package my days into posts that would be interesting, funny or somehow read-worthy, with the result that I’d spend hours staring at my laptop and poring over words and photos when I’d rather spend those hours staring at the ocean and pouring a deliciously refreshing drink.

The reality is that blogging, sharing, posting, commenting, tagging, and hashtagging have become so prevalent, so expected, that I felt rebellious for choosing to be a relatively quiet traveller. Why wasn’t I updating my Facebook status upon arriving in each place? Why hadn’t I joined Instagram to tell my travel tales through daily photos? Why did I take 4 months to send my first real update to a relatively small list of friends and family (by old-school email, no less)?

Let me be clear - I didn’t entirely boycott social media while travelling. I did post some Facebook updates and photos, and I reaped great benefits that arose solely because of my participation in social media. For example, I chose certain travel destinations after being inspired by friends’ photos, and I met up with friendly faces in foreign places simply because one of us had posted something on Facebook that told the other where we were. Social media can undoubtedly connect and benefit its users (travellers or not) in incredible ways.

But what I feared was getting dragged over to the dark side, the point at which we shift our focus too far away from the live experience and we become preoccupied, too occupied, with how we will capture it, tag it, post it and wait for the “likes” to filter in.

At one point during my trip, I was one of what felt like 5,000 people packed into London’s Sloane Square to watch a large screen on which Andy Murray was seeking to become the first British man to win Wimbledon in 77 years. Last year, he lost in the final and cried. This year, he was hoping to do neither. The pressure on him was monumental, as was the tension that hung over the crowd. When Murray finally won the eruption was incredible: people cheered and clapped and jumped and hugged and did whatever victory dance they could manage on the tiny piece of pavement they’d claimed as their own for the last 4 hours. It was one of those spine-tingling live sporting moments that you’re thrilled to be part of and leaves you feeling like you’ve made a new best friend in the stranger beside you... and it was a moment that I shared with my phone. Ashamed as I am to admit it, I was one of those people who couldn’t clap, jump or hug my human friends beside me because I was busy holding my digital friend above the sea of flailing arms trying to “capture the moment”. While I’m glad to have caught some great footage (which I have actually watched since), the moment would’ve been better if I’d just lived it. I caught myself wondering almost immediately: was this what the dark side felt like?

A photo finish

Happily, my travels involved very few moments like that one and, for the most part, I did what I’d hoped to do when I decided not to blog: I saw, I did, I relaxed, I reflected and I absorbed and I didn’t feel tied to a gadget while doing so.

About a month after that day in Sloane Square, I overheard a brief but brilliant exchange between two friends which, I think, reflects an increasingly unhealthy addiction to social media and the tools that feed it (arguably most striking in its younger users, but the older ones aren’t immune; certain grown-up world leaders have, after all, just been roasted for taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service). After logging into his Facebook account in a hostel foyer, Traveller #1 exclaimed “This is an epic photo, how can I only have 5 likes?!” and traveller #2 replied “Who cares?”. Indeed, who does care? When we post things, who are we posting them for? Should getting only 5 likes or 3 likes (or, horror of horrors, no likes) make our epic travel photo seem any less epic to us?

Social media undoubtedly has its place, but the trick is to ensure it’s used for the right reasons and without letting it detract from our real-life experiences. Because, in the end, the live show is always better than the recording.


Photograph by Amanda Parks.

@Courtroomjunkie: Leave your phone at home!

Fatimah Omari

A young man recently had the audacity to steal a police officer’s hat from a Sydney courtroom. To the embarrassment of the thief, CCTV footage showed him looking up at the cameras seconds before committing the crime. Were it not for the CCTV cameras installed in the courtroom, the Police would have been at a loss to explain how a $150 hat could suddenly vanish into thin air. So what could possibly motivate the brazen young thief? The man, a part time dancer, sought a genuine police hat to add an element of reality to his dance ensemble. The magistrate did not share the same zeal for costume authenticity and described the crime as ‘stupidity at its highest’, placing the man on a two year good behaviour bond.

This story got me thinking: what impact do we have on the administration of justice when we bring our own technology into a courtroom? In a world of iPods, iPhones and iPads, we have clearly become addicted to a drug called technology and consumed by one mantra: iCan’tLiveWithoutIt. While the judiciary is embracing the shift towards sophisticated electronic courtrooms, many judges remain somewhat hostile towards the use of electronics by members of the public. The capacity of modern mobile phones and laptops to covertly capture sound and video or to instantly transmit information across the globe at the touch of a finger is proving to be a challenge for courts and judges.

Restrictions on the use of technology by members of the public are increasingly being introduced to avoid unnecessary interruptions to court proceedings and to protect the identities of witnesses and jurors.

A young Sydney woman recently discovered that justice is swift for those who flout the rules. The woman in question was charged with contempt after her inner photographer came out to play. She had heard through the grapevine that a family friend was serving on a jury and, to mark what she believed to be a notable occasion, the woman took a photo of the courtroom and several jurors’ faces. In a world of tweets and tumblrs, such images can be mass-broadcast, edited, tagged, discussed, re-tweeted and blogged in a matter of minutes.

This woman insisted that she attended court with good intentions and for the purpose of satisfying her curiosity of the Australian legal system. The judge handed down a slap on the wrist and released her without conviction. In contrast, a UK judge recently sentenced a man to two months in prison in order to send a simple message to the public: photography in the courtroom will not be tolerated. Imagine the impact on a closed session of court if a reckless Gen Y juror tweeted a blow-by-blow account of proceedings.

It may be obvious to some that the taking of photos, capturing video or recording speech and sounds in a courtroom is a no-no. However, the cases mentioned above are a sign of the times and reflect the impact of the technology revolution on human behaviour. It has become commonplace for a person to pull out their phone in response to anything mildly photogenic, so it should come as no surprise that the knee-jerk reaction of one woman, who was excited to see a familiar face in the jury, was to take a photo. The use of camera phones to capture and instantly circulate weird and wonderful images has become popular, particularly amongst younger generations. With every moment now being regarded as a Kodak one, the photographer feels compelled to share with masses of digital friends and random acquaintances.

Of course mobile phones and cameras are not the only devices capable of frustrating judges and court officers. When I worked as a paralegal on a case involving terrorism charges, I witnessed the transformation of the Sydney West Trial Court into a fortress. Dual security checkpoints at the entrance to the complex and the courtroom made me feel like I was passing through stringent airport security. Since the trial concerned matters of national security, all recording-enabled devices had to be surrendered prior to entry into the courtroom. Separation anxiety ran high.

The intimidating routine of being scanned with a wand, having bags checked and handing over phones and laptops quickly became annoying for paralegals and regular visitors. However, there was no denying that electronics were a potential security risk given their diminutive size and ubiquitous nature. According to a court officer, confiscation of my iPod was necessary as (with a small attachment) it is able to record sound.

The technology revolution has proved to be a double edged sword. With respect to courtrooms, the risk lies not only in the ability to discreetly photograph or record sensitive material, but also the ability to instantly transmit this data. Fortunately, such violations of court rules are minimal and, for the majority of people, common sense prevails over a desire to share images taken inside the Supreme Court.

 
Image courtesy of Robin Hutton, made available by creative commons licence via Flickr.