Speaker 1: Coolso media, that's going excusing.
Speaker 2: So the Internet is changing the way you talk and
Speaker 2: hold people's attention, and it's literally changing the way that
Speaker 2: we communicate on a fundamental level.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, you guys didn't like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's try this delivery of the message instead. The
Speaker 2: last year. Okay, for this, you do have to imagine
Speaker 2: that I'm doing my makeup effortlessly while openly trauma dumping.
Speaker 2: Let's get the music going again.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The last year, during the peak of my career, I
Speaker 2: uprooted my life after getting no fault evicted from my
Speaker 2: apartment so two Vegas venture capital dickheads could move in,
Speaker 2: which they definitely didn't, and move back to New England
Speaker 2: to be with my dad. And the real reason was
Speaker 2: that I wanted to date some guy in Maine who
Speaker 2: ultimately broke up with me after showing me David Cronenberg's
Speaker 2: The Fly, which I think about a lot.
Speaker 3: How is that?
Speaker 2: Are you listening? Are you paying attention? Because in certain algorithms,
Speaker 2: these two approaches that I just tried makeup trauma dumping
Speaker 2: and screaming like there's a bomb in the room, these
Speaker 2: two approaches are still the easiest way to get people's
Speaker 2: attention in short form algorithms. There's more ways than that, obviously,
Speaker 2: but these are kind of the time honored traditions. Personally,
Speaker 2: I skew more towards reckless oversharing than Volume one thousand alarmists.
Speaker 2: But if you're neither, yeah, you might have a hard
Speaker 2: time reaching people on the Internet. Right now, this is
Speaker 2: sixteenth Minute, the podcast where most weeks we talk too
Speaker 2: and about the Internet's characters of the day, but this
Speaker 2: week it's a side quest episode. Today we're going to
Speaker 2: speak to a gen Z linguist about how the algorithm
Speaker 2: has fundamentally changed language and what the implications of that
Speaker 2: might be. And I have to say, I feel so
Speaker 2: fucking old talking about this, But the term for these
Speaker 2: ways that we communicate to break through to the algorithm
Speaker 2: is called algo speak.
Speaker 3: Basically, the way we.
Speaker 2: Perform for the algorithm in order to capture not even
Speaker 2: people's attention necessarily, but the algorithm's attention that delivers our
Speaker 2: content to people. We've talked about it a lot on
Speaker 2: this show. I've talked to reporters on the subject and
Speaker 2: to content creators who are beholden to it. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's easy to dunk on these pretty identifiable passes to
Speaker 2: get our attention through speech, through memes, through editing techniques,
Speaker 2: through duration of video. But when you're living depends on it,
Speaker 2: and the algorithm itself remains opaque.
Speaker 3: What option do.
Speaker 2: You have but to play the game start a podcast,
Speaker 2: of course, although in a podcast environment that is increasingly
Speaker 2: reliant on video clips posted two algorithm spaces like TikTok,
Speaker 2: YouTube and Instagram, that's increasingly untrue. But our guest today,
Speaker 2: who is both a professional linguist and a hashtag content
Speaker 2: hashtag creator, thinks that this is a very important conversation
Speaker 2: to have, and I agree because most recently he feels
Speaker 2: that it's fundamentally changed the way that our elections are run.
Speaker 2: So as a treat here's my conversation with the etymology
Speaker 2: Nerd aka Adam Alexic, a Harvard educated linguist who's built
Speaker 2: a career across social media platforms talking about linguistics and
Speaker 2: more specifically algo speak since he was a teenager.
Speaker 4: Babe, Wake Up.
Speaker 5: The Oxford English diction just published their shortlist for the
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four Ward of the Year. The top contenders
Speaker 5: so far include brain Row, Demuur and Lore, but the
Speaker 5: one I've had my eye on the most is slot
Speaker 5: for low quality AI generated content.
Speaker 2: He's also written a book called Algo Speak, How Social
Speaker 2: Media is Transforming the Future of Language that will be
Speaker 2: published next year, and he came on to tell us
Speaker 2: how the algorithmic communication has and will continue to change
Speaker 2: how we understand each other and who our words can reach.
Speaker 3: Here's our conversation.
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Adam on the Internet. I'm known as etymology Nerd.
Speaker 5: I'm a content creator and a linguist focusing on how
Speaker 5: social media is changing language.
Speaker 2: I am so glad that you are working on what
Speaker 2: you're doing, and that you're a content creator as well.
Speaker 2: In my experience, most of what I've se about algorithmic
Speaker 2: speak is by people who aren't creating content themselves. It
Speaker 2: feels a little disjointed. How did you first get interested
Speaker 2: in etymology? Was content creation first?
Speaker 3: Was this interest for How did this sort of come
Speaker 3: together for you as a career?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what you just said is super interesting because I
Speaker 5: don't think you can properly study it unless you're also
Speaker 5: in the weeds yourself, Like, unless you're like on TikTok yourself.
Speaker 5: You can't like talk about the new TikTok words or
Speaker 5: how algorithms are shaping. Like if you feel it as
Speaker 5: a creator, you really do feel it, And academic linguistics
Speaker 5: is like super far behind. I mean, you need to
Speaker 5: make sure a word sticks around, you need to make
Speaker 5: sure it works as a research paper or something. And
Speaker 5: by the time these guys have all their PhDs, they're
Speaker 5: thirty years old and they're not caught up with the
Speaker 5: new stuff anymore.
Speaker 3: Their internet ancient, right right.
Speaker 5: So my story as I started, I just started with
Speaker 5: like an etymology blog. I was talking about word origins
Speaker 5: since like tenth grade. So I've been running that for
Speaker 5: like a while. Then I was graduating college with a
Speaker 5: linguistics degree, and I started having to asked myself the
Speaker 5: same question everybody with a linguistics degree ask themselves, which
Speaker 5: is like, what do I do now? And that's when
Speaker 5: I started making content. And so for about a year
Speaker 5: and a half now, I've been making short form videos
Speaker 5: on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as the.
Speaker 5: Atomologineer and done a lot of fun. But I have
Speaker 5: felt kind of this interesting balance between my content creator
Speaker 5: side and my linguist side, and I keep studying both
Speaker 5: myself and every time I'm on social media just consuming
Speaker 5: it passively. I also can't really turn off the little
Speaker 5: more analytical part, like why are they saying it this way?
Speaker 4: Why is it phrasing this way?
Speaker 2: You know, I totally agree that actually pay our content
Speaker 2: creator yourself is kind of important to understanding it, just
Speaker 2: like the internal anxiety of like, if I don't make
Speaker 2: this adjustment, I will totally functionally disappear in this space.
Speaker 5: And we are ultimately like super subservient to whatever the
Speaker 5: whims of the algorithm are. I remember last summer, TikTok
Speaker 5: announced that they are now only to be paying people
Speaker 5: who make videos longer than a minute. So now all
Speaker 5: of our content, which used to be like under a minute,
Speaker 5: that's how it started out, subtly, I had to shift
Speaker 5: to slightly medium form if that was short form. The
Speaker 5: way we're telling our stories changes with that. What's crazy
Speaker 5: to me is that, like our stories, our storytelling is
Speaker 5: always shaped by the medium in which we communicate. When
Speaker 5: we didn't have writing or whatever, we used oral tradition
Speaker 5: and we had to rhyme our stories because that was
Speaker 5: the only way to remember, like the long chunks of
Speaker 5: text like the Odyssey or whatever.
Speaker 4: Our stories were shaped by the lack of a written medium.
Speaker 5: And then we have written mediums and we start using chapters,
Speaker 5: and we start breaking down things in the subdivision, and
Speaker 5: our stories again change. We serialize things with newspapers or
Speaker 5: storytelling is changing with our medium. And again now we
Speaker 5: are in this algorithmic medium where the way we communicate
Speaker 5: is shaped by the algorithm. It's respondent to what the
Speaker 5: algorithm awards, and in the end, that's always engagement optimization.
Speaker 2: When it comes to communicating and needing to work around
Speaker 2: the algorithm to communicate effectively. Or I guess to the
Speaker 2: most people, what are there any common misconceptions that you
Speaker 2: see either on the content creation inside or just in
Speaker 2: the way that it's perceived by people who don't make
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 5: Maybe not a misconception per se, but an interesting miscommunication
Speaker 5: that inevitably is going to happen every single time someone
Speaker 5: talks to someone on the internet. When I make a video,
Speaker 5: I maybe have like an idea of who my audience is.
Speaker 5: I like have a general concept of who's going to
Speaker 5: consume my video, But in the end, the algorithm is
Speaker 5: going to push that to whoever the algorithm pushes to
Speaker 5: They might push that to a different audience. They might
Speaker 5: push this to a larger or smaller group than I thought,
Speaker 5: and maybe a completely different demographic. And so I'm miscommunicating
Speaker 5: inherently in what I say. In the algorithmic sense. This
Speaker 5: is especially sailing when we think about filter bubbles and
Speaker 5: how words can travel, ideas can travel out of echo
Speaker 5: chambers and to the broader population when they spread as memes.
Speaker 5: It's something that it's very hard to think about because
Speaker 5: you consume content and you're like, oh, this was made
Speaker 5: for me, and I make content. I think, oh, I'm
Speaker 5: making this for whoever's going to consume it. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of nodes in this network that are completely lost
Speaker 5: when think about what an insane mess social media is.
Speaker 4: If you like zoom out.
Speaker 3: Going to your piece a little bit.
Speaker 2: I really appreciated how you pretty clearly contextualize this communication
Speaker 2: shift that you're talking about, and you specifically use the
Speaker 2: term viral communication.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me a little bit about what that is?
Speaker 5: Yeah, In the past, public communication has always differed from
Speaker 5: one to one. Private communication for just having a conversation,
Speaker 5: it's just you and me, right, But if I'm speaking
Speaker 5: on a soapbox to a crowd. Everybody in the crowd
Speaker 5: is going to hear my message, and that's called broadcast communication.
Speaker 5: One person broadcasting their message. And traditionally media has had
Speaker 5: this type of broadcast communication over the radio. The example
Speaker 5: I used in the substack posts you talked about was
Speaker 5: FDR during his fireside chats. He would just send his
Speaker 5: message out to sixty million Americans. You use it to
Speaker 5: dispel misinformation and use it to explain his policies. But
Speaker 5: it's one person broadcasting their message to sixty million Americans
Speaker 5: at once. There's no scrolling away, there's no sharing this
Speaker 5: to another, you know, to a friend. It's just one
Speaker 5: person to a bunch of people. And with most media
Speaker 5: it's been like that radio television, it's people who tune
Speaker 5: in and hear the message. Since the late twenty tens,
Speaker 5: we've had a huge shift towards viral communication, which is
Speaker 5: a different style away from badcast communication. Viral communication depends
Speaker 5: on shares, and it depends on engagement. And if I
Speaker 5: send out a message on my TikTok, it's not going
Speaker 5: to immediately be seen by sixty million Americans. That'd be crazy,
Speaker 5: and no politician can speak like that anymore. Joe Biden, Kamala,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. These people cannot immediately send their message to
Speaker 5: six million Americans. They have to rely also on the algorithm.
Speaker 5: That means that they have to make their message such
Speaker 5: as the algorithm spreads it. And the algorithm is only
Speaker 5: going to spread your message if it's good at getting interaction,
Speaker 5: if it's good for the platform, because the platforms business
Speaker 5: priorities always come first, and their priorities are to keep
Speaker 5: you on the app for as long as possible. So
Speaker 5: they're going to see if the initial message gets interactions,
Speaker 5: gets shares, and then they're going to push it further. Also,
Speaker 5: the shares themselves are going to push it. But it's
Speaker 5: this sort of structure where instead of a top down
Speaker 5: one person to a bunch of people communication, it's one
Speaker 5: person to some people to a little more people and
Speaker 5: then it spreads from there, but through this network where
Speaker 5: more and more people are getting their content from some
Speaker 5: previous person up the line who's already consumed it.
Speaker 2: How do we see these algorithms attempt to be gammed
Speaker 2: by different candidates and different campaigns. Were there things that
Speaker 2: stuck out to you as particularly effective or like oh no,
Speaker 2: the whatever the boomers wifted it on this one.
Speaker 5: A lot of the stuff is stuff people have been
Speaker 5: worrying about since twenty sixteen, like echo chambers and filter bubbles.
Speaker 5: What I said earlier about this audience you think you're
Speaker 5: speaking to is not the audience you're speaking to. And
Speaker 5: meme based communication I think is also critical, so one
Speaker 5: they can build up their core filter bubbles. The Kamala
Speaker 5: people had everybody was consuming their Brat videos. Everybody who
Speaker 5: was watching Brad videos was voting for Kamla. But no,
Speaker 5: none of the Trump supporters were getting that. And all
Speaker 5: the Trump supporters are getting completely different style of content
Speaker 5: like probably the same people are getting like Haktua and
Speaker 5: What's Up Brother videos like more in the Mana sphere
Speaker 5: like this kind of entirely different group that the Brat
Speaker 5: people are not getting these videos at all. So we
Speaker 5: have these like two separate filter bubbles. Occasionally memes do
Speaker 5: trickle out and through these filter bubbles, but with memes
Speaker 5: always spread ideas. And I really like to say that
Speaker 5: language is interchangeable with memes on the Internet, and that's
Speaker 5: all interchangeable with metadata too, because whatever the algorithm picks
Speaker 5: up as like this is trending. Oh, if Brat is trending,
Speaker 5: then it's going to push Brat as a trending thing,
Speaker 5: because algorithms push trends to keep you on the app.
Speaker 5: And then creators make more Brat content they want to
Speaker 5: make a living, and then consumers consume more Brat content,
Speaker 5: and so we're in this cycle of it becoming more
Speaker 5: and more trendy, and so trends are blown up from
Speaker 5: niche communities. Sometimes ideas do stay in these communities, but
Speaker 5: sometimes they blow up on a larger scale. And this
Speaker 5: is especially important when we're talking about communicating political ideas.
Speaker 5: Back in twenty sixteen, we had like Pepe the Frog,
Speaker 5: we had all these sort of extremes ideas that like,
Speaker 5: you don't understand how crazy it gets at the core
Speaker 5: of the filter bubble, like the cats and dogs type
Speaker 5: stuff that like people on the firpree don't see on
Speaker 5: the on the like the super deep like part of
Speaker 5: Facebook where they are spreading these memes that it's not
Speaker 5: something like a lot of people and more progressive chambers
Speaker 5: are hearing at all, and we're hearing maybe things that
Speaker 5: sound a little more sane on the outside but like
Speaker 5: deep in the center, like the people who are most
Speaker 5: inside this network are getting the Q and on immigrants
Speaker 5: eating our pets kind of thing.
Speaker 2: I think for the people outside of that bubble, hearing
Speaker 2: that comment for the first time is completely shocking. Where
Speaker 2: if you're inside of this separate, algorithmic bubble, it's something
Speaker 2: you've been hearing for a while.
Speaker 4: You're in very different chambers.
Speaker 5: And the style of political communication to one audience doesn't
Speaker 5: reach a broad audience. So it's sort of a new
Speaker 5: style of dog whistling almost where you can expect your
Speaker 5: core group to hear this really radical message, let's say,
Speaker 5: and then on the outside is more palatable. And if
Speaker 5: you're not super deep into the groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are there examples that you can think of of
Speaker 2: people It doesn't need to be a politician who have
Speaker 2: been able to navigate around this to cut through or
Speaker 2: is it just impossible to.
Speaker 3: Do at this point?
Speaker 5: It's impossib unless using badcast communication. I think if you're
Speaker 5: using viral communication, you need to be communicating in different ways.
Speaker 5: I as a creator, I make some videos that I
Speaker 5: know aren't going to go viral, but I know that
Speaker 5: they're for my core audience who cares about like linguistic passion,
Speaker 5: So I make sometimes like more niche linguistic topics that
Speaker 5: I think my core audience is going to like, so
Speaker 5: I retain my core audience. And then I also make
Speaker 5: these broader, relatable videos about language and names. Names are
Speaker 5: very popular likes to share to the people who have
Speaker 5: this name or whatever, or trends, trending words, things that
Speaker 5: get interactions and are pushburger in the algorithm. So I
Speaker 5: know ahead of time a lot of times that my
Speaker 5: videos are going to do better than other videos. But
Speaker 5: I'm making them for different kind of groups. I know
Speaker 5: somewhere for my core groups, some are for my outside groups.
Speaker 5: In the end, though, I am modifying my speech for
Speaker 5: what I think is going to go viral, and I
Speaker 5: make videos about things that are trending because I know
Speaker 5: that's the best way to reach a bigger audience.
Speaker 2: From a creative standpoint, having to navigate and observe this
Speaker 2: constantly changing algorithm, do you find at all creatively invigorating
Speaker 2: as someone who who's making stuff all the time. Is
Speaker 2: it frustrating?
Speaker 3: Are there things?
Speaker 2: Because this is something that I have felt at different points,
Speaker 2: there are things that I would love to put out
Speaker 2: into the world.
Speaker 3: But sometimes you're like, I really.
Speaker 2: Think no one would see this just based on what
Speaker 2: I've seen cut through totally.
Speaker 5: On a personal level, it's easy to feel frustrated that
Speaker 5: I have to conform my speech. I talk in a
Speaker 5: different accent online because I know it's like better for
Speaker 5: retaining my audience.
Speaker 4: I use more extreme language.
Speaker 5: I have to sometimes issue nuance, like I can't get
Speaker 5: as into the weeds as I would like to get
Speaker 5: and sometimes something can be misconstrued.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I try to present things as best as I can,
Speaker 5: but inevitably something will be lost. I do think on
Speaker 5: another level, like people always artists throughout history, I've always
Speaker 5: had to conform to their medium like but fundamentally, I
Speaker 5: do think there are also patterns in what retain human attention,
Speaker 5: Like superlative language has always been good for getting our attention.
Speaker 5: That's not a new human behavior.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more of my chat with Adam.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I recently realized that one
Speaker 2: of my cats is more or less a Ringer visually
Speaker 2: and behavior wise, or Donkey from Shrek. Somebody, and here's
Speaker 2: the rest of my conversation with Adam Alexic the etymology Nerd.
Speaker 2: I want to ask a little bit about specifically about
Speaker 2: that the vocal shift, because as I was, I read
Speaker 2: that in your piece, but I was like, I want
Speaker 2: to understand when you're shifting your voice, what are you
Speaker 2: shifting it towards?
Speaker 3: How are you shifting inflection?
Speaker 2: What is like TikTok voice that you've found to be effective.
Speaker 4: Well, I call it the influencer accent.
Speaker 5: And there is there's the most stereotype one like the
Speaker 5: hey guys, say, I'm doing my makeup routine. There's like
Speaker 5: a little up talk there. There's like, uh, maybe sometimes
Speaker 5: we'll do a little vocal fry. They'll stress certain words
Speaker 5: to keep your attention. Now, I don't do that style.
Speaker 5: There are many different styles. That's that's the most like
Speaker 5: cliched one. There's I do what I call an educational
Speaker 5: influencer action, Like I still I stress certain words, I
Speaker 5: sound really excited. I'm gonna talk to you like this
Speaker 5: and it's gonna hold your attention for a minute because
Speaker 5: that's what I need to do. But also you'll see
Speaker 5: people like mister beasts as well. If you look at
Speaker 5: any mister Beast video, this man does not speak like
Speaker 5: that in real life, not even close, and like he's.
Speaker 4: Also gonna exaggerate. Everything's gonna say, I just built this
Speaker 4: huge island. I'd throw a bunch of influencers on like
Speaker 4: it's gonna talk like this, right.
Speaker 5: These are all different accents, but all geared to getting
Speaker 5: your attention, and there are some similarities.
Speaker 4: They'll they're typically used up talk.
Speaker 5: You hang on every last word because it sounds like
Speaker 5: it's unfinished, so he keeps going and you want to
Speaker 5: hear most. I'm gonna I'm still gonna stress certain words
Speaker 5: because if your attention starts to drift and I say
Speaker 5: something that sounds important, you're gonna lock back in and
Speaker 5: you're less likely to scroll away. Yeah, the influencer actions
Speaker 5: would coming in different styles. All kind of do evolve
Speaker 5: out of this attempt to hold on to your attention.
Speaker 2: When I returned to old content that I like, like
Speaker 2: for example, if I'm going back to a like YouTube
Speaker 2: video essay that I enjoyed five years ago, it sounds different,
Speaker 2: the length is different, the delivery is different, the visuals
Speaker 2: that you would see a lot around that time are different,
Speaker 2: and it is like you're saying an extension of art
Speaker 2: but it feels fascinating that you're like, oh, if this
Speaker 2: came out today, I don't know, you know, if it
Speaker 2: ever would.
Speaker 1: Have reached me.
Speaker 5: Mister Beasts just one of his employees leaked a manual
Speaker 5: about a month ago of like is like Mister Beast's
Speaker 5: Handbook to succeeding in Mister Beasts productions, And it was
Speaker 5: this book he wrote for his employees about like how
Speaker 5: he goes viral, and I found it fascinating both on
Speaker 5: linguistic level and as a creator again kind of looking
Speaker 5: at this from both lenses. But he explicitly mentioned in
Speaker 5: the book that he wants to make things as extreme
Speaker 5: as possible. He wants to constantly he talks about retention
Speaker 5: so much. Every single page talks about re multiple times,
Speaker 5: because that is the one thing you really need to
Speaker 5: hold on to the audience. And then then YouTube's going
Speaker 5: to push the video to more people. So it's like
Speaker 5: this kind of top level. You hit your first group,
Speaker 5: you retain that audience, and then YouTube's like, oh, people
Speaker 5: like this, so they send it to more people and
Speaker 5: that's viral communication.
Speaker 3: Again, mister Piece is so diabolical, it's he's quite scary.
Speaker 4: He's very intentional with it.
Speaker 5: It's like he's yeah, like you read the handbook, and
Speaker 5: I mean, any I'm manipulating you. Any creator is manipulating you.
Speaker 5: If we're going viral, that means we are playing with
Speaker 5: your emotions and your attention. The only way to get
Speaker 5: attention is to do that. Like as if I say
Speaker 5: this is the best something, this is the most interesting something.
Speaker 5: That's usually how I start my videos, like with some
Speaker 5: kind of crazy claim like that, and then that manipulates
Speaker 5: you a little bit because you're like, wow, the best something.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a lot of interesting somethings, but only
Speaker 5: one thing can be the most interesting something. So now
Speaker 5: now I hooked you by playing with the psychological thing
Speaker 5: that all humans have.
Speaker 2: That's another sort of shift I've noticed in my own
Speaker 2: media consumption habits over over time, where even if it's
Speaker 2: a creator I really like, usually I will not ignore,
Speaker 2: but like assume that how they open the video is
Speaker 2: probably exaggerated or not true something that you're like, okay,
Speaker 2: I trust that they'll get to the nuance, but that
Speaker 2: can't be right, right.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a bit of a deal with a
Speaker 5: doubt because like if I mean I at least feel
Speaker 5: like I'm trying to make good content. I feel like
Speaker 5: a lot of people also feel that. But you cannot
Speaker 5: be successfuls and influenci unless you somewhat play into these things.
Speaker 5: And I mean on a personal level, I just try
Speaker 5: to strike a balance where I do, like try to
Speaker 5: cite my sources in my video. I do try to
Speaker 5: like not make like actually fake claims, but just maybe
Speaker 5: have purplyized like slightly to the point of where I'm
Speaker 5: still not like misinforming. But it's it's it's something I
Speaker 5: think about frequently and as I consume other media and
Speaker 5: think about that a lot.
Speaker 2: When you are because you're creating content on multiple platforms,
Speaker 2: do you change your presentation from platform to platform?
Speaker 3: If so, what does that look like?
Speaker 4: Great question?
Speaker 5: So for tik talk and Instagram, I'm just posting like
Speaker 5: the same one minute video across all platforms. Most creators
Speaker 5: do that for like the short videos, so there's a
Speaker 5: lot of similarity between those three platforms. I'm branching onto
Speaker 5: long form YouTube, where I do speak a little more
Speaker 5: relaxed and have.
Speaker 4: Less of this feeling of pressure.
Speaker 5: And I also spend a lot of time recently writing
Speaker 5: on substack and I just finished writing a book, and
Speaker 5: these are super long form and I can really nuance
Speaker 5: my thoughts, and I think it's most authentic to how
Speaker 5: I actually want to communicate. But even for books, I modify,
Speaker 5: like I use maybe more correct English grammar whatever that means,
Speaker 5: but less less like colloquial slang usage than I might
Speaker 5: use in a video. And the slang usage is actually
Speaker 5: maybe more authentic to how I speak casually. So there
Speaker 5: are each medium does constrain you in different ways, and
Speaker 5: that's I don't want to be too alarmist about this.
Speaker 5: I don't want to come in and say like, this
Speaker 5: is the end of the English language that like every
Speaker 5: languist tries to tell people, it's never going to be
Speaker 5: the ying.
Speaker 3: That way to start the video, right, which is this
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 4: Of the English language is yeah, let's find.
Speaker 2: Out that that is actually One of the few things
Speaker 2: I do find creatively interest is like, if I have
Speaker 2: to express this idea in three different ways, can I
Speaker 2: do it effectively in three different ways?
Speaker 3: That's like one of the elements I find a little
Speaker 3: more fun.
Speaker 5: I really like about the Internet is that it has
Speaker 5: democratized to public communication. So in the past, like I
Speaker 5: mentioned FDR because the few examples we have of people
Speaker 5: who really were using broadcast communication were the elites, like
Speaker 5: the politicians, the reporters, the people who all went through
Speaker 5: like elite universities or whatever, who all have like fancy jobs.
Speaker 4: These are the only people who are able to communicate you.
Speaker 4: In the past.
Speaker 5: And since YouTube, since now, especially now in short form
Speaker 5: video platforms, anybody has this platform, the elites no longer
Speaker 5: control communication, and in that sense, there's less maybe manufacturing
Speaker 5: consent of what media you're getting. There's more people criticizing
Speaker 5: the governing, which I think.
Speaker 4: Is a good thing.
Speaker 5: I think that's our democratization seems pretty good to me.
Speaker 5: And on another level, on the linguistic level, there's less
Speaker 5: of that formalization of language because when language is controlled
Speaker 5: by elites, they're going to impose their grammatical rules, like oh,
Speaker 5: you have to capitalize this or not use this word
Speaker 5: or whatever. On TikTok, people just talk how they authentically
Speaker 5: talk a little bit closer to that. At least, there
Speaker 5: there's more slang words happening because of that, because they
Speaker 5: feel like they're able to use the language that they
Speaker 5: want to use, and I think that's pretty great, so
Speaker 5: again for pros and cons here, I do think it's
Speaker 5: not universally categorically bad.
Speaker 2: The way that you closed your piece that what you
Speaker 2: cited a speech that I had not heard of but
Speaker 2: on paper is incredibly weird because you know, you say.
Speaker 5: Adam, the stigmas of Australia, the government is best Australian
Speaker 5: senator who like used brainwrot words in her speech about
Speaker 5: how this government is capping and then she urges you
Speaker 5: to vote for a government with more aura. But like,
Speaker 5: let's look at why she's using that language. She's using
Speaker 5: that language because she knows that clip of her is
Speaker 5: going to go viral. It's very clever in her part
Speaker 5: and it did. It did go super viral and multiple
Speaker 5: platforms because she used this kind of language which evokes like,
Speaker 5: which gets shares, which like gets people's attention, so paradoxically,
Speaker 5: like it feeds back into itself.
Speaker 3: That's so rare.
Speaker 2: A shout out to the twenty two year old that
Speaker 2: almost certainly wrote that we are constantly presented with the
Speaker 2: idea of the in the US in particular, and there's
Speaker 2: truth to it, but I feel like it's more complicated
Speaker 2: based on what you're describing that, you know, politics are
Speaker 2: getting crazier or politics are getting.
Speaker 3: Weirder or worse.
Speaker 2: But I think what your work sort of indicates is sure,
Speaker 2: that may be true, but also there is some strategy
Speaker 2: to behaving in a more elevated way if you want
Speaker 2: to get your message to anybody, like you can't really.
Speaker 5: Be boring, right, But it's an underline, like I do
Speaker 5: keep coming back to this thing with any linguistic change
Speaker 5: that I writer talk about, that these are still underlying
Speaker 5: human behaviors.
Speaker 4: We're still humans.
Speaker 5: That's not changed, right, And humans always going to adapt
Speaker 5: to their medium, and they're always going to be using
Speaker 5: language in new ways and changing it. And we're just
Speaker 5: doing that in a new way, which is short form video,
Speaker 5: And that is worth talking about because because it does
Speaker 5: somewhat change.
Speaker 4: Your language as well.
Speaker 5: Emergently, it's caused new words to emerge faster, and it's
Speaker 5: caused memes to come and go quicker than they used to.
Speaker 5: So like a word might be popular, like demurre was
Speaker 5: popular for like a week, and then it was like,
Speaker 5: at least in my circles, it's not being used. I
Speaker 5: talked to my my ten year old cousin the other
Speaker 5: day and she and her friends all say demure still,
Speaker 5: and I couldn't help thinking about the filter bubble thing that,
Speaker 5: like maybe I was in the initial filter bubble of
Speaker 5: who like Jules Lebron was talking to when she started
Speaker 5: making the demure videos, but now it's filtered down to
Speaker 5: middle schoolers, and middle schoolers are they're not consuming that content,
Speaker 5: but they're getting it from people who are using it,
Speaker 5: and so like it trickles down almost to all the people.
Speaker 5: So words and ideas the same. This is also like
Speaker 5: an idea spreading with that. And I talked to my
Speaker 5: twelve year old male causin he was talking about sigmas
Speaker 5: and I don't know that word emerged out of the
Speaker 5: man of spherest so like, I don't think he's like
Speaker 5: getting like black filled here. But it is like interesting
Speaker 5: how these ideas and words travel through networks and filter
Speaker 5: down to children. And that's maybe something I'm a little
Speaker 5: concerned about. But also the words themselves I've just dressed
Speaker 5: are not bad maybe just yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's definitely a double edged sword.
Speaker 2: I think I have a tendency to be a bit
Speaker 2: of an algorithm alarmist, partially in the way it causes
Speaker 2: people to communicate, but also just the opaqueness of it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, the opaqueness is something that that constantly just really
Speaker 5: deeply frustrates me as a creator. Instagram doesn't give you
Speaker 5: customer support unless you've purchased metaverified. TikTok doesn't tell you
Speaker 5: anything nless you're in their special like secret TikTok program.
Speaker 5: Even so, like they don't communicate to creators really what
Speaker 5: their expectations are. They might just take down a video
Speaker 5: or they might just whatever. So creators are like especially
Speaker 5: afraid to take on the algorithm. And that's like how
Speaker 5: we get outgo speak like words like unlive instead of
Speaker 5: like suicide or something because you're afraid it. But like
Speaker 5: you can still say the word suicide. Just the algorithm
Speaker 5: might suppress your video, it might not. They don't even
Speaker 5: tell you we're getting like productive language changed happening because
Speaker 5: of people being afraid of the algorithm or people trying
Speaker 5: to hijack the algorithm in ways that they they might
Speaker 5: might work, might not even work. But if you start
Speaker 5: by using a certain word, like you say Sigmas of Australia,
Speaker 5: that probably is gonna better for the algorithm. But it's
Speaker 5: also gonna perpetuate the word stigma, and then maybe my
Speaker 5: my twelve year old cousin starts using it. Personally, I
Speaker 5: try to also not use algorithms as much as possible.
Speaker 5: I don't like how Spotify pushes the same trending song
Speaker 5: every time I finish a playlist, so I've turned off
Speaker 5: the AutoPlay. I don't like like on TikTok. I sometimes
Speaker 5: get like a video of like somebody playing jazz, and
Speaker 5: I really like listening to jazz, but I feel this
Speaker 5: urge to scroll away, and I ask myself, what is
Speaker 5: this urge coming for my Because my brain wants the
Speaker 5: dopamine hit It was slightly better next video, So I've
Speaker 5: been sort of trying to train myself to stop and
Speaker 5: listen to the jazz video. In its entirety, it is
Speaker 5: rough because we are kind of getting trained to have
Speaker 5: shorter attention spans, for sure.
Speaker 2: The algo speak is also something I find really fascinating
Speaker 2: and also seems to have shifted as time goes on.
Speaker 2: I don't you know fault any creator for having to
Speaker 2: use it, but it is it is interesting to me
Speaker 2: in terms like unalive terms like particularly grape always really
Speaker 2: rubs me the wrong way, but weirdly ends up. It
Speaker 2: feels like kind of minimizing very serious things and almost
Speaker 2: like suppressing or not encouraging people to talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: serious issues.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I absolutely think that there is sort of a trend
Speaker 5: towards infantile language when we use replacement vocabulary, so like
Speaker 5: look at eggs instead of sex, or I do think
Speaker 5: great instead of.
Speaker 4: I do think.
Speaker 5: Like a lot of are on alive sounds a little
Speaker 5: more childish than suicide, right, so, I think. But it's
Speaker 5: because a lot of these words are coming out of
Speaker 5: memes which are made by young people, and young people
Speaker 5: like using kind of fun sounding childish language. There is
Speaker 5: a whole separate debate about whether or not this is
Speaker 5: good or bad. I've talked to a lot of middle
Speaker 5: school teachers and guidance counselors about unlive, and some of
Speaker 5: them feel like, yeah, they're not able to talk about
Speaker 5: the serious topic, which is concerning, But other people are saying, actually,
Speaker 5: it's opening up conversations. It's allowing middle schoolers to Some
Speaker 5: middle schoolers are learning the word on alive before the
Speaker 5: word suicide, and it's allowing them to have these conversations,
Speaker 5: especially when they're using the word as a genuine euphemism.
Speaker 5: Sixty percent of the middle school teachers I talk to
Speaker 5: are say that their kids are using on alive primarily
Speaker 5: as the euphemism for when they don't want to use kill.
Speaker 5: So I one teacher said, the students submitted an essay
Speaker 5: on Hamlet unliving himself, and another one had a classroom
Speaker 5: discussion the unliving that happens in Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde.
Speaker 5: Kids genuinely think this is like a serious euphemism for
Speaker 5: kill that sounds maybe nicer. Say so, like, we're seeing
Speaker 5: this online speak turn into the offline. And I actually
Speaker 5: the title of my book which is coming out it
Speaker 5: is I'll go speak how social media is changing a
Speaker 5: language that's that's available now, and I talk about a
Speaker 5: lot more.
Speaker 2: That is really fascinating to me. And in a way
Speaker 2: that you're like, that's just a lateral language shift. That's
Speaker 2: pretty interesting that in twenty years you could you could
Speaker 2: have someone in public office saying on alive and be
Speaker 2: totally serious.
Speaker 5: I think we're joking about it now. I'm very sure
Speaker 5: that it's going to be a thing.
Speaker 2: That is really fascinating and an interesting way to sort
Speaker 2: of accelerate the growth of how we use language, how
Speaker 2: we talk, like how we talk about very serious issues.
Speaker 2: And then there's the cynical part of me that it's
Speaker 2: like it will never feel normal for me to hear
Speaker 2: of forty five year old man say SIGs.
Speaker 3: I just never want to hear it.
Speaker 4: It's definitely the future.
Speaker 5: So I know it.
Speaker 3: I love love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of kind of Poe terminosity
Speaker 5: with the memes and the metadata and the language, which
Speaker 5: I keep trying to spread this message that they are
Speaker 5: the same thing. Now, Like Riz trended last year because
Speaker 5: it was a hashtag, like or not necessarily a hashtag,
Speaker 5: but like the audio, like the algorithm picked up on
Speaker 5: that as a trending term. So it is metadata and
Speaker 5: creators are using it because they know it's a piece
Speaker 5: of trending metadata. But it's also a meme at the
Speaker 5: same time, it's like a funny riz meme whatever, and
Speaker 5: then but it's also a word. So the word is
Speaker 5: the meme is the piece of information for the algorithm,
Speaker 5: and they love categorizing us, they love tagging us. That's
Speaker 5: I think there's been a lot of new words for
Speaker 5: categorizing ourselves and our identities, whether it's like cottage, core, unquoquette,
Speaker 5: or like all these new micro labels all also emerge
Speaker 5: out of the algorithm trying to find more information about
Speaker 5: us and then turning those into trends, which are also words.
Speaker 5: So it's all kind of connected to itself in that way.
Speaker 2: My last question for you, this is a podcast about
Speaker 2: main characters of the Internet, which is I feel like
Speaker 2: an increasingly challenging and rare phenomenon to sort of nail
Speaker 2: down because of, like you're saying, how quickly the algorithm
Speaker 2: tends to move. Now, So with regards to this show,
Speaker 2: I mean, because you spend so much time professionally and
Speaker 2: academically within the algorithm, do you feel that we will
Speaker 2: continue to get Internet main characters in the way we
Speaker 2: once did? Will that change? How do you Where do
Speaker 2: you see that going?
Speaker 5: I think it's fascinating that you're putting this emphasis on
Speaker 5: the main character. I think there's been a trend towards
Speaker 5: the Internet's trying to make you feel like you're the
Speaker 5: main character of the time. It's narrativizing. It's it's like,
Speaker 5: when why are all these memes starting with PUOV. They're
Speaker 5: inviting you to experience something firsthand. That's why we talk
Speaker 5: about why we're in our era for something, why this
Speaker 5: is something like we're explaining our lore, We're explaining our
Speaker 5: you know something arc but like we tend to serialize
Speaker 5: our own lives and pretend like we have this main
Speaker 5: character syndrome, like we're going on side quests.
Speaker 4: Really, I think all our lives are kind of meaningless, but.
Speaker 5: It feels good to not think that, which is why
Speaker 5: the algorithm has been pushing stuff that makes you feel good,
Speaker 5: makes you interact with the content and share more. So
Speaker 5: I think the reason we're all I think we're all
Speaker 5: going to be main characters in our heads because that's
Speaker 5: what the Internet is telling us.
Speaker 2: WHOA Well you heard it here first everyone, you are,
Speaker 2: in fact the main character. Thank you so much to Adam,
Speaker 2: who you can find everywhere. He's got over half a
Speaker 2: million followers on TikTok, a million on Instagram, half a
Speaker 2: million on YouTube. This guy knows his damn Algo to
Speaker 2: follow him to keep learning more, and you can also
Speaker 2: pre order his book now.
Speaker 3: At the link in the description.
Speaker 2: And next week we begin our next deep dive into
Speaker 2: the era of personified brands. I'm talking Denny's being the
Speaker 2: most popular girl on Tumblr. I'm talking Wendy's Twitter feuds
Speaker 2: of the twenty tens. I'm talking woke stakums during COVID.
Speaker 2: I'm talking the duo lingo bird getting murdered for clout
Speaker 2: a couple weeks ago. How did American marketing arrive at
Speaker 2: a language at bird swimming and piss the bone? Chilling
Speaker 2: history starts next week. See you then, please don't say segs.
Speaker 2: And for your moment of fun, here is that brain WRT.
Speaker 2: Australian politicians speech. Adam and I were talking about from
Speaker 2: Fatima payment to.
Speaker 6: The Sigmas of Australia. I say that this goofy air
Speaker 6: government have been capping not just now, but for a
Speaker 6: long time. A few of you may remember when they
Speaker 6: said there'll be no phantom tax under the government.
Speaker 5: I lead.
Speaker 2: They're kappa holics.
Speaker 6: They're also y apoholics. They yap NonStop about how their
Speaker 6: cost of living measures are changing lives for all Australians.
Speaker 6: Just put the fries in the bag, little bro. They
Speaker 6: tell us that they're locked in on improving the housing
Speaker 6: situation in this country. They must have brain rot from
Speaker 6: watching too much Kai Sinat and forgot about their plans
Speaker 6: to ban social media for kids under fourteen.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and
Speaker 2: iHeart Radiops. It is written, hosted, and produced by me
Speaker 2: Jamie Rostis. Our executive producers are Sophie Lickterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 2: from the brand creator and Pet. Shout outs to our
Speaker 2: dog producer Anderson, my Kats, Flee and Casper, and by
Speaker 2: Pet Rothbert who will outlive us all Bye.