I was talking about this with my professor the other day, and thought it’d be interesting to hear all of your thoughts.
I think it’s fascinating the different aways in which web-etiquette changes across communities and communication styles. Texting, email, forum posts, social media posts, MMOs, etc. all have different expectations and ‘rules’ for the users.
I noticed this first because I was thinking about how my style of communication online feels different to that of many of my peers. And I suspect part of that is because my main exposure to “talking to people via internet” came from forums and MMOs as a kid, as opposed to my friends who used social media earlier than I did. So I’m wondering what others’ thoughts are! Obviously there are so many other things that affect the ways we communicate online, such as neurodivergence, culture, language, and age- I think it’s fascinating and I wish there were more studies done on the internet in this way.
Do you, as a Forum User™, feel like your style of online-based communication is inherently different than peers who do not use platforms like this? Hell, different social media sites even sometimes have different ‘dialects’. There’s so much variation in the ways we communicate online even though the medium (text-based chatting) is the same!
I think the presence of clear and enforced rules plays a big role. I know that if I go offtopic in response to your question, I’ll get told off and my post will probably be removed or merged to another topic - so I’m motivated to stay on topic. You can say pretty much anything you want on sites like Reddit or Twtter, all you’ll get is downvotes. Or retweets, or whatever the hell it is they do there.
And other than that there’s less of a back-and-forth nature to forums, which prevents the sort of one-upping and owned-with-logicking that you see on Twitter and Reddit. Back when I used to frequent some communities on Reddit, I’d often get into heated discussions which were easily diffused by sending a DM and taking the conversation out of that public arena where everyone bites back in fear of getting publicly humiliated.
So there’s moderation and the back-and-forth format - and if you’ll permit me a slight tangent: likes. I’m convinved that if we were to outlaw likes and upvotes on all platforms in the world, it’d reduce the kind of bad behaviour so prevalent in big online communities. It’s the one thing I don’t like about Discourse forums - it’s a default option that no forum runner ever considers turning off, because likes have become an unquestioned part of every bit of the Web. Even chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp have the little react emotes that act as likes. Conversations don’t need scoreboards!
oh, this is fun to ponder! there really are so many different communication styles across different places online… in no small part because memes are often a huge part of how people communicate and what might be a funny joke on one site is completely incomprehensible gibberish to someone on a different site.
i think i type in a pretty normal way for my age + web-background (AIM & livejournal to skype & tumblr to discord & cohost); all lowercase w/ some chatspeak and variable/limited punctuation etc !
i think typign like this makes my posting sound more like the way i talk - in a monotone, with runon sentences, punctuated by uptalking more than pauses or full stops
it is somewhat unusual for a Forum User, though! haha. forums + blogs tend to lean more towards more formal/“correct” typing in my experience. (sometimes it’s even in the rules!) even longform tumblr posts tend to type more like this, though. there’s definitely a cultural gap; ppl who type more like me tend to read more formal language as angry, i think, and people who type more formally tend to read a typing style like mine as stupid or low-effort. even though both styles are probably trying to communicate in a way that feels “neutral” to them! womp-womp.
since i know other ppl tend to read a more formal typing style as angry or mean that’s another reason i prefer to avoid it… it seems like i already often come across as angry or intimidating or rude even when i am making an effort to seem chill and pleasant ! so i imagine switching up how i type in casual contexts would make the problem WAY worse lol.
i do try to adjust if i have to though. if i’m somewhere where people are going to get mad at me / tell me off for typing like this, or if there are particular rules about it, or if i want to try to be taken somewhat seriously (setting up meets to pick up free stuff from craigslist, texting my therapist, sending questions via email, that sort of thing) then i’ll type “properly” .
Oh definitely. My first time chatting with strangers online was via forums, but the forum I joined had strict rules for spelling and grammer; sms-style ‘text-speak’ was banned. Everything else I had used to communicate before now (SMS and MSN) pretty much expected the opposite (or demanded it in the case of SMS, which at the time was still like ‘press the 2 key three times to write the letter c’). As a result I’m pretty sure the Eragon forum taught me how to write properly (or at least taught me to care about writing properly).
And then, when I started using IRC in a small community that kind of fell together, some of the old MSN habits came back, including things like sending 5 short messages in a row when 1 longer message would be better. I think that’s a pretty common habit with IM protocols but of course it’s discouraged to double-post on a forum or social network.
Also, on IRC vs newstyle IM platforms, on IRC you would correct typos by resending whichever word you mispelled, adding an asterisk. On forums and new IM platforms you’d just hit edit.
Lastly, 90% of the homestuck fan community mysteriously developed typing quirks around that time, that was fun.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about the enforcing of rules before as a major factor, haha that makes a ton of sense!! Even though short-form communication like texting and social media has “rules” none of it is really enforced, which gives a completely different culture to forums and mmos (generally)
Like all things I think this depends on the specific culture at play. I’ve been to quite a few forums where snarky comebacks and public bickering are common- but then, since I’m young, I only started using forums when social media was already gaining a foothold, so maybe it’s more of a holdover?
Memes are another one I didn’t consider but I totally agree!! I know on Google+ (lmao), a bit aspect of that culture was making fun of what Facebook and Instagram users thought were memes. Which- we were on Google+. Throwing stones in glass houses and all that. But I feel like something that distinguishes different communities is totally the humor used, for better or worse. It’s why here we try to limit the amount of in-jokes- it can make a place inaccessible to newcomers if overdone.
This is interesting; I can’t say I’ve ever been on a social network where its discouraged to double-post! Definitely forums, though. And I know in some Pokemon Showdown chatrooms back in the early 10s, double posting was definitely looked down upon there
Yeah I think it depends on the forum - or sometimes even the specific thread. I hung out on a forum at the very beginning of social media (around MySpace, before Facebook), and the political threads could very much turn into a back and forth bickering, with people cherry picking small sections of someone’s post and then writing a ton in response.
… Probably not the healthiest environment to learn internet communication! Luckily a lot of my other forum interactions were more chill.
I think one difference between forums and other social media is that forum threads/topics are a linear conversation that everyone sees, while on many social media conversations are spread out between user’s profiles with shares and quote tweets and such. It’s easier to get the whole picture on forums; presumably most folks are at least skimming the prior posts before reading your most recent one. Your post isn’t a solitary paragraph mixed into their timeline of many other conversations and statements.
I absolutely see different social medias having different “dialects”.
As a tumblr main, there are certain things that I see in online communication which I consider to be indicative of a sort of “tumblr dialect”. Examples of this include, but are not limited to:
“Feeling normal” (as a way to say you are feeling extreme enthusiasm, excitement, derangement, etc)
Absurdist comedic hyperbole (“I’m going to rip off my door and tear it apart with my teeth”)
Describing one’s self as animalistic, usually in relation to the last point (chomping, biting, barking, “rattling my cage”, “pacing my enclosure”, “enrichment for my enclosure”, teeth / fangs…)
There are also multiple phrases that people on tumblr use that are like the way certain areas of the world have “sayings”. (For example, unless you’re from the South of the USA, you probably haven’t heard, “Heavens to Betsy.”) Examples of THIS include, but are not limited to:
“Piss on the poor” as a way to refer to poor reading comprehension. (Originates from an exchange which more or less goes, “The reading comprehension on this site is piss-poor” “How dare you say we should piss on the poor”)
“I’m bald” to mean “other” on a poll. (References a hair color poll, where the final option was, “Idk / I’m bald / Any other miscellaneous infinitely nuanced answer”)
“Blorbo” to reference a character that you’re particularly passionate about. (References a post where someone uses the phrase “blorbo from my shows” to describe seeing someone reference their favorite fictional character whom the reader does not recognize.) (I’ve also seen this one cross over to general fandom spaces.)
god thank you for mentioning the ‘tumblr accent’ LMAO i totally have it, it very much bleeds into my real life sometimes too. People typically just assume I am uniquely hilarious and cool (lie) but in fact I am repeating tumblr phrases and jokes…
As an autistic Tumblr user myself, a thesis about autism and Tumblr culture would be interesting to see indeed. Many Tumblr users do love to boast about Tumblr being a queer autistic website.
oh, by the by, if anyone herehasn’t read it yet i highly recommend gretchen mcculloch’s “because internet: understanding the new rules of language” ! it’s about internet communication and it’s a really neat read!!
