Digital
July 15, 2026
Communication in a “chronically on-line” society
How memes, algorithms, and digital repertoires are transforming the way we speak, interpret, and share the world
I recently visited the exhibition MEME: in the Br@sil of memefication, at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, in Belo Horizonte. The exhibition brings together about 800 items produced by 200 artists and digital creators, combining formats such as videos, sculptures, comics, clothing, sound installations, and interactive experiences.
It seems curious to find memes occupying the galleries of a museum. We are accustomed to consuming them quickly, while scrolling through feeds, replying to messages, or trying to keep up with the day’s events. In exhibitions, however, what normally receives a few seconds of attention invites us to pause.
This change of environment reveals something that the speed of networks usually hides: the meme is not just a funny medium. It carries language, collective memory, public events, behaviors, disputes, and ways of interpreting reality. Behind a short phrase or an apparently simple image, there can be a chain of references that needs to be recognized for the message to be understood.
Upon observing this phenomenon, a question began to follow me: are we just adding new expressions to the vocabulary or creating a new form of language? In the show “The Sky of Language”, Gregório Duvivier, provokes the audience with a phrase that helps to think about this transformation: “Every language is another language spoken incorrectly”. The phrase works better as a poetic provocation than as a scientific explanation. Nevertheless, there is an important truth in this playfulness: language does not exist separate from people. It is modified by use.
Internet
The internet did not create this process, but it made it more visible, accelerated, participatory, and measurable. Today, we can follow an expression emerging in a community, crossing platforms, and reaching face-to-face conversations in a matter of days.
Beyond new words, we developed other ways to build meaning. Spelling errors can be intentional. Emojis change meaning according to context and even the generation that uses them. Audios, images, and intonations function as complete answers. We are not just creating terms. We are combining text, image, sound, and context to form new meanings.
The term “meme” also did not originate on social media. Richard Dawkins introduced it in 1976, in the book “The Selfish Gene”, as a unit of cultural transmission. The approximation with “gene” should not be taken literally, but it helps to observe how ideas, habits, expressions, and behaviors can be transmitted, modified, and selected socially. Researcher Limor Shifman updated this discussion by understanding the meme not as an isolated element, but as a set of related digital items, imitated or transformed by different users. Differentiating viral content from a meme. Viral content is widely shared; memetic content generates versions, responses, and new uses.
The meme, therefore, does not exist only in the original version. It lies in the memory needed to recognize the reference and in the ability to apply it to a different situation. It is in this sense that the meme ceases to be just a content format and begins to function as a “social grammar”.
To understand this grammar, it is not enough to be online. It is necessary to participate in repertoires and recognize codes that change rapidly. The expression “chronically online” became popular in ironic posts to describe people deeply immersed in the culture of digital platforms. It is not a medical diagnosis, nor a consolidated academic category, nor an automatic synonym for digital dependence.
More than indicating time spent in front of a screen, the expression describes people whose language, humor, and sociability have been shaped by the codes and references of the internet. A chronically online person recognizes phrases, audios, characters, and events that may be unknown outside social networks. They use digital meme structures in face-to-face conversations, interpret everyday situations based on languages created on the networks, and sometimes assume that the references in their repertoire are known by everyone.
These people are not just consuming digital language. They act as receivers, editors, and distributors: they receive a reference, alter its context, and use it to communicate another experience. Many expressions disappear after a few days. Others cross groups and environments until their origin is forgotten.
Among the examples presented at the CCBB exhibition, the case where a “thumbs up” emoji was interpreted, in a judicial decision, as a manifestation of agreement in a negotiation stands out. A symbol initially used to demonstrate informal approval began to produce consequences in a contractual context.
The example shows that the meaning of a message does not depend solely on the symbol used. It is constructed by the relationship between context, intention, conversation history, and the expectations of those involved. The same emoji can mean agreement, irony, impatience, ending the conversation, or simply confirming receipt. For some people, the “thumbs up” is cordial. For others, it can seem cold, passive-aggressive, or even hostile.
Something similar happens with words, images, audios, and expressions that cross different groups. Their meanings change according to who uses them, to whom the message is directed, and in which environment it circulates. Mastering a language, therefore, does not just mean knowing its vocabulary. It means understanding the cultural conventions that guide its interpretation.
This transformation is not recent; since the first digital environments, users have adapted language to the possibilities of the available tools. Leet speak, originating in digital communities of the 1980s and 1990s, replaced letters with visually similar numbers and symbols.
In Brazil, internet slang developed its own characteristics with abbreviations such as “vc”, “tb”, “fds”, “blz”, and “rs”. Over time, typos, lack of accents, onomatopoeias, emojis, and alternative spellings began to communicate closeness, informality, irony, and identity. With the expansion of audiovisual, more elements began to compose this grammar.
In this environment, the word ceases to be the sole unit of communication. An intentional mistake, an emoji, or an expression can carry meanings that depend on shared experiences.
Mastering this grammar produces belonging. Understanding a reference demonstrates that we follow a certain environment, know its characters, and recognize its rules. Using the right meme, at the right time, can bring people closer and communicate an experience that would require a much larger explanation.
But all belonging also establishes a boundary. Those who do not share the repertoire may understand the words or symbols in isolation and still not grasp the message. In another text published in this column, I wrote about how digital literacy goes far beyond the technical mastery of tools. It involves knowing how to read the digital world, interpret its codes, recognize risks and possibilities, and act consciously in this environment.
Understanding new languages is also part of this literacy. This does not mean knowing all the memes or following every trend. It means developing the conditions to recognize, to know how to differentiate news from satire, to realize when an image has been taken out of its context, and to understand that the most shared content is not necessarily the truest.
As services, professional relationships, opportunities, and public debates increasingly depend on digital “codes,” the difficulty of interpreting them ceases to be merely a generational discomfort. It becomes a barrier to participation.
Reactions
There is still an element that differentiates current transformations: our reactions are continuously recorded. Likes, comments, shares, views, and time spent make visible the ability of a message to capture attention. For people, brands, and organizations, knowing how to use the language of the platforms can generate visibility, recognition, influence, and opportunities. These interactions are called engagement, and engagement has become a kind of currency. However, this currency does not necessarily measure quality, truth, depth, or understanding. It measures reaction.
In this environment, short, emotional, recognizable, and easily adaptable forms of communication gain an advantage. Even seemingly random or nonsensical content can achieve enormous circulation because it sparks curiosity, strangeness, and the desire to participate in the joke. This is the case with expressions like “67”, repeated as a reaction or inside joke even without a stable definition. Its value lies less in literal meaning and more in recognition: those who understand the reference demonstrate that they are part of that repertoire.
These elements do not need to convey a clear idea to function. What seems random to an outside observer can function, within the group, as humor, identity, and a password for belonging. And precisely because it arouses strangeness, repetition, and participation, the apparent “nonsense” also becomes capable of generating engagement.
Algorithms do not create our language on their own, but they participate in the selection of what will be seen, repeated, and transformed. By favoring content capable of generating reactions, platforms influence which formats find more conditions to circulate. If language used to change as people repeated certain forms, now this repetition is also influenced by systems that measure and distribute engagement in real time.
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Who wrote this column
Lucas Tangi
