Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic
Big thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor
Publishers and NetGalley for making Adam Aleksic’s Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language available for review. William S. Burroughs often proposed the idea
that language is a virus back in the 1960s, explaining that language will often
adapt to novel situations in order to gain prominence and, in Burroughs
concerns with propaganda and control, coerce and manipulate individuals and
societies especially when others in power have tools and technology to spread
this virus. Although he died when dial-up internet was still big in the late
90s, he didn’t live to see the term “going viral” manifest, but I often wonder
what he would think of how ideas and trends spread through the internet and
social media today. Adam Aleksic, a linguist who creates online content
exploring language history and a self-described etymology nerd, has written a
book that examines how our increasing time spent online has impacted our
language use. While many people may have their own assumptions about the state
of language since social media has become increasingly popular (myself
included), Aleksic notes, somewhat like Burroughs, that language has always
been influenced (or infected) by society and the technology that arises. He
cites several pre-digital examples of technology, especially in the more recent
eras of mass media that have proliferated new phrases, slang, and phrasal
templates that are often adopted and used in novel situations and become part of
our common parlance. This was a fascinating book, and while I didn’t agree with
everything Aleksic says, especially about algorithms, his book challenged my
thinking about language, culture, and technology, and made me a little less
concerned and a little more aware of current trends. Although Aleksic is a
TikToker, this book is an incredibly useful reference and resource for parents
and teachers who may be confronted with the strange new language that their
teens and tweens seem to be bringing home from school on a daily basis. Whether
they’re asking you to have more rizz or just talking about brain rot,
Aleksic provides some useful etymology for these OL terms and how they arrived
in our homes IRL. He will frequently use these examples as a starting point to
explore more complex linguistic ideas, working from the specific examples to
more general frameworks and concepts, and then back to the specific examples. I
appreciated this approach since he uses familiar ideas that I’ve encountered
with my kids, and this helps to prime me for understanding some of the other
learning and language concepts that he presents.
Each chapter deals with a different trend and concept in
language, many of which have been proliferated by social media. One of the more
interesting concepts that I considered with this book is how social media has
sped up the adoption and abandonment of many of these terms. As Aleksic notes,
most subgroups or subcultures use language to denote their affiliations or
connections. Specialized language helps to bond and demonstrate a shared
understanding; yet, oftentimes, when a subculture gradually becomes part of the
dominant culture, their language may leak out as well, being absorbed and
adopted by the dominant culture. Aleksic uses the example of “cool” as a part
of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) used in the 1940s. As African American
culture became more influential in the dominant American culture, many phrases
and terms were adopted, and we eventually have the word cool, which still
exists, although it may not be used by the vanguard of culture anymore. As
Aleksic also noted from interviews and surveys with middle school students,
once older generations or those on the outside (or within the dominant culture)
begin to use these terms, those within the subcultures often adopt new phrases
and terms, abandoning what was once theirs. The internet and social media are
speeding up this process, enabling language to proliferate quicker than ever,
especially through short-form videos popularized by Vine, a TikTok predecessor,
and TikTok.
Aleksic is a skilled writer who is able to convey complex
concepts and ideas to a broad audience, most likely due to his experience and
success as a successful content creator on social media. For example, the first
chapter uses the whac-a-mole analogy to explain how online language has adapted
to evade censors and content checkers. Posters online have developed euphemisms
and other representations to identify new ways of expressing controversial and
hotly debated topics. This use of language has extended into real life where
Aleksic found an example of the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture used the term
“unalive” to explain Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. While this book examines the
etymology of many different terms and phrases from OL that have made it into
our IRL convos, Aleksic explores how algorithms have helped to shape much of
the ways we talk. Again, this is something I first noticed with my kids around
the start of the pandemic when screen time increased and there was little to do
around the house. One activity that my kids enjoyed engaging in was making
videos on their iPads. I was amazed that my kids would hit record and start the
video with something like “Hi everyone, today we’re going to…” and often end
with “Don’t forget to hit that like button…” It was just something they
associated with videos from viewing content online, most likely watching other
kids unbox toys. Nevertheless, youtube kids continued to push these videos as
my kids engaged with similar videos more and more. Aleksic not only explains
how these templates repeat as the popularity of these videos ends up
replicating them, but he also notes that many of the opening phrase templates
use the kind of language and tones that are a part of children’s television
shows like Sesame Street, which makes sense when creators are trying to
engage their audience, but also appeal to familiarity.
The chapters that dealt with etymology tracing the history
of popular slang terms were probably my favorite. In one chapter titled “It’s
Giving Appropriation”, Aleksic uses terms like slay, fam, and throwing shade to
examine how words from the Ballroom Drag scene of the 70s and 80s NYC made
their way onto social media and eventually into more popular parlance, moving
from an underground marginalized community to the mainstream, dominant culture.
Furthermore, Aleksic notes how this kind of appropriation often fails to denote
the language’s origins, as well as the kinds of risk that this appropriation
might hold for marginalized communities. As Aleksic repeatedly reminds us,
language, and specifically slang or these kinds of specialized terms used by a
subculture, are a strong indication of identity and belonging, and when these
terms become assimilated into the dominant culture, this may pose a risk to the
subculture’s identity. The chapter that precedes “It’s Giving Appropriation” is
titled “Wordpilled Slangmaxxing”, and I initially found it upsetting since the
focus is on incel language. Although Aleksic uses incels as another frame of
reference for tracing what are now more common terms, I initially wondered why
the book focused on this abhorrent, misogynistic, helpless group. Although
incels are pathetic, Aleksic explores how their language was catchy, using
combinations of familiar terms in novel ways, and managed to convert some
people online. The chapter primarily examines how words like Sigma and looksmaxxing
were diffused through memes posted on 4chan, where the anonymity of posters
allowed incels to run wild. It was a little disturbing to think about how these
terms my kids use originated as incel ideas, but again, Aleksic notes how over
time, memes allow ideas and language in particular to morph and adapt for novel
adoption in different environments. It’s a truly fascinating look at how
abhorrent ideas are reshaped and recast into the dominant culture and
eventually lose their meaning. This also highlights the kind of duality of how
language and idea diffusion from subcultures to the dominant culture can be
both positive and negative. In some ways, the diffusion can lessen horrible
ideas and bring about less relevance to hate groups, but in other ways, this
kind of appropriation can begin to trample on the originality and uniqueness of
subcultures or marginalized groups.
Aleksic also notes this duality when he discusses algorithms
towards the later chapters in the book. One fascinating chapter, “What Are We
Wearing This Summer?”, examines how “core” groups are formed online, but in
turn how many of these specialized subcultures are frequently targeted by
marketers and corporations. It was interesting to learn about so many of these
subcultures (cottagecore, goblincore) and how corporations use a targeted
marketing strategy of trying to get smaller groups to buy more products to
stand out with their individuality. It also seemed like some of the platforms
and corporations work to create new subcultures or genres of music to appeal to
people. I’ve often wondered about how some of these new genres have formed, but
it seems like it’s possibly a corporate creation, which in turn, ends up
driving some artists to make music or art to fit that genre. It’s a strange
kind of hamster wheel like cycle, where I wondered what was really driving the
creation and consumption of art—the individuality of the participants or the
bottom line of corporations.
The one idea that I somewhat disagreed with Aleksic is in the last chapter. “At the same time, algorithms aren’t all bad. In democratizing public communication, they’ve given us more access than ever to public video evidence and records…Now that anybody can have a platform, it’s harder for elite powers to set the agenda by manufacturing consent…” Although I agree that social media has provided more people with a platform for communication and information, I’m not sure if everyone is using it for that purpose. While people have freedom of expression and can use social media for art and creation as well as information dissemination, we also see how many people use social media for personal gain or to promote disinformation. Furthermore, I question whether social media, which are large corporations who rely on selling our personal data and information to other large corporations, are really democratizing information. In a recent election, two owners of social media companies teamed up to win a close and contentious election. I often wonder what role Twitter had in the 2024 election. Were certain voices algorithmically suppressed, while other voices possibly received more attention, likes and retweets? What role, if any, did that have on people’s likelihood of voting for candidates? We also know that with twitter’s new owner, there was a promise to return to absolute first amendment rights, whether the information was true or not. We saw how the power of language and disinformation on social media led to the violence of January 6th. Meta is now going to abandon the fact checking it put in place after COVID disinformation ran rampant on its platform. I wonder how much more algorithms will favor the kinds of fictions people may prefer to hear or that social media companies know will draw more engagement, whether it is through affinities or rage. In 2017, Franklin Foer wrestled with the implications of the algorithm on our daily life, noting that engineers have frequently sought to optimize our lives and make daily life more efficient. The algorithm is one of the primary tools for this, and while yes, it does bring us recommendations or content that it thinks we will enjoy or engage with, some of them are programmed to present us with more extreme content, since social science has indicated that people react more strongly to extreme content. In Foer’s argument, he suggests that the cost of this efficiency is our free will. Social media corporations seek our attention and engagement, but also want to make decisions for us, which is a scary concept. Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that social media is a significant part of our daily lives, and Aleksic’s book highlights how language in particular is influenced by social media. This is a fascinating book that challenges our assumptions about language and social media, allowing us to reconsider its influence by reminding us that technology and other human innovations have always had a bidirectional influence on language, each working to shape one another. Despite some of my own concerns about how algorithms are affecting our lives, I found this book to be enlightening and entertaining. Aleksic’s experience as a content creator demonstrates that he knows how to appeal to a broad audience and make complicated topics relevant and interesting for almost everyone. This is a great book for parents, teachers, and any other etymology nerds.
No comments:
Post a Comment