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.

Small press networks in the digital age

Julie Koh, Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn

Sleepers Publishing is an independent publishing house based in Melbourne. Founded by Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn in 2003, it advocates for new and emerging writers in Australia. Writer Julie Koh interviewed Louise and Zoe about the implications of new technologies for the work of Sleepers Publishing and other small presses across Australia.

How does social networking impact on how you connect with readers?

Social media is a really quick and easy way to speak to our audience frequently and light-heartedly. We use Twitter, which is big in the publishing industry, and Facebook. Some of our authors are great social networkers: Steven Amsterdam is big on Facebook, with regular and interesting updates, and miles vertigan is a prolific Tweeter. His tweets are funny and irreverent, and a great companion to his book, Life Kills - they have a similar style and sense of humour to the book, so they are each a tiny publicity stunt.

The Sleepers App for iPhone comprises short stories from previous Almanacs. What was your rationale behind creating the app? Are you finding this technology to be a worthwhile venture?

We were aware a few years ago that reading habits were starting to change, and as we began to make our existing books available as ebooks we also wanted to dive into a new format. The iPhone App seemed like a good way to start because we know many users of the iPhone, and the great thing about it is that it’s with you all the time. There have been sales but digital formats are generally slow at the moment, and plenty of our readers still prefer paper books. However, it’s been a really useful way for us to get our toes in the water of digital reading, and we have discovered a fondness there. We are, increasingly, surrounded with friends and family reading on Kindles and iPads.

You publish in both paper book and ebook formats. Are you finding one format to be more popular than the other? How much do you think this will change in the future?

All of our books are now available as ebooks. We still sell more paper books, by a long margin, but it’s slowly changing. It can be hard to find the books you want as ebooks in Australia, due to territorial rights, so readers are sometimes wary of investing in the new technology until everything is available. However, availability is increasing, in multiple formats, starting, for us, with Readings and Kobo, and we envisage a steady rise in ebook take-up from our readers over the next few years.

A few years ago, the Small Press Underground Networking Community (SPUNC), in which you are both involved, commissioned a report by Kate Freeth, A lovely kind of madness: Small and independent publishing in Australia (2007). Freeth found that some of the more common difficulties that small presses face relate to issues of distribution, publicity, marketing and public awareness. How is SPUNC helping small presses to confront these difficulties?

SPUNC has been invaluable at connecting small presses with the ebook retailers/distributors, and therefore showing us the market that is out there. It can be difficult to keep up to date with all of the technology as it changes so it’s terrific having someone "on the ground", digitally speaking, to keep us in the loop. In terms of paper book distribution and marketing, the SPUNC site and blog and surrounding social networks creates an easy to access way into a community of likeminded publishers, and a community of eager readers. It’s the linking and educating that SPUNC does so well.

Can you comment further on how new technology has had, and will have, an impact on the operation of Sleepers Publishing and small presses in Australia?

We can’t speak with any authority about other small presses but, at Sleepers, it has been terrifically energising to know that we are now able to access a worldwide community. Prior to ebooks, it has been near impossible for us to take our books out of Australia and New Zealand, but now we are in the global market. We look forward to seeing that grow and continue. Sometime in the future, we will print fewer books – ideally only printing on demand – therefore reducing the need for warehousing or, as is the case at the moment, overcrowding our micro-tiny office. We look forward to that day!

Louise and Zoe discuss the Sleepers iPhone app,

the founding of Sleepers Publishing and paper books.

Planet ebook: from virtual graveyard to literary lift-off

Julie Koh

The world of the self-published ebook is quickly shedding its image as a virtual planet where failed authors go to die.

Increasingly, fiction writers are considering the ebook as an avenue through which they can bypass established publishers to get their work out there and to connect with new readers.

E-superstars

One of the stars of the ebook revolution is Amanda Hocking.

The 26-year-old author from Minnesota, U.S.A., has received a great deal of media attention over the last year, having grossed approximately $2 million in ebook sales. Her ebooks include the young adult vampire romance series, My Blood Approves.

What stuns most commentators is how swiftly Hocking’s star has risen. She began self-publishing ebooks in April 2010. By early March 2011, she had sold over 900,000 copies of 9 of her ebooks. Her series of novels about trolls, the Trylle Trilogy, was optioned for a film in early 2011, with Terri Tatchell, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter for District 9, attached to adapt the screenplay.

Self-publishing phenomenons like Amanda Hocking demonstrate that the ebook is allowing indie authors to extend their readership significantly on a global scale.

That said, ebook self-publishing seems to be more lucrative for those sections of the indie fiction writing population who publish genre fiction, such as thrillers, romance, paranormal romance, mystery and fantasy. As Hocking’s sales figures suggest, the most successful of these writers are those whose work taps into the young adult zeitgeist, which at present favours — among other things — female fantasies about pallid men with sharp teeth who fall in love with us but simultaneously must resist draining us of blood.

What about literary fiction?

For emerging non-genre writers like myself, the question remains whether taking the self-published ebook route is advisable for developing a literary reputation. After all, success in literary fiction is often tied to where, and by whom, an author has had work published. Furthermore, readers may not trust a self-published ebook to be of the same quality as ‘p-books’ (a trendy new word for paper books) put out by reputable publishing houses.

Until mainstream readers and critics genuinely come around to this new electronic format, one option is for emerging literary fiction writers to self-publish short stories in ebook format after the publication of those stories in well-regarded print and online literary journals. This widens the availability of the stories to potential readers without requiring the author to pass up the opportunity to keep building a literary career that follows a traditional trajectory.

At the same time, an emerging writer may decide to publish other short stories direct to ebook, simply because those stories are experimental and unlikely to be accepted by major literary publications due to their niche market appeal.

Take, for instance, The Fantastic Breasts, a feminist satire I’ve published through Smashwords. Without a doubt, this story would have had trouble finding a publisher. Its style is an obscure and experimental mix of magic realism and hyperrealism. To add to this, the story has the potential to alienate those who take its lack of political correctness literally and feel that the language used denigrates women. The story may also alienate those who struggle to reconcile its extreme satirical humour with the serious issues it addresses relating to the objectification of women.

Ultimately, not all stories a writer produces are destined to be popular. In circumstances where an author isn’t willing to compromise to make a story more palatable for a mainstream audience, the ebook is a powerful new publishing option. It lowers the barriers to publication for experimental literary work and vastly improves the author's chance of reaching that work’s niche global readership.

Lift-off

Ebook technology can benefit a wide variety of fiction writers, particularly those who can handle the hurdles involved in self-publishing and who want to connect with a global readership without having to woo an established publisher willing to aid them in this quest.

I once heard of a writer who said that having an unpublished story is like having a grown-up child who won’t leave home. The ebook has become an avenue through which such a story can make a life away from the worried clutches of its author: a life that begins in an aesthetically pleasing and widely available electronic format on an increasingly prosperous virtual planet.



Image by goXunuReviews, made available by Creative Commons licence via Flickr.