The Internet!

                                                                           Internet!


Oh, The Internet. Many believe that this is man-kind's greatest creation; All the worlds discoveries, any information you could ever need available at the push of a button. This blog would not exist without it. I am not here to explain the bounteous information available on the internet. I am here to explain how I believe that the Internet is it's own culture, divided into many more diverse sub-cultures.




I believe that the Internet is house to the most unique culture on the planet. In this culture, anyone with any point of view can find at least somebody who feels the same way, over time this snowballs into it's own sub-division and spreads on. This is a great thing! Sometimes this group of likeminded people can create a certain degree of aggression, as people are used to hearing people agree with them, but in most instances it's good.




The internet has anything a culture could need. It has a common place, while this generally involves a country, It has the Internet. The internet is like a giant continent. Each country being a different part of the internet. All these different parts of the internet have their own dialects an pseudo-languages, used almost exclusively by them. The largest divide in internet culture is probably the divide between gaming and general social media. While both are available in most areas, a website generally focuses towards one or the other. For example; While there are 'games' on Facebook, It is by no means a gaming website. While Steam, on the other hand, Yes there are groups and some social networking, it is clear to see that Valve were focusing on gaming and they threw the social part in to co-ordinate gaming sessions among friends.




There are websites that do both. I can think of two websites in particular that do this very well. Reddit and YouTube work well with both sets of users with expertise. I use both sites regularly. YouTube is famous for it's 24-million-user subscription based Let's Players. It is almost as well known for it's vloggers, who take regular videos of their day-to-day lives. Reddit is a giant forum, which helps further my point and was part of my inspiration for this post. Reddit allows for the building of 'Sub-Reddits.' These Sub-Reddits are miniature forums dedicated to a single things. The URL is the general www.reddit.com, then followed by /r/[insert_topic_name_here].


My primary reason for believe the Internet is like it's own nation is that it has it's own language. The Internet isn't some stagnant thing. It is a living thriving community. There are words used almost exclusively on the Internet that would have no meaning if used outside of the internet context. Certain words have only been born or re-born out of necessity from internet communities. Words like gank would never have come to be if not as a global linking words for some communities. Certain anagrams have evolved into words from Reddit and YouTube. Things like FTFY, AFAIK and IIRC only exist because of simplification. Like many cultures we have our own forms of art, We gave new life to the meme. It's our mark on the world's culture.  It's with those pictures and transformations of cultural icons that we have impacted culture the world over.


Not only does the Internet affect the world by throwing it's own culture and language into the mix, It also compliments others. Thanks to where I often visit over the internet, I an frequented by speakers of other languages. I rarely go a day without seeing several Russian speakers. As such, when I realised that they didn't speak very much English, I took it upon myself to learn some Russian that would be most useful in the situations I am in. As such I can now hold a weak conversation, read Cyrillic and trade with relative ease. I have also picked up and actually used other European languages and I've even used Irish to communicate with another human being!


The internet by not be a place on earth. It may not be it's own state officially, but it does everything normal countries do and more. Thanks so much for sticking through to the end of this one!