In its short lived history, the internet has formed its own culture. Acronyms, emoticons and leet-speak as well as spam, trolling and the unfortunate Youtube comment are innovations that have steadily snuck their influence into the real world.
As the living clay that we are, the internet has molded us into people that audibly say “LOL” instead of using our chest muscles to laugh. We’ve been fully initiated into the cult of internet and the strange ways its users connect behind a screen of anonymity.
For example, trolling. Urban Dictionary describe this as “the art of deliberately, cleverly, and secretly pissing people off, usually via the internet, using dialogue.” Notice the part, “usually via the internet.” When the term first came into existence on Usenet in the early 1990’s, it was strictly within the anonymous bounds of cyberspace.
But as the boundaries between real life and the computer crumble with more accessible user interfaces and higher resolution, the disconnect between the online world and the real world becomes smaller. The intangible becomes more acceptable and the status notifications ring up ever higher amounts of dopamine in your real sitting body. The world of 1968 that produced “2001: A Space Odyssey” inherently mistrusted artificial intelligence, the world of 2013 that produced “Her” showed a man and an operating system in love. Our attitudes towards computers have changed.
Machines habilitate our social lives, they give us wealths of information, and they even store our grades. But when we become so accustomed to the mannerisms of the online — the sarcasm, the facetiousness — we run the risk of having real dialogue overrun.
In the post-modern, post-internet period we live in, there is now an accepted linguistic disconnect between what a speaker is saying and what he could be implying. Everything anyone says could be really sarcasm, deep-cover irony, an intensely method-acted form of satire or completely meaningless.
Adult Swim comedy shows like “Loiter Squad,” “The Eric Andre Show” and “The Tim and Eric Awesome Show,” for example, have simultaneously stripped the world of its meaning while making the meaningless hilarious. In an age where non sequitur comedy like that can be viewed at impulse via digestible Youtube clips, and ridiculous argument threads concerning the existence of God, the validity of religion and the “top five rappers in the game” exist underneath, I can’t take anything seriously.
The other day in San Marino, I walked by an overweight, sunburnt white dude spouting Old Testament rants and calling Obama homophobic slurs. I’m still not sure whether I should have applauded his acting or not.