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.
Writing as Speech
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.
Digital Linguistics
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.
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 Digital Dark Age
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.
The Digital Singularity
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 Participatory Nature
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.
Authority, Truth and Governance
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.
Decentralized Authorship
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.
Conclusion
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, global literacy rates are 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.