English Archives - I'm Not Doctor Who

There are a lot of things I don't like about myself, but one of the things that I have always been rather pleased with is my willingness to engage with the English language. A lot of this stems from being encouraged well at an early age, both by my parents and at school, but also a natural sense of inquisitiveness and curiosity about the use of words and language.

scattered word tiles on black background — Photo by Eleonora Vokueva on Pexels.com

I mention this because I am seeing more and more reports of a "literacy crisis" that appears to be arising, primarily as a result of "BookTok" (i.e. people on the odious short-form video platform TikTok who supposedly talk about books) and "book influencers" (i.e. people on a broader range of primarily video-based social platforms who supposedly talk about books). Most recently, the thing that has come up is some of these people complaining to authors when they come across a word they do not understand — and rather than looking that word up for themselves, using it as an opportunity to learn, they instead throw their toys out of the pram and get very mardy, even going so far as to throw around terms like "ableist". (Fuck off. Your assumption that disabled people can't read is the ableist perspective here.)

This sort of behaviour is absolutely unthinkable and unfathomable to me. I have always loved it when I learn new words, concepts or ways to express myself from things that I've read. There are turns of phrase I picked up as a child that I still use to this day, and I relish the opportunity to make use of a word that I've recently learned.

I am also more than happy to look something up if I'm not sure of it. I actually tend to find this happens more often while I am writing than reading; I'll be tapping out a sentence, and for some reason a particular word that I'm not entirely certain of the definition of will pop into my head as maybe-possibly being appropriate for the situation. Rather than shying away from using that word for fear of appearing stupid by using it incorrectly, I will look it up, determine whether or not it is, in fact, appropriate for the situation in question, and then, if possible, make good use of it. It's not out of a desire to appear "clever" or to baffle the reader with my vast vocabulary; I just find it fun and satisfying to discover new ways in which one can play with language.

I've always been like this. I started reading books that were well ahead of where I was "supposed" to be as a kid, so by the time I got to primary school I was reading things several "Levels" ahead of my peers and taking on considerably more challenging reading comprehension exercises. By the top end of primary school, I was busting out words like "antidisestablishmentarianism" and "floccinaucinihilipilification" in the morning Daily Spellings session in Class Four, and being able to correctly use them in a sentence.

I apparently once also terrified my parents by, one day, aged maybe three or four, coming down the stairs and immediately quoting the beginning of Genesis to them. In this particular instance, it was not a "reading" thing — I hadn't been secretly ploughing through the Bible in between episodes of the Mr. Men — but rather a quotation from a cartoon I had recently watched on video. I guess it's connected, though; I had found the whole "In the beginning…" speech striking, so I wanted to deliver it in my own childish way. That's still a way of playing with language, just using the spoken word and listening instead of reading and writing.

The concept of "BookTok" makes me angry. It is completely beyond me exactly how anyone thought a community of people who make short-form attention-deficit videos online were ever going to come out with anything particularly worthwhile to say about a medium that rewards taking your time and drinking things in. And the very term "book influencer" makes me bristle. We never should have accepted the marketers' insistence than "influencer" is a valid job description. It's disgustingly dystopian, particularly since "influencer marketing" is now an established part of promoting any sort of product online.

I love language. I love reading, and I love writing. It makes me by turns sad and furious that, in the space of a generation or two, we appear to be losing all respect for the written word. Just the other day, I saw someone online earnestly recommending that anyone who wanted to spend their time talking about a favourite topic should "just become a TikToker" rather than starting a blog. I bit my tongue at the time because I couldn't be arsed to start a fight, but it just made me feel weary more than anything.

What are we doing? It almost feels like a deliberate attempt to siphon all the "culture" out of society, perhaps in an attempt to ensure that none of us step out of line or express any sorts of "dangerous" opinions.

Funny, I think there are a few books about that…

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I forget the exact circumstances of when I came across the quote in this post's title. It may have been on some form of social networking website, or dating site, or something like that. But it was a good few years back now.

The context of the quote was in one of those sections you get on pretty much all online profiles that asks you to list your favourite music, films, TV shows and books. This person's favourite books were listed as "book? lol".

That struck me as rather sad, but perhaps a little unsurprising given the general attention span of most people these days. Why sit down with a book which delays gratification and requires active use of the brain when you can be immediately bombarded with information via TV and the Internet?

It's an age-old argument of course, and one which has probably been running ever since every new information-giving technology came along. However, it seems particularly ironic in the context of the Internet, given that much of it is, in fact, text. Sure, there are pretty pictures and buttons that fart when you click on them and pornography, but it's still fundamentally built on text. You're reading text right now. Is your head hurting yet?

The fact that everyone has a voice on the Internet is one of those things that is debatable as to whether it is a Good Thing or not. But as part of having that voice, everyone has the opportunity to give their thoughts and expand on them as much as they want to. The sad thing is, though, in many cases, people don't feel like they have the time to read (or write) a full, well-considered argument. Instead, they denounce it as a "wall of text" and choose not to read it.

It happens in video games, too. A friend of mine once said that he couldn't get through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney because there was "too much reading". It's a game about a lawyer. I'm not sure what else he was expecting.

As a writer, as someone who crafts language and bends it to my will in the name of pretentiousness, self-expression, catharsis and humour, this is sad. The English language is a powerful tool that can say many things. As, indeed, are other languages. But it seems that for many these days, the priority is for quick, snappy, "efficient" communication. And sure, there are situations in which this is entirely appropriate. But I say that shouldn't be the norm. People shouldn't be afraid to speak their mind in as much length as they wish.

My mind is particularly drawn to the early days of the Squadron of Shame. Long before we started producing our podcast, we ran lengthy discussion threads on a variety of games on 1up.com's Radio forum. We'd started as a result of one of the 1up Radio features, so that was our spiritual home. Many of the people who populated that forum were articulate sorts who agreed with my thoughts above, so there were plenty of like-minded individuals there who enjoyed taking part in our discussions and posting their own "walls of text".

But one day, the Powers That Be at 1up decided that it would be a great idea to merge all the forums into "Games" and "Not Games". This meant that lengthy, in-depth discussion threads from groups such as the Squadron were crammed into the same space as "OMG HALO IS BETTR THAN KILZONE". Naturally, this led to problems. In one of the last discussions we had on those boards—on the subject of the peculiar PS2 game Psi-Ops—the posting was almost immediately derailed by a particularly notorious troll who posted "OMG FUCKING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT" in giant red letters. Said "wall of text" was maybe six or seven paragraphs long and was interesting to read, but as soon as troll boy showed his face, the discussion went off track, not helped by many people (including myself) rising to his bait.

It's a pity that to some people the desire to speak in detail, at length and to produce a coherent argument is seen as a negative thing. Personally I would have thought that a forum—by its very nature an asynchronous method of communication in which people can take their time to consider their responses—was the ideal environment in which to have these lengthy discussions. But apparently not.

This is perhaps an unnecessarily negative picture, of course. There are still people who read books. There are still people who like to post more than five words at a time. There are still people who don't decide to ignore all the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar "just because it's the Internet"—who came up with that stupid idea, anyway? It's just a pity that, at times, they seem to be declining in number.

Oh well. If you read through all that, you can count yourself amongst the élite!

Tag: English

#oneaday, Day 217: "Book? LOL!"