fromonesurvivortoanother:

labrownrecluse:

monetizeyourcat:

ludwigfalalalala:

The internet ruined grammar for the contemporary generation this is known because as we all know old people on facebook have impeccable grammar compared to younger people

realtalk: the internet revived the epistolary and essay formats, which were previously held in reverence by a telegraphic and telephonic and audiovisual culture

olds are mad about internet talk because they treat writing letters as a class signifier and it’s part of our way of life indistinguishable from our broader literacy

we are living in the renaissance of the written word

there are a lot of upper middle class white kids on tumblr pissed off about it too

even though inane mediocre white douchebags like tayler okleee and lacie grean are more likely to be tumblr famous and picked up by the mainstream media, there are working class or working class origin poc who have thousands and thousands of followers. thats ultimately why they get so much harassment and bullshit because the medium itself is not set up to exclude them.

since their pasty dads and uncles arent policing tumblr throwing poc and lower class users out for not meeting some arbitrary standard like in the new york times or the new yorker, they have decided to take it upon themselves to try to weed out the most outspoken ones who they think belong at the bottom, like Black ppl/trans ppl/sex workers/ppl who present(or are read) as female/poor ppl etc. they go harder at people who are marginalized in multiple ways and they do it using harassment and threats of violence. tumblr support is full of the same assholes so theyre fucking useless.

one area where there is def a difference in language is when Black ppl use AAVE. i have seen tons of Black bloggers get harassed for it when most of tumblr is throwing the grammar and spelling conventions of a wide variety of languages out the window. but somehow AAVE is the one exception that is crossing the line, unless non-Black ppl are appropriating it. then its mysteriously okay.

its a renaissance for us because we can interact with each other as long as we have some way of accessing the internet, but its not without its costs for people who have to put up with all this shit just for daring to be heard when privileged pieces of shit want to shut them up.

what a lot of people do not realize is that (popular or common) english tends to develop and shift towards ease-of-use more than anything. this is why “New Orleans” became “n’awlins” and “you all” became “y’all”, and why people say “sher-bert” instead of “sher-bey”, and so on.

the same is true of dialogue on the internet

this is why people make posts like this

without end stops.

what people do not realize is that this format directly mimics natural speech patterns and even breathing

and it also fits how we tend to think in phrases instead of long paragraphs.

i think it’s a kind of poetry, really.

it’s funny when i get messages criticizing my capitalization or punctuation, because i know exactly how these rules work— i just choose not to follow them for the sake of saving myself energy

also i feel like i can communicate my ideas more clearly— not to everyone, but to the people i most want to communicate with

which is ironic since punctuation and other grammar rules are made to standardize and clarify writing. (of course, lots of people know that this is not true.)

tl;dr english is not set in stone and if you think it should be then you are just silly