Reading Because Internet made me wish I'd become a linguist! McCulloch's takes on online language are interesting, fun, and political--things I want from a job. (Plus when your job is studying the internet, cat content is part of the deal) Strangely, though it was a fast read for nonfiction, I could have stood it being a little shorter. Or maybe some chapters are just of less interest than others. About 100 pages at the end are the index and bibliography, so it's actually not that long. Because of all the notes, I might recommend reading the book in print. My Libby download didn't handle endnotes well, so I blew them off.

I made more than 25 highlights in the text. Here are some of the most compelling"



Obviously, as an internet scholar, I'm a print culture nerd, so what I like about this sentiment is that it's apt for zines, as well OR MORE SO. This following quote is something zine librarians say, too



TIL: "acronym" is a mid-20th century term. I bet it was coined by librarians.

A measure of when a term invented in BIPOC communities has become coopted: when it starts appearing in Buzzfeed headlines, as was the case with "af" in 2014, which started in LA and Miami five years earlier. I wish she's spent more time, maybe even a whole chapter on the Black internet, though.

And here are some more bits that are relevant to zines, especially how girls and women changed the culture



And of how much interest girls and women's role in furthering language is to male researchers lolsob



Furthering my (as yet unwritten) theory about how girls and women changed zine culture



And here's one for all the a-holes who don't want to use they pronouns because the construction isn't grammatical



Name drops of two people I know: Jessamyn West and Michelle McSweeney!

Exclamation points (which she calls exclamation marks) in email messages as emotional labor!!!






Finally, for some olde linguistic nerdery: Linguist Llama.