Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything. The printing press, for example, did not just give us books; it gave us a new way of thinking, a new way of organizing knowledge, and a new way of understanding ourselves. In the same way, the digital revolution is not just about faster communication or more information; it is about a fundamental transformation of our culture, our values, and our sense of identity.
– Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Information wants to be free, culture follows evolutionary flows—viral memetics—and accreditation, provenance, patents, copyright are all burdens that strangle the free flow of the work and ruin its memetic fitness. Recognizing memetic culture cedes no authorship, no credit; art is produced in a lucid state playing handmaiden to collective unconsciousness—and accelerated by the web—Art comes from beyond the self, comes from the network, or God. Claiming it is hubris. Plagiarism is thus praxis, freeing work from hindrance.
– Charlotte Fang, What Remilia Believes in (2022)
We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books...But not all the information was inherited by later generations. A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really. That's what history is. But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness.Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander… All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.
– Colonel's AI and Rose, Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001)
The contemporary world is often described as a post-literacy world. With the exception of a few war-torn regions, public education has become a state-mandated enterprise and a cornerstone of modern society. Literacy rates in developed countries hover near 100%, and even in poorer nations, these rates approach similar figures when older generations are excluded from the calculation.
The number of books published annually has reached unprecedented heights, driven by the advent of internet distribution technologies and the proliferation of online stores. Moreover, nearly every aspect of modern life is textually based. From accessing websites to filing taxes, a minimum level of literacy is essential. Literacy is no longer optional; it is widely regarded as the foundation of civilization, a legacy cemented since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. To not be able to write, let alone read, means being ostracized by society or becoming dependent on third parties.
However, the emergence of new printing technologies, capable of reproducing intricate details such as images, alongside the rise of computers and the internet, has revolutionized how we share and consume information. These advancements have enabled the proliferation of multimedia content—sound files, animated images, videos, and interactive data visualizations—giving rise to a new form of “text”: hypertext. Hypertext occupies a specific space between traditional, static reading interfaces and dynamic, interactive platforms where the reader assumes an active role.
This shift toward interactivity has brought digital communication closer to real-life interactions, making it more organic and less abstract or theoretical. While books are typically written with rigor and designed to be context-independent, internet interactions—fueled by hypertext and low-latency exchanges—emulate the fluidity of real-life conversations. Emojis, emoticons, and GIFs now serve as substitutes for body language and facial expressions, while shorter, fragmented sentences replicate the spontaneity and fragmented aspect of spoken language. You can’t interrupt someone writing a book, but you surely can in an instant message conversation.
It is within this context that the concept of digital orality takes root. Although we are far from being an illiterate society, our modes of communication have evolved. The formal, structured methods characteristic of written cultures have given way to a style more reminiscent of oral traditions. This transformation is not about our ability to read and write but rather about the nature of writing and communication itself. Digital communication has adopted a more organic, contextual, and fluid approach, mirroring the way we speak rather than the way we write.
In the past, writing served as a formal, structured, determinate, and permanent medium for archiving knowledge—a quality that distinguished literate civilizations from oral cultures, which are often perceived as more primitive. The transition from oral to written culture profoundly shaped human society, enabling greater depth and complexity of thought. More importantly, written culture, particularly through printing, facilitated the transmission of decontextualized information. This shift fostered individualism, emphasized material evidence, and introduced the concept of authorship, which had been far less prominent in oral traditions. In a sense, books have been the vector of modernity.
When we refer to the "Dark Ages" (the Middle Ages), often citing the scarcity of inventors or artists compared to Greco-Roman Antiquity or the Renaissance, we tend to overlook the fact that the very notion of authorship—or personal attribution for an achievement—was not as clearly defined. Written culture not only solidified the idea of authorship but also gave rise to personal interpretation, a concept closely tied to Roland Barthes’ notion of the "death of the author". Barthes argued that the meaning of a text is not fixed by its creator but is instead shaped by the reader. This concept can be applied in an extra-literary context; ideas may or may not be affiliated with an individual, but at the end, we only remember the tools we have at our disposal. You don’t need to know who invented the first pianos to use them.
Today, however, digital communication—through instant messaging, social media (Web 2.0), and other platforms—has integrated multimedia formats such as video, audio, and images alongside traditional text. This integration has reinforced the brevity and informality characteristic of casual or intimate conversations. Snapchat stories, which vanish after 24 hours, and viral trends that disappear as quickly as they emerge exemplify this shift. Even the way tweets or social media posts are composed reflects a spontaneous, speech-like quality, incorporating slang, abbreviations, emojis, and GIFs. These elements expand language to convey emotions, tone, and context in ways that text alone cannot, effectively replicating the nuances of face-to-face communication through non-verbal elements.
Emojis and GIFs function as modern-day hieroglyphs, conveying tone, emotion, and context in ways that transcend the limitations of plain text. They bridge the gap between written and spoken language, creating a hybrid form of communication that is both visual and verbal. Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that "the medium is the message" is particularly relevant here. In his magnum opus, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan argues that the medium through which information is transmitted fundamentally shapes how we perceive and interact with that information. The medium is not simply a passive vessel for content; it actively influences the way we think, communicate and understand the world to the world. In the context of digital orality, the medium of digital —with its emphasis on brevity, immediacy, interactivity, and visual elements—reshapes of these cognitive features.
Thinking in the context of cyberspace isn’t a unidimensional or linear process but a multidimensional and fluid one; as the tools at our disposal aren’t limited to simple words. This multidimensionality is reflected in the way digital communication mixes elements of oral and written traditions, creating a new linguistic hybrid with specific evolutions specific to each mode.
The blending of formal writing systems with informal speech in digital communication is akin to the process of creolization. Just as Haitian Creole emerged from the fusion of French and African languages, digital communication merges elements of oral and written traditions, creating a new linguistic syncretism. This creolization process is even more evident in the way internet slang, abbreviations, and memes evolve and spread, often transcending linguistic and cultural frontiers. However, unlike traditional creoles, which emerge from a prolonged contact between distinct linguistic communities, digital creolization occurs at an unprecedented pace, driven by hypertext and multimodal nature of the Internet.
This linguistic fusion process is not unique to Haiti. Similar processes have occurred in other regions, such as Jamaica (with Jamaican Patois) and Cape Verde (with Cape Verdean Creole). More exotic mixes, such as the Basque-Icelandic pidgin spoken in Iceland during the 17th century between locals and Basque whale-hunters, or the Lingua Franca, a Romance language born in the West Mediterranean amongst Moorish and European traders and sailors, also illustrate how language evolves at the interface of cultural exchange, particularly through trade. In the cyberspace, this interface occurs at two levels: at the media level, between oral tradition (spoken language, tone, rhythm, themes) and written traditions (text, structure, permanence), mediated by the multimedia aspect of social media; and at the community level, where different subcultures interact and influence one another on platforms like Twitter and other digital spaces..
The former is dependent on material technology itself, and thus on technological developments in media. The rise of computers enabled multimedia content to be created; emails and websites made it possible for this content to be read and shared; and the rise of smartphones and web apps made it something we can use on a constant basis. The latter, however, is culture-dependent. The rise of spaces where communities and subcultures can clash leads to a process of emergent language, but it is also driven by algorithmic architecture. As algorithms prioritize content engagement, through memes and trends, this creates a positive feedback loop where certain linguistic innovations (slang, abbreviations, etc.) are amplified and spread rapidly.
More than simply a space for creolization, the Internet is also a fertile ground for neologisms—entirely new words and expressions that emerge from the unique dynamics of online communities. These neologisms often reflect the values, humor, and subcultural identities of their creators and, more importantly, of the communities in which they spread. Online communities, particularly those on platforms like 4chan, Reddit, and Twitter, are hotbeds of linguistic innovation. These spaces often operate as linguistic incubators, where users experiment with language to create insider jargon, memes, and coded expressions, such as "Kek" as a substitute for “lol” among 4chan users, derived from the Korean word for laughter (ㅋㅋㅋ), “cuck” derived from the word “cuckold,” or “yeet,” which emerged from nonsensical exclamations in viral videos and evolved into a word expressing enthusiasm.
These words, more than being evidence of cultural evolution, are also used as markers of group identity. Sharing the same slang and cultural references creates bonds and excludes outsiders or larpers. Although some of these words find their way into the broader pool of the grand forum, many remain confined to smaller communities. Not only this process is also present in the meatspace, but the same process of linguistic ostracism occurs. If you don’t know some words or cultural references, you’re probably not a member of the community.
Another fascinating aspect of internet language is its ability to circumvent censorship through wordplay, word-swapping, and coded expressions. Social media platforms often enforce community guidelines that restrict certain words or topics, prompting users to develop euphemisms, homophones, and symbolic substitutions. For example, “ahhh” is used as a substitute for “ass” (in sentences such as “weird ass”), symbolic substitution where letters are replaced by symbols like @ for A or £ for L, or emojis like 🥷 for slurs like the n-word or 🌽 for porn. These linguistic innovations, which are efficient as a group building strategy, also highlight the importance of shared cultural references in shaping collective memory.
Another relevant parallel between oral cultures and digital communication lies in the concept of collective memory. In oral traditions, stories are passed down through generations by elders and communal leaders, preserved through repeated recitation and distributed consensus. Many would argue that this method isn’t accurate for the transmission of precise information across time due to human error or data manipulation; “we can’t trust what we can see.” However, this is a fallacy, as oral tradition has been known to carry more information across time than books.
Orality is an antifragile process, reinforced through communal links; one could argue that selection principles are applied through societal filters. Only the most relevant information is transmitted and joins the cultural meme pool. This process can be said for information overall, but textuality makes it more convenient to overstore information, leading to noise, especially in contexts where search technologies aren’t accessible.
We can talk about the preservation of the Quran or hadith down to the transmitter, but also old stories that have been carried out, such as oral stories in Afghanistan recalling Alexander the Great and the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, or Aboriginal stories about an era of a green Australia, which is 50,000 years old. On the other hand, books aren’t necessarily safe from any of the critiques of orality. Nobody knows the authorship of many manuscripts, including the Bible (a case of decentralized authorship, which will be discussed later), and mass printing allows for a non-negligible number of mistakes; the Wicked Bible is a good example.
The same processes happen dynamically in digital cultures, though through different superstructures and social dynamics. One key difference is that digital collective memory isn’t solely based upon recitation and informal information. Everything is archived or recorded—whether through Twitter bookmarks, browser history, or cloud storage—but this content is rarely revisited. Information is consumed in the present, often with little regard for its long-term preservation, yet the fear of losing access to it persists. This paradox underscores the fragility of digital memory: despite its apparent permanence, digital content is often ephemeral, subject to decay, deletion, or obsolescence.
At the individual level, information does not need to be retained because it is always accessible—or so we assume. Yet, at the social level, collective memory functions through a process of selection and reinforcement. Viral trends, memes, and shared stories spread across time and space, embedding themselves in the cultural consciousness. Like neural pathways that strengthen with repeated use, these digital narratives are reinforced through circulation and repetition. However, this process is far from democratic. Digital stories are subject to algorithmic selection rules, with the most popular or influential ones remaining ingrained in culture while others fade into obscurity.
This creates a kind of digital Darwinism, where only the most fit information survives while the decadent ones fade into oblivion. This survival of the fittest is complicated by the sheer amount of data generated each day in the digital age; petabytes of data nobody will ever access anymore after it has been created…
The sheer volume of data generated in the digital age leads to another paradox: while everything is archived, only a fraction is retained in collective consciousness. This phenomenon, often referred to as the dark age of the internet, highlights the fragility of digital memory. Websites disappear, links break, and platforms shut down, rendering vast amounts of information inaccessible. Deleted web pages from the early 2000s leave behind broken links and digital voids that will never be recovered. This fragility is exacerbated by the fact that much of our digital content is stored on servers with low redundancy, making it vulnerable to data loss or corruption. More recently, Google announced that accounts with no activity in the past two years would see their content deleted. The notion of ownership through cloud storage is difficult, as we don’t own anything at all.
The challenge is not simply about preserving information but ensuring its relevance and accessibility. In a world of information overload, where the volume of data far exceeds our capacity to process it, the question becomes: What is worth remembering? This question is central to Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), which explores the consequences of a digitized world where trivial information accumulates endlessly, preserved in all its banality. Kojima’s vision of a post-truth era, where misinformation and slander proliferate unchecked, in an unfiltered state and growing at an alarming rate, thus slows down social progress and the rate of evolution. The Patriots’ plan in Metal Gear Solid 2, through censorship, gives structure and authority to determine what is true and what is false—a topic that will be covered later in this article.
Digital orality profoundly affects our relationship with time and space. The internet has compressed these dimensions, creating a world where information is consumed as quickly as it is generated. In many ways, the internet functions as the antithesis of books: while books physically transport knowledge across space and time, broadening access to ideas and stories, the internet collapses these distances, making every event—whether a war, a bombing, or a football match—an experience lived simultaneously with its occurrence. This immediacy transforms how we engage with the world, turning passive observation into active participation.
While the internet archives vast amounts of information, the speed at which this information is consumed and discarded creates a sense of temporal compression. The past feels distant, and the future never seems to arrive. This is akin to Bernard Stiegler’s work on technics and time, which argues that technology fundamentally shapes our perception of time and memory, creating new forms of temporal experience. In the digital age, the internet acts as a time machine compressing the past, present, and future into a single, continuous stream. This compression disrupts notions of historical continuity while emerging a fragmented, nonlinear experience of time.
It can be perceived as a darker mirror of Henri Bergson’s concept of la durée. While Bergson argues that time, as a subjective qualia, isn’t a series of discrete and measurable moments but rather a continuous and flowing process, durations are qualitative, not quantitative; it is the lived experience of time in which the past, present, and future are constantly compared to each other. In cyberspace, however, this interwoven relationship is distorted as the internet collapses time itself. The past is the present, which is the future, from an informational perspective. Trends emerge and vanish with dizzying speed, creating a kind of cultural amnesia and time flattening, where context is constantly shifting. History is no longer perceived as a linear progression of defined dates but as a subjective, relational construct, shaped by the interplay of past and present. History isn’t made of a single narrative but rather many competing ones.
This concept of cultural amnesia is reminiscent of Mark Fisher’s notion of hauntology, a term coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book Spectres of Marx (1993). Hauntology refers to the persistence of cultural ghosts—ideas, styles, and artifacts from the past that continue to haunt the present, preventing us from moving forward. Fisher applies this concept through the lens of capitalist realism, a term he popularized in his 2009 book of the same name, to describe the pervasive sense that people would rather imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Within this framework, Fisher argues that we are trapped in a cycle of endlessly recycling the same cultural artifacts as they dissolve into the realm of cultural memory. We can no longer create something genuinely new; instead, we can only imitate and remix the past—a phenomenon evident in films, music, video games, and other forms of media. Fisher identifies the mid-1990s, coinciding with the birth of the modern internet, as the turning point for this cultural stagnation. At the time, the web was still seen as a utopian space by many activists and avant-garde thinkers. Yet, could it be that the collapse of space and time brought about by the internet has exhausted our capacity for new ideas and concepts?
The shared nature of digital culture—expressed through memes, slang, and viral trends—requires continuous participation to remain relevant. Just as oral cultures relied on gossip and timely, context-sensitive information to reinforce social bonds, digital culture thrives on the constant exchange of ideas and references. This participatory culture compels individuals to engage, either actively by sharing content or passively by observing and consuming it. In cyberspace, behaviors like lurking (observing without participating), responding to notifications, and navigating the overwhelming flow of information all reflect the pressures of staying connected in a hyperconnected world.
At the heart of this participatory culture lies FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), an info-hazard-fueled anxiety about being left out of the collective conversation. In the digital age, not participating in the grand forum means being out of date, possessing obsolete information, and losing touch with the shared references that define group belonging. This fear is amplified by the highly evolving nature of digital language, where trends emerge and disappear with astonishing speed. Information becomes inherently ephemeral, valued not for its permanence but for its immediacy and relevance to the present moment.
The ephemerality of digital culture mirrors the fluidity of oral cultures, where knowledge was constantly adapted and reinterpreted. However, unlike oral cultures, which relied on communal memory to preserve meaning, digital culture often lacks a stable framework for interpretation. Memes, for example, can be endlessly remixed and repurposed, creating a kind of semiotic chaos where meaning is constantly in flux. This is even more the case through the rise of post-irony in the early 2020s, where media can have two different interpretations and become funny through hyper-irony. This dynamic reflects the broader shift from a print-based culture, which valued permanence and authority, to a digital culture, which prioritizes immediacy and participation.
At the same time, the participatory nature of digital culture, driven by FOMO and the ephemerality of information, reflects a return to the fluid, dynamic communication patterns of oral traditions. This affects how authority is perceived, and narrative constructed in the cyberspace.
Another parallel between oral cultures and digital communication lies in the nature of authority and the distinction between truth and falsehood. In oral traditions, authority was not vested in institutions or written archives but in the individuals who transmitted knowledge. For example, in the science of hadith, the credibility of a narrative depended on the trustworthiness and memory of the person recounting it. Authority was personal, relational, and deeply tied to the community’s consensus.
In the digital age, this dynamic finds its counterpart in the rise of influencers, who act as modern-day authorities based more on charisma, relatability, and "vibe" than on formal qualifications or expertise. Unlike traditional scholars or technocratic experts, influencers derive their authority from their ability to embody and articulate the values, desires, and identities of their audiences. They serve as common faces for their communities, offering a sense of belonging and shared purpose.
However, this shift from institutional to personal authority comes with a cost. In the absence of formal and objective structures for verifying truth, authority becomes fluid and contested. Truth is no longer anchored in objective facts but in community consensus, shaped by the dynamics of likes, shares, and viral trends. Jean Baudrillard explores this phenomenon through his concept of simulacra and hyperreality: in a postmodern world, representations (simulacra) replace reality, creating a hyperreal environment where symbols and images collapse the distinction between truth and fiction. In this context, truth becomes whatever fiction people deem most fitting. This hyperreality is further amplified by the proliferation of memes, AI-generated content such as deepfakes, and the growing disconnection between the “real” world and the “virtual” world. Through algorithmic selection, social media constructs a hyperreal world based on a blend of community consensus (likes, retweets, etc.) and the platform’s own narrative-pushing mechanisms, which can amplify certain stories over others. As a result, the relevance of influencers is heightened even further. In a world of competing realities—and in the absence of a structuring narrative—those who cling to the “real” are often seen as disconnected from their peers, existing in a world that no longer aligns with the hyperreal consensus.
This process also leads to a depersonalization of cultural production. In the context of memes, for example, the identity of the creator is often irrelevant. Memes are appropriated, remixed, and circulated by the collective, their meaning shaped by the group rather than the individual. This stands in stark contrast to modern notions of authorship, where a singular creator can be traced and credited. In a decentralized authorship framework, which may or may not be attributed to postmodernism, authority resides not with the author or the reader but with the collective itself. There is no single author or owner of any concept, piece of art, or content; instead, these creations belong to a larger swarm, where the collective holds as much claim to them as any individual. This is particularly evident in the case of digital content. While memes serve as a prime example, the same principle applies to slang, emerging concepts from group interactions, and even works of art. In a decentralized authorship environment, art becomes the product of the group’s collective unconscious, and there is an implicit duty to expand upon it.
In this framework, linking content to an individual is seen not only as futile but also as a reflection of materialistic tendencies—prioritizing ego, the desire for recognition, capital, and commercialization over artistic freedom and the true self. By removing friction barriers such as accreditation, ownership, and copyright, decentralized authorship significantly enhances the memetic fitness of ideas. Ideas can now spread, replicate, and adapt within the cultural ecosystem with unprecedented ease, free from the risk of being tainted by association with any single individual. There is no face to blame, only the collective. Decentralized authorship, in the digital age, can be seen as the inception of crypto-tribalism.
This process of adaptation can be understood as a memetic evolutionary arms race, where cultural evolution—driven by the mutation and reconfiguration of ideas—can advance further when embraced by the group. An example is the evolution of Wojak memes, which have transformed in ways unimaginable at their genesis in 2012. Decentralized authorship also complicates the identification of specific individuals due to the swarm effect. Memes, once detached from their creators, remain untainted by the potential flaws or intentions of any single person.
In this context, art is not the product of an individual but rather the emergent result of collective intelligence, which enables its creation in the first place. Similar processes occur in oral societies, as highlighted by Walter Ong in his book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982). Ong argues that oral cultures are inherently communal, participatory, and situational, while literate cultures are individualistic, analytical, and abstract. Oral traditions rely on repetition, rhythm, and communal participation to preserve knowledge in a decentralized manner, creating a living memory that is inseparable from the present moment. In contrast, written culture emphasizes permanence, precision, and decontextualized information (or truths), enabling the transmission of knowledge across time and space but at the cost of losing the immediacy and fluidity of oral communication. Digital orality represents a return to the participatory, communal nature of oral traditions, but it is powered by the scale and speed of digital communication, which depersonalizes the individual (decentralized authorship) in a memetic culture where meaning is perpetually in flux—a Deleuzian rhizomatic process.
Yet, this process raises questions about identity in cyberspace. Who are we in this collective framework? Are we all one, or is one everyone? To what extent can identity singularity be achieved, and is it even necessary? These questions bring us back to the broader implications of digital orality; and how this framework can be used to understand nearly every aspect of the digital age.
The notion of print culture must be relativized. Books have long symbolized individualism, rationalism, and materialism, offering an immutable form of knowledge and truth that transcends time and space. In the postmodern world, literacy is nearly universal, bolstered by the written competency requirements of contemporary nation-states. This might lead one to assume that print culture remains the dominant mode of communication. However, this assumption overlooks the fact that the mass production of books—enabled by lithographic printers in the 19th century—represents a relatively recent anomaly in human history. For most of our existence, oral traditions were the primary means of transmitting knowledge and culture.
Orality is inherently a relationship-oriented process, rooted in the need for tribal structures to sustain and transmit knowledge. Textuality, by contrast, is subject-matter-oriented, characterized by environmental detachment and individual interpretation. What we witness today is a syncretic fusion of print and oral cultures. Digital orality combines the informational advantages of writing—its precision, permanence, and capacity for complex thought—with the fluidity, immediacy, and communal nature of oral traditions. This hybrid form of communication transforms how we create, preserve, and interpret meaning. Written texts are no longer static or self-contained; they are increasingly influenced by multimedia computing developments, embedding images, videos, and interactive elements that redefine the reading experience.
Digital orality lies at the intersection of these two modes, acting as a precursor to a new form of crypto-tribalism. This emerging tribalism combines elements of both oral and written traditions, facilitated by technological innovation. Cryptocurrencies, for example, provide a sense of common interest, bonding groups together on both cultural and material bases. This new tribalism is the precursor to the cyber-taifas—fragmented digital communities, each with its own narratives, truth-seeking mechanisms, and ultimately, grand narratives or qisas. In this context, there is no single hyperreality but many intersubjective qisas, each shaped by the values and beliefs of its respective community.
At the group level, digital orality manifests in the circulation of memes, gossip, and narratives that align with shared values and identities. This dynamic makes psychological warfare—such as the spread of fake news—highly potent. In the post-truth era, where impactful content often prevails over factual accuracy, digital orality’s way of filtering information entering into the collective memory is vital.
In this context, digital literacy becomes an urgent priority. Just as oral cultures relied on group wisdom or personal ties to discern truth and navigate complex social dynamics, modern society must cultivate the skills needed to critically evaluate digital content. This is especially crucial in light of the rise of AI-generated contents.