internet explorers club |

Emily Hummel -

My fellow Internet Explorers. A lot of people have been talking about The Internet and its effect on Our Daily Lives, so let's dig into that a bit.

First off, here's a piece on Kate McKean, the "Literary Agent for the Internet." This is a really interesting piece about how books come from things created online - from Texts From Jane Eyre to the Tragedy Series. It is also super stressful when I think about things that I personally produce:

“Some [blogs] are just rights nightmares—you can legally do it on the Internet, but you can’t legally put it in a book and sell it for money. And I can’t do books of things that are funny on the Internet but no one cares outside of that.”

Secondly, Is The Internet Ruining the English Language? Short answer: No, but this digs into the way that language / communication has ~evolved~ through the influence of / use of the Internet.

BuzzFeed has released their style guide, which is just further evidence for the evolution of language. Favorites include the following, though I'm bummed they didn't include ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • Quidditch (capped, as in the game on broomsticks)
  • makeout (noun, the act of making out)
  • selfie (refers to a photo taken only by someone in said photo)
  • unfriend (not de-friend)

Finally, I just got introduced to NYT is ON IT, a Twitter feed where they talk about pretty basic things that the NYT is making perhaps a bigger deal than they should about, including:
Etcetera: Video cameras on Jumbo (not Giant) squid. Ska band... or Improv troupe? X-Wing and TIE Fighter are coming back (but you need a joystick). Babycore is apparently a thing, which is the worst. Skymall is dead! Long live Skymall?

--Emily

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