Every few years, I buy a new edition of The Associated Press Stylebook. I don’t freelance often anymore, but I keep the stylebook around in case I need to double check something.

If you’re not familiar with the stylebook, it lays out the appropriate spelling and punctuation for reporters to use in their stories. No, don’t worry. This isn’t going to be a piece about grammar. But I do want to direct your attention to one specific entry in the stylebook because it deals with perception, and as we move into the public relations (PR) aspect of How To Be (Internet) Famous, you need to understand how important perception is.

Internet With A Capital I

In the Stylebook, it says you have to always capitalize Internet. But I think this is stupid, and I’m going to tell you why.

Since before we had the World Wide Web, there’s always been the internet (the technical infrastructure we use to access the Web, apps, and their predecessors) and the Internet, which is the world that existed once you were connected by that infrastructure.

For proof of this, just wait for the next headline like “Pluto Memes Are Taking Over The Internet” and you’ll see what I mean. They’re not taking over the internet (the infrastructure), they’re being spread by media outlets based entirely within the Internet and to the audience of people who makes up the Internet and spreads things amongst themselves.

The internet is a utility. The Internet is a thing with its own audience, media outlets, and other social norms. See the difference? The problem is that we often treat the Internet like it’s a reflection of reality (offline) when it’s almost always not.

And this isn’t a new thing I’m pitching to you. The internet dates back to the ‘60s, and until the early ‘90s, the people who had access to it treated it like an exclusive club. (See: Any book ever about the World Wide Web or Netscape.) Those people DID NOT want expanded access for everyone else to get on to their Internet (note the capital I). It wasn’t the infrastructure they were concerned with, it was the world they created being infiltrated.

So there’s always been “The internet” and “The Internet”. When The Daily Dot slogan says Internet in “Your Internet. Your News”, they are NOT talking about the infrastructure the capital I Internet in the associated press stylebook refers to. Same deal with Reddit. When Reddit claims itself to be the front page of the Internet, instead of the festering wart it actually is, Reddit is referring distinctly to the Internet. Capital I. The world that exists on top of the infrastructure.

This fight, by the way, is played out on every single platform on the internet too. A platform comes out, it gets popular among a select group of people, and then the platform expands to include more people, and the original people lose their shit. That’s the nature of the Internet (capital I.)

See the difference? But wait, here’s where it gets more complicated.

The Internet (capital I) has its own reality distortion field. So you may see stuff that’s “popular” on the Internet that most people couldn’t give any less of shit about, let alone be able to identify in a lot of cases. I spoke about this at length in Social Media Is Bullshit beyond the main point that we often treat things on the Internet like they’re representative of a lot of people when they’re often not. (I’m looking at you, members of the media.)

Buzzfeed calls the Internet (capital I) community the “Bored At Work Network”. This is an incredibly dumb name perpetuated by an evil company looking to confuse dumb brands into thinking the Internet (capital I) is magic. And of course, that only Buzzfeed can wield that magic for them. However, what this dumb name refers to is very much real as it refers to the people who make up the (capital I) Internet and help define its culture and norms as well as spread different things.

That’s why I said last week that little of what you do on the (capital I) Internet matters. This is because the Internet has its own community and norms, and to approach it like an asshole would (spam, “growth hacking” which is basically spam with a nicer name, etc.) simply does not work.

The Internet (capital I)  has a very specific audience. You may or may not have the appropriate product / pitch for that audience. You can help find out by doing the stuff I suggested in the previous installments of this series.

So, the AP Stylebook is wrong. There should be an entry for internet (lowercase i) that refers distinctly to the system we all use to access the Web or use Netflix, and Internet, to refer distinctly to the audience and world that exists on that infrastructure (or the numerous subdivisions that exist on internet-enabled platforms like Twitter or Facebook or, god help you, Snapchat).

Not that I’d expect the AP to have their crap together when it comes to the Internet. Because seriously, do you look at some of the things reporters say about the Internet?

Perception Is Reality

Listen, nobody likes reading about the media. So I’m not going to say too much about them beyond this: For every ten good and awesome reporters you meet, there is at least one asshole, and the problem is that the one asshole works for a place like The New York Times.

That means what that one asshole says matters more to people who don’t know any better, and the other ten, as nice as they are, don’t carry as much weight as they deserve to carry.

This sucks. But like I mentioned earlier, there’s a Big Club, and most of us ain’t in it.

And since that one asshole works at The New York Times, they can do an irreparable amount of damage because people still think what The New York Times says, matters. (It doesn’t.)

So if the New York Times, just as an example, wants to say David Karp of Tumblr fame is a genius, despite the fact that if Yahoo! Inc.  hadn’t bought his company, it would have run out of money and shut down within a matter of months. People will think he’s a genius.

We’ll leave out the fact that Yahoo!’s own success was driven entirely by Dot Com mania and has basically been this big, dumb, company ever since that buys other companies and ruins them (see: Delicious and Flickr). The fact that Yahoo! even exists today is all the proof you will ever need that people are dumb and easily mislead by the media.

The New York Times, and many national outlets, have absolutely no interest in telling you the truth when it comes to the Internet (capital I) because you’re not the audience. Members of the Big Club are. The ones who control a lot of the wealth and make the big decisions for the rest of us.

So if they all think the Internet (capital I) is magic, the New York Times and the other national outlets are going to go with the flow and write about it like it is. Perception is reality.

That then trickles down to the rest of us where we think, “Oh hey, the Internet is amazing” even though we don’t run a brand who is going to give an agency several million dollars, which in turn will give the tech company a couple of million, which in turn fuels VC speculation into startups that could also get millions of dollars because other members of their portfolio just did.

It’s just this big, dumb, stupid cycle, that’s fueled in large part by bullshit statistics and a media that won’t think or say anything critical because there’s a lot to be gained by going with the flow. (Have you ever noticed the revolving door of tech journalists and others from national outlets who join startups?)

Is YouTube bigger than television? Well if you report numbers released by Google and Nielsen Holdings N,V, (who has business dealings with a lot of these tech companies) sure it is!

Is Facebook Video a “YouTube Killer”? Well if you believe the numbers released by Facebook, of course it is!

And if you’re a reporter covering these companies, of course these numbers are real. You’re going with the flow!

So like the headline says, here’s the bad news: Perception is reality. So while we all fight and scratch and crawl all over each other to get a piece of that digital pie which (barely) exists, we abandon the stuff that works, not realizing that what I said last week is the truth: What happens offline drives what happens online. The tail does not wag the dog, but we sure and talk about it like it does.

Here’s the good news: You can shape reality. You can find proof of that above. If Facebook says Facebook video is a YouTube killer, nobody questions it in the big media outlets. So the perception is the reality. Your job from here on out, as you walk the road to becoming (Internet) Famous is to help shape that reality about yourself and your product.

Next week, I’ll start to walk you through how to do that.

Image credits: The Associated Press Building and the generic reporter photo appears via Wikimedia Commons. Rick and Morty marketing photo taken by Marianne O’Leary on Flickr