There have been a few books that have caught my eye about the evolution of language on the internet, but Algospeak was offered on Netgalley so I picked this one up first. After I finished it, I was wondering if I would still be interested in other books on this topic. From looking at the synopsis of a similar book, Because Internet by Gretchen McCullough, the unique thing that stands out about Algospeak is that its primary focus is on short-form video on TikTok and Instagram, rather than taking a longer view back to the earlier days of the internet. So if you've already ready other internet language books, I think this one has a hook that is worth the time.

I have to admit I had a little bit of a mental meltdown when the author referenced being in middle school in the mid-2010s. That was just yesterday, right? I thought this book was written by a grown person?

Once my brain did some reluctant math, I came to really appreciate the perspective on this topic of someone who grew up when short-form video content started dominating social media. Rather than reading something written by an older outsider who is researching and trying to understand how this form of communication has shaped language, we have a guide who has been steeped in it and can share firsthand observations of how it has evolved. I thought that it was very valuable that he gave plenty of examples from his own social media content and was able to explain what he did with it and why.

On the downside, not all of the trends he referenced were explained, and my exposure to TikTok has primarily been through being a semi-regular viewer of After Midnight. I'm not online enough to recognize what some of these trends were without a sentence or two to describe them. He mentioned the Roman Empire a lot without explanation, I am guessing this is not a historical reference? But what is it?

I think the most useful thing that the author did was tying in the current trends in language to the overarching trends in language evolution that have always existed, and explaining how what we're seeing now isn't any different than the way language has always evolved. He did this fairly regularly throughout the book and kept tying each new point into this. It definitely took my original point of view that kids are really bizarre and need to put their phones down and go outside, and turned it around a bit to feeling like okay, we're just continuing on this path we've always been on.

I'm not sure I was the target audience for this book. It was very informative, but I didn't get a lot of the references.

Algospeak by Adam Aleksic is a sharp, engaging look at how the internet and algorithms are transforming language. Blending linguistic expertise with influencer insight, Aleksic explores how memes, emojis, and algorithm-driven slang are reshaping how we communicate. With original research and cultural savvy, this book is a must-read for anyone curious about the digital future of language.

As a boomer who is OK, I don’t spend a lot of time on social media platforms. Despite this shortcoming, the Internet has had powerful influences on me—both good and bad. Clearly, I feel them in fields as varied as finance, commerce, entertainment and politics. As a self-proclaimed “linguistic nerd” Aleksic seems to be the ideal to guide to improve my understanding of how social media may have already changed my life through the evolution of language. In his book, he makes a strong case for this change being massive with evidence for rapid alterations in accents, slang, grammar, speech patterns and even the symbols we use to communicate (e.g., emojis).

The idea that algorithms are running the show is interesting because most people who have spent even a minimal time online do indeed feel their influence. The power of Aleksic’s book is that it explains how algorithms work, what they are intended for and how they can be manipulated. Loads of new words and phrases come from these activities and they are profoundly changing how we communicate. What’s fascinating is how the Internet facilitates the rapid adoption of such changes. Based on communities and contexts, some memes spread while others fade and, remarkably, some escape the online environment entirely and become part of the broader culture.

Aleksic fills his book with a blizzard of facts taken from his own Internet archival research, original data, personal experience as a presence online, and interviews with his colleagues. He frames the structure of the book around specific topics, but these are so closely related that they often seem repetitive. Moreover, his narrative depends on a lot of jargon, which can be puzzling and obtuse. Despite these fairly minor flaws, the book is engaging, and Aleksic comes across as a thoughtful person who is excited by his material (excessively?) making it accessible through humor.

Not just a study on the future of language, but really a deep dive on the psychology behind social media itself (and specifically TikTok), this book is fascinating. It incorporates just the right amount of linguistic data, historical context, and funny TikTok slang.

The author has a great writing voice; his personality is as evident as his wealth of knowledge on these topics. I found this reading experience to be very engaging which isn’t always true of nonfiction books, even when I’m interested in the content.

I learned so much in this fairly short book that I’m not even sure how to summarize it. The writing is efficient by necessity, but there were many topics touched upon that were so interesting I would have loved to go even deeper (I would read an entire book about the Taylor Swift effect on social media behavior and in real life). I also found one section to be fascinating on how ASL is being impacted by social media. The transformation of language and behavior in our digital era is an emerging conversation that is quickly becoming relevant to absolutely everyone.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book to read and review.

Thank you to @netgalley for this early copy!!

I am forever fascinated my language, social media changes and influence on our daily lives and all things in between so I knew this book would be one that I didn't want to pass up.

It did not disappoint! I was fascinated by Aleksic's look into the history of our language and where all these new and strange terms came from and social media's overall impact on the language that feels new at one point and almost overnight is accepted long term or discarded.

He gave language to lots of things I personally have noticed about how the algorithm has affected all of our lives and especially the way we speak and I really appreciated his insights.

Personally I feel like he was too optimistic about the current trends that we are seeing although I understand his view is more from a linguistic POV and not necessarily and overall impact on the health and well being of our current society.

Great read for anyone who is curious about internet culture and wanting to expand their understanding of how we got here and where we might go next!

There's a lot to like about Algospeak—Aleksic is an engaging writer who clearly loves language, and has a knack for choosing interesting examples to analyze (everything from sigma and skibidi to Roman Empire and girl dinner).

The chapters about incel slang and appropriation were particularly powerful—the analysis in these chapters is really strong. Aleksic does an excellent job tracing the history of terms that entered the mainstream, acknowledging the cultures where those words originated, and considering what it means when mainstream culture unknowingly adopts or appropriates language.

I also appreciated the observations in the book's final chapter about the ways that language change/innovation is almost always regarded as a problem, and how that's a cycle we repeat time and again throughout history. It's good context for a lot of the moral panic that arises over "kids these days" and their scary/bad/brainrotting slang.

Although I liked the book, the writing is also prone to unacknowledged contradictions. In places, Aleksic describes how videos/posts by "ugly," old, poor, queer, and Black people are suppressed by the algorithms. In other places, with equal confidence, we get the assertion that social media has democratized communication and created a truly level playing field for marginalized creators. Which is it?

Both of these statements cannot be true; does the algorithm punish some users while rewarding others, or does it create a radically new type of level playing field? I would argue that each statement is accurate to a greater or lesser extent and depending on context—but the book doesn't seem concerned with getting to that level of nuance. Perhaps that's part of the attention-grabbing language choices he describes using on Reddit and in his own videos, apparently at the cost of elements like internal consistency.

Another issue is with the definition of "social media," which at times seems to exclusively mean "TikTok" and at other times seems inclusive of older, more text-based forms of social media. This leads to some bizarre claims, like "Millennials are less accustomed to social media [than Gen Z and younger users]." If we're talking about TikTok and other short-form video apps, sure, I guess—but using the blanket term "social media" makes that sentence ridiculous. The lack of clarity around a key term in a book about linguistics is strange.

On the whole, Algospeak is a fun and interesting read. If you liked books like Because Internet, Wordslut, or Cultish, you'll probably enjoy this one, too.

I'm referring this title to our Broadcasting and Journalism teacher. Interesting take on how social media is changing our language and, therefore, our thought processes.
Part of this i had already assumed was happening; working with teens for a quarter of a century has enabled me to watch, in real time, exactly what this book covers.
I received an ARC from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who is chronically online, I really enjoyed reading this book and learning how social media is changing the ways we speak and the slang we use. Some of this was stuff I'd observed on my own but never thought about in-depth, and I'm happy to have the extra insight now. I've had a few other books on similar topics on my to-read list but never got around it reading them, so a big thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the opportunity to read this ARC!

I responded to NetGalley's promotional e-mail, and learned (to my regret) that I'm the wrong audience. I keep up with slang but I don't care that much about the mechanics of its changes-- and barely enough to scan the first & last chapters.

I understand that the Web is accelerating the rise of new vocabulary & slang. Kudos to the author for getting an entire book out of the explanation.

3 stars. Tops.

What happens when you live for Fate? Piper is a senior in high school and comes from a thick family history of Fated loves in the cozy town of Crescent Falls. Along with her best friend Diana and Leo, she makes her way through their senior year searching for her Fated one. Meeting Forest at a party one night, thanks to Leo, she suddenly feels the Blessing of Fate and knows him to be the one for her. But she’s never dated before and enlists the help of Leo to teach her the way.

I loved the idea/concept of this book, but it just fell so flat for me. Was the book enjoyable, I guess. But there could have been more. Predictable, even in the early pages, there was only the question of how far the FMC would go to keep the Blessing going. I really had to force myself to finish this.

Just finished Algospeak, and what an education I have gotten! As a Baby Boomer, and not a huge user of social media, I really had no idea that our language was evolving in this way! Adam Aleksic has written a book that explores the current "algospeak", that is, the popular language of those immersed in algorithm directed digital experiences. But after reading it, I think it might be obsolete pretty soon. Life moves with incredible speed in the digital world, and today's algorithms will be outdated tomorrow, it sounds like, and today's cultural language will have been replaced with new words and meanings relevant to future social media use and behavior.

I assumed this book would be about the new slang words that my grandkids use, but it's so much more than that. Aleksic digs in on the linguists' perspectives on both the history and future of the English language (and others), and how at this point in history, those sneaky algorithms have dictated which new words become prevalent and which ones don't.

This is not an easy book to read and comprehend. It's an important book for today. I hope the author plans to update it periodically to reflect the results of all those nascent algorithmic functions.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Algospeak.

"Algospeak" clearly makes the case and justifies Aleksic's subtitle: "How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language." It's a significant fact and worth setting out. Alas, it isn't worth setting out at this length and with all these examples, though some (in particular how social media censorship leads to the development of new words or new uses for old ones and the discussion of ASL and the deaf community) are quite compelling.

All that may not be particularly noteworthy or surprising to folks who live almost entirely on social media, rarely interacting with the physical (I think they call it "real" world). But since I have no (as in zero, as in none) interaction with social media, I've never been on any of it and intend never to be on any of it, I can't say. I can say, however, that if I had any wavering in my refusal to participate, "Algospeak" and Aleksic have made me certain to stay out.

I love reading books like this, whether about the impact of social media or new technology, so this was right up my alley. Thanks so much for the gifted copy of this one!

I follow this author on Instagram and was very happy to see that he wrote this book with the same humor and education I see in his videos. This was an incredibly informational and fun nonfiction book to read.

Great writer but I really could not get into this story. Thanks for the opportunity to read but it was just not for me. Good Luck with the boo.

At the perfect intersection of my interests: linguistics, sociology, and brainrot. I first became familiar with this author via his viral videos online as @etemologynerd and was super excited to receive an e-ARC of his book (thanks Knopf and NetGalley!).

He is really able to capture the whimsical nature and hilarious contrast of his viral videos by diving deeper into social media slang through a serious, academic lens. Who knew I'd be reading a book with a chapter entitled "Sticking Out Your Gyat for the Rizzler"?

I learned so many awesome new terms from "grawlixes" to "digital rubbernecking" and the "engagement treadmill" - all of which gave me a new lens with which to understand social media and the algorithm. I do wish that the focus was more on the linguistic and sociology pieces rather than expounding deeply on the inner workings of content creation and the algorithm, but it makes sense that he does and that's just a personal preference. Some of those bits lost my attention, but the chapters about incel language, linguistic appropriation, and generational divides were particularly strong. Overall a very good read and would recommend if the topics interest you!

Algorithm driven speech. Hmmm. When it comes to the slang of the internet, I’m the old guy sitting on the front porch yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, pull up their pants, and moaning, “What’s the world coming to?” So I got a review copy of this from NetGalley to try to understand, minimize mourning for the too rapid loss of language. There’s a disconnect here (on my end). Mr. Aleskic is clearly of a generation gapped from me by several generations - of the X, Y, Z, Millennial type, though not the ~25 year per generation I always knew (he does talk about the concept of generation). He was in high school when Reddit was young. And Reddit wasn’t founded until 2005. And his living - in addition to being a linguist - has been in and around social media, so he has some chops from the direct experience type as well as his education.

If you are a budding or wannabe influencer, in writing of how words enter and are adopted in the vernacular, Mr. Aleksic writes in depth of trends, techniques, methods, styles, accents common to past, and current (as of the writing…he knows how fast things go out of vogue), that highly viewed content creators use to manipulate their reach through the algorithms. (And their followers). How algorithms drive echo chambers, filter bubbles, extremist incel slang and - the author uses the word “philosophy”, but I think of it as “toxic sophistry”, proliferation of the dangers through memetic means. And it's a relatively new term on its own: "The earliest references to the term for “algorithms shaping how you speak” are from scattered tweets and TikToks before Taylor Lorenz popularized the concept in a 2022 Washington Post article."

The author says "I think it’s great for the English language that we’re able to switch in and out of the algospeak sociolect." A linguistic certainly would. And, it is also not different from bilingual speakers to shift/blend the two languages they are speaking.

Algospeak is here to stay... until tomorrow when there will be a different algospeak. And I have to continually police the curmudgeon in me.

He says, "As I work on this chapter, the AAE words I write about keep getting spell-checked or autocorrected, because they’re not seen as “standard English.” Instead, they’re dismissed as “incorrect,” based on the idea that the East Midlands–derived dialect of English is the “correct” one. Beyond spell-check, I keep seeing this attitude in my comments section whenever I talk about new AAE-derived words. There’s always someone bemoaning the “corruption of the English language” or saying that the slang words irritate them because they’re “grammatically wrong.” In reality, of course, “correct” English is a construct."

Uh...{raises hand}…sometimes, but I'm learning, so not always.

"Who cares about old definitions when you can use new labels to create new demand? The real winners, of course, are the social media platforms, which take a commission from all these newly created sales. How
convenient for them."

I like this: "The change isn’t so much about the disappearance of dialects as about their replacement from a geographic medium to a digital one."

And I learned "Musical.ly was acquired and merged into TikTok, which is where ByteDance perfected the recipe by engineering the most addictive social media website imaginable."

Addictive? More probable than not, I suppose (I’m an outlier I guess - when sent a TikTok video, I watch just the one, if that.)

On the rapid spread of slang words:
"My favorite example of this phenomenon is the “Rizzler song,” a TikTok audio that went massively viral in late 2023 for its slang-heavy lyrics:
Sticking out your gyat for the rizzler
You’re so skibidi
You’re so fanum tax
I just wanna be your sigma
Freaking come here
Give me your ohio"

I love learning about languages. But I can only speak one. This is another language I don’t understand. The author says "While this may seem like gobbledygook to the uninitiated, each slang word referenced in the Rizzler song was already trending at the time for being associated with Gen Alpha comedy."

“Uninitiated”. {sigh} Oh well.

The author notes " Etymology has never been a discipline of pretty stories. Words don’t just evolve from point A to point B, but rather develop in the context of greater cultural moments. Language follows human needs, trends, and social groups; all linguistic changes are already emergent effects of a complex system. Technology is yet another complication to that system." Plays hell with etymologists trying to trace the words.

But a problem (one of many) with the ubiquitous algorithms has unintended consequences: "A 2023 University of Oxford study found that essentially all influencers are 'purposefully minimizing their own creativity in order to pander to perceived algorithmic tastes and subsequently enhance their visibility.'” Meaning, we all lose. It's all about engagement... “digital rubbernecking”. (I like that term.)

Bottom line: "At its core, our 'modern slang' is spreading exactly as our '“old slang' did, only through a new medium." (And faster.)

A few selected other observations:

" Knowing that their video might be removed for talking about their own experiences, some influencers opted to use lesser-known alternative words."

"... we’re generating an obscene amount of data for linguists to sift through. This can easily be overwhelming. No matter how much work we put in, we’re never going to come close [to getting it all]"
{Ironic. Algorithms an AI must necessarily be used to analyze algorithm an AI driven language changes. }

[On "you" as a hook: "I'm sure you've heard X", "You should stop doing X", etc. titles]
"The word 'you' frames what I’m going to say in a way that will make you connect it to your life experiences."
{Curious. When I see those words, I’m out, moving on the something, anything else (unless it is more of the same).}

"I’ll admit: It’s an unfortunate reality that all influencers somehow manipulate your emotions to go viral,..."
{I guess that’s why I am averse to this chapter… I am not a fan of internet “influencers”.}

"Similar phrases go viral every week whenever creators try to start a new trend, from 'Roman Empire' to 'beige flag' to 'orange peel theory' (if you’re unfamiliar with these, congrats for not being chronically online in 2023)."
{Huh. No clue.}

"We’re actually quite used to prestige dialects in the media. Think how jarring it would be to hear your Channel 10 anchor speak in a thick Appalachian accent."
{Back in 1994, my wife had a discussion on accents with some Staten Island teens who worked for her. She explained that their accent was NOT the norm (gasp!) and told them to watch the local news that night
and listen to the television anchors (all of whom spoke with General American accents).}

"All families speak in unique familects—intimate registers of communication characterized by certain words or expressions only recognizable to that family—and all romantic partners teach each other a secret language that can’t be spoken with anyone else."
{ All?}

“'In my X era' had been a phrasal template since at least the early twenty-first century, and “delulu” had been used by 'Koreaboos' on Twitter since at least 2014. However, the terms reached common parlance
only in the early 2020s, and that’s because the TikTok algorithm gave them a medium to spread."
{ This is fascinating. “… since at least the early 21st century “ is less than 25 years! 2014 is eleven, and the 2020s is less than five. Bottom line, rapid proliferation, rapid change. }

I think this book could have been longer and still been just as interesting, if not more. It covers a large breadth of topics, from gang language to Swiftie dialects, and it's all very interesting. I've heard a lot of the words discussed in this book offline, and not being a TikTok user, I didn't know that all of the words that were popularized by TikTok were popularized by TikTok.

You do definitely have to keep in mind when reading this book that it is from the perspective of a social media influencer, and Aleksic does very little to distance the content in the book from that perspective. There's a pretty significant amount of defense of how social media algorithms are good because they allow for diversity of content on social media and for minorities and poorer people to speak about what they experience, which is odd because the book also discusses how those people are frequently censored by the algorithms. It's also a little weird for that defense to be coming from a straight white guy who graduated from an Ivy League university. Personally, even though he's talking about how useful social media and algorithms can be, I finished the book even more glad that I don't use TikTok and am not a person who spends lots of time on social media. I don't really like his comment on the fluidity of sexuality, since only one of the "big" sexualities (bisexuality) is... actually fluid. Most straight men who talk about the fluidity of sexuality don't have good intentions. I was wondering when the book would get to discussion of queer identities being discussed online, and I'm glad it was discussed a little bit, even if it was only a paragraph or so. I do think maybe since he has a clear commitment to how sexuality can be fluid, it's actually a good thing he didn't spend much time discussing gay people.

I found the insight into how social media influencers manipulate audiences for attention interesting, and it's refreshing for an influencer to admit it as straightforwardly as Aleksic did in this book.

This was an intriguing title that came in my recommended ARCs so decided to give "Algospeak" a read. This is one of many nonfiction works being published in the midst of the subject matter that it covers, so I was curious to see what areas would be covered.

In a nutshell, this work is a recounting of different pockets of digital content and social media mostly in the last 5-10 years and the ways that different terms, sentences and phrases, and modes of communication have dramatically changed in that time. Author Adam Aleksic covers a broad range of subject areas, including the different platforms (Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok), different events and influencers, and the evolution of specific terms and words that are now a part of our common rhetoric. I also appreciated Aleksic's own personal experience as a creator trying to promote himself across different social media platforms, especially the "shadowbanning" he experienced when trying to traverse into sensitive subject areas (intentionally or unintentionally) and his attempts to stay on top of the ever-changing algorithm.

For me personally, this wasn't a read I found particularly intriguing or applicable. As someone in my early 30s who is trying to pare back my social media exposure, I found a number of topics and terms ones I was already familiar about and didn't really want to know more details of - like influencer feuds, for example. I would have appreciated more focus on how language changed over extended periods of time versus just such a narrow window that I myself had firsthand experience of. This may be a more applicable read for an older audience who is trying to grasp the communication and ever-changing language of a younger, digital audience but wasn't one that I found significantly informative.