Video killed the radio star

We live in the age of the internet, and the internet has created a new age of communication. We're deciding the rules as we go, and in a lot of ways it's exciting. This is a whole new medium. I can read a forum post and the punctuation, capitalization, use of smiley faces, use of lolspeak or l33tspeak can all add a peculiar tone. It's hard to explain.

I've mentioned it to some people, about a Facebook message sounding abrupt, or a forum post coming across as snarky, but sometimes they just don't see it, and when I try to explain it things get complicated. "Can't you see how they punctuated this? How sarcastic the army of winking faces are? It's practically screaming attitude." Since the medium is still evolving things aren't black and white, but I love the evolution.

Things started out with smiley faces. Simple but useful emoticons that were able to convey when people were joking, when they were angry, and most importantly when they were being sarcastic. Sarcasm is still almost impossible to detect over a screen, and considering how prevalent it is in English it's pretty important to find a way to make it understandable without facial expressions or voice tone. Writing emails or forum posts was hell for people whose humor relied on sarcasm, but smiley faces made things easier.

Things continued to evolve past smiley faces. Use of punctuation or capitalization began to be used strategically to affect tone. People began to develop "dialects" based on where they frequented online. Avatars became popular, and two separate movements started; keeping the same avatar to be recognizable or using different avatars based on mood or atmosphere. Memes proliferated, and soon the use of a meme could add a new flavor to a conversation based on the meme, almost like internet-wide inside jokes. Lolcats, macros, and gifs started to become popular. Here's a way to put a face to a feeling or thought! Captain Picard is face-palming so this means X, Kanye is clapping so that means Y. Macros also became a way of bonding. Forum threads occasionally degenerate into macro sharefests when people with the same taste in movies or TV meet online. Thus macros can be used as peace offerings or a method of calming down an incensed thread with a subject change. In non-textual conversations it's unnecessary and impossible to hold up a clip of a kitten being tickled to show how happy you are, and yet that's the way we are communicating online. I wonder, sometimes, if we're moving towards an international language that can transcend different mother tongues.

I think one of the most interesting parts of internet communication is that social boundary lines are being redrawn. Ten years ago using a smiley face in a work related email would have been unthinkable but now it's not as taboo. Other boundaries are blurrier, and more difficult to define. We live in an age where social sites abound. Some people see no difference in referencing on Facebook what happened on Twitter, or mentioning a forum post on a separate blog. Other people view these things as compartments, like keeping private and work life separate. We're all in a state of flux right now as these new social structures are being created, and it's incredibly exciting. What are your thoughts on internet communication?