The Culture of the Internet

When you speak of Culture, you deal with varying groups of people from different walks of life that are all bound together by a particular trait they all share. Maybe that trait is love of animals, or the non-eating of animals and their by products. Or perhaps those traits are a specific musical genre or way of life.

Whatever it is, these groups have all found their way ONTO the internet. Absolutely none of them come FROM the internet.

I say this, because the internet itself has a culture, and I wouldn't want anyone to confuse internet culture with a culture found on the internet. 90% of cultures, genres, and groups of people originate beyond the internet, and have made their way there.

I would say that the culture of the internet itself centres around places where original content (or O.C.) is produced not necessarily from a specific source, but from all sources. This cultures focal point is, in my opinion, the forums found at 4chan. The anonymous are the culture of the internet, and they've created many laughs for all of us, whether we know it or not.

There are, in my opinion, three sources for information about the culture of the internet...

First, you can join it. by going to /b/ and reading whats posted. unfortunately, posts are rarely up for more than a few hours, so the content is constantly changing. This puts new meaning to the term "here today, gone tomorrow" because everything on /b/ changes every few hours.... everything.

Secondly, if you choose not to join it, there are two notable sources that you can get your information from: the first is Rocketboom. A bit better known than your other option, rocketboom produces a youtube series called "Know Your Meme", in which they review, and explain, the most notable of the output from the internet culture.
Rocketboom will explain all that the internet culture finds funny, while keeping you at a safe distance from the people in the culture.

The Third and final option is to browse around the wiki of Encyclopedia Dramatica (which seems to be down at the time of this posting). This pseudo-encyclopedia contains everything about every meme you could want to know, written by the authors of the meme, and it's contributors. this sometimes makes the information hard to understand, or obscured in some way, since there's a lot of references to varying ways of portraying what they're actually saying (try looking up "starting your own religion" and you'll see what I mean)

Through any, or all, of these methods, you too can be savvy on whatever the internet is talking about. and if you're truly bored, check out the 4cha.... wait, rules 1 & 2 of the internet are prohibiting me from saying anymore...

I've already said too much.