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Issue 07: Young Internet

Edited by Bo Burnham

We talk about The Internet a lot.

Engagement, Influencer, Cyberbully, Blogosphere, Online Dating, Social Networking, Micro-Blogging, User- Generated Content. Why is it that most of the terms we use in order to talk about The Internet sound as if they were coined by a fifty-year-old copy editor who still uses a flip phone? Because they probably were? The quality of the language itself—sterile, self-serious, and old—is the polar opposite of what it’s attempting to describe.

I have also talked about The Internet a lot and have tried to adjust my language to better suit it—to not sound like the dusty farts rambling on about hashtag culture. But The Internet has its own language, and it’s adjusting all the time, rapidly, aging like milk, and the thing you set out to describe honestly on its own terms will have redefined those same terms by the time you’ve finished describing it. You want to write an essay on memes? Good luck. How’s that dissertation on Gangnam Style coming along?

Eventually, I realized that maybe the problem wasn’t my words—it was my impulse to describe it in the first place. The Internet needs no describing; it is its own description. It should be observed. It should author itself. And the people who are currently truly living it—not observing it from the outside— the people who will one day grow up to be crusty, out-of-touch losers like me, banging their head against a wall wondering why they sound so damn old—are kids.

So let’s listen.

– Bo