Internet Grammar Getting Worse

I wrote this article several months ago. It likely no longer makes any sense. Then again, Rick Astley could still be voted best act ever.

The internet has always been a butcher shop for the English language, but it seems to be getting worse. The problem is that while misspellings, misuse, bad grammar, and intentional, ironic bad grammar, were once relegated to sites I stayed away from, it’s now seeping into the sites I actually visit.

YouTube is massively popular, everyone seems to use it, it’s inescapable and I can’t help visiting it as much as everybody else. Comments are minimally moderated though, and this means that where I used to have only a small intake of “lol” and “!!!,” in my daily life, I now have an overwhelming dose.

The stupidity seems to be leaking; it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to read my favourite forums without becoming annoyed into distraction by obnoxious catchphrases. I’m not sure if there are any more catchphrases than there used to be, just that the latest generation is a lot more grating.

Where previously, catchphrases were several words long, internet memes seem to have become shorter over the years, so that now single words are the catchphrases. The internet has ruined for me the words “win,” “fail,” and “epic.” These three simple, common, useful words now make me shudder when I hear or read them.

That new movie is not “win,” nor is it “made of win,” and it is especially not “made of win and awesome.” Your anti-Scientology protest might have been great, even incredible, but was it actually “epic”? That new game may not be very good, but it is not “fail,” or even “epic fail.” The first time these words were ever used in this fashion might have been entertaining, but now I wonder if anyone using them even realizes that they’re doing so improperly.

It’s not just the grammar and overuse that are problems, but that the people using the words seem to think in binary, where movies, video games, and just about anything else can be described as being only the greatest or the worst thing “evar.” Nothing is decent or okay.

Almost as grating are the cat image macros, or “lolcats,” which are pictures of animals, usually cats, doing something “cute,” with some kind of text scrawled across the image. This text either conveys what the animal is supposedly thinking, or describing its action, both in saccharin-sweet baby talk.

If I wanted to roll my eyes at the way people talk to their pets, I’d leave my house, not spend all night in front of my computer. The internet is a cold, dangerous place, and posting images used to be for the purpose of disgusting fellow message board readers. Bring back gaping anuses; I’m sick of seeing your cat.

The only positive in the latest generation of internet trends is surely Rick Astley. Mr. Astley, and his 1980s masterwork “Never Gonna Give You Up,” have been endeared to me thanks to the “rickroll” phenomenon. I’ve never actually been “rickroll’d,” which means to trick someone into seeing the “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video (for those of you who don’t know, and if that’s you, what’s wrong with you?), but I sure have rocked out to that song many times (including right now, as I write this). My contribution to the 5 million+ views of the YouTube video have been voluntary and without remorse.

I think what separates “Never Gonna Give You Up” from win/fail/epic, and cat macros is that Astley’s use of the English language is not an attempt to revert to grammatically broken baby-talk. Where once, in an internet long ago, “all your base are belong to us” made fun of bad English, now the trend in catchphrases is to embrace it.