#NerdSingularity

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Have spent the evening trying to work out how to incorporate a particular feature of Twitter hashtags into a spoken conlang. I'm not even ON Twitter, and yet the unofficial use of hashtags as self-commentary, editorializing, metadata, references, and stupid jokes FASCINATES me. Makes me almost want to go to grad school just so's I could do a thesis on it, but barring that, it's an interesting conlang exercise. Yes, it's very much a product of its medium--text-based and part of hyperlinks--but it does present some interesting ideas.

Not sure it'll work out, but it'll be fun to try. Perhaps I will call it Hipsterese.

Comments

[baroncognito.livejournal.com]

The idea of hashtags in spoken language makes me think of Kevin Nealon.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

*attempts to find the Subscribe To This Newsletter button*

...tell me more! Because I too find this kind of self-aware metadata interesting. (And unlike the metadata of, say, Facebook, I actually follow how it works.)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Aside from the technical hyperlinking aspect, I'm not sure how distinct they are linguistically from parenthetical expressions, #hypertext #language #wordplay #triplenerdscore

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Not too terribly different. They work as asides--or, in modern times, as the *cough* ("I'm not naming names *coughBarbaracough*").

Though that second one does suggest part of what makes them distinct, though--I'm talking about the ones that aren't about trends or topical tags, but little extra editorials. I'm considering doing particles to encode affect--they would work independently to mean things like "and that's terrible" or "good for them!", but that could also be used as markers for parenthetical subclauses. But it's pretty fluid at the moment.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how the Homestuck tumblr-parody worked, although in at least one case the editorial seemed to come from the author rather than the character.

(Thought the best part may be when a deaf character and a mute one communicate in "sign language"...represented in the dialogue boxes as animated GIF forum macros)