Abstract For Final Paper.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us:
The Effects of Internet Culture on Speech, Humor and Human Interaction.

The current generation of young adults is the first to be raised with access to the internet as children. The evolution of quick and easy communication has allowed people to spread things such as jokes and news like never before, reaching new audiences both on and offline. The internet affects the way that people relate to and speak with each other, and has resulted in a completely new vocabulary that is spoken online. As online events and jokes increasingly bleed into the real world through television and other media, the swiftly changing culture of the internet is becoming more integrated with the daily lives of people. The intent of my paper is to explore the evolution of internet culture and language, and the effects these have both on and offline. The impact that image boards and various other internet communities have had on the slang that people, mainly young adults, use today is so far-reaching that most people are not aware of it at all. To actively participate in internet communities, one must speak a patois of English, in-jokes and be able to understand obscure references to television, video games, movies and popular culture in general. The “language” that has evolved is much like the multiple forms of Spanish that are spoken in the border towns of America, as discussed in Gloria Anzaldua's "How to Tame a Wild Tongue". The communities themselves can be related to Henri Lefebvre’s essay, “The Social Text”, in the way that all of the people in the communities participate in the shaping of the “landscape” and language of the community, and as a result of intercommunication between various websites, the internet as a whole.