if there's anything that's great about this generation and/or the internet, it's that we've basically invented our own variant of English just to make up for lack of tone over the internet and it's beautiful
there's a whole chapter making the case, in detail, that emoji caught on because they are the best replacement we've come up with for the way we gesture while talking
I keep having the thought that like, newspeak was presented as like, oh no the HORROR when we read 1984 in freshman year or whatever but more and more I'm all for "doubleplus ungood"
The other day I bungled saying something and followed up with "act like that was better good English" and you know what, that is EXACTLY what I wanted to convey
(we didn't talk much about the dictatorship aspect of newspeak much in HS I mostly remember the smug superiority of the 9th grade grammar police of which I was definitely one)
Huh, I think my class was the mirror of that. We didn't get the grammar police angle, only the "This is being used to limit your ability to describe anything with any nuance, and thus limit your ability to think with any nuance." angle.
it is reasonably expected that you actually don't know and are asking sincerely