Slang Rap Democracy

You don't know what cysage is, although you've certainly cysed a bunch of shit.  Maybe you're thinking about cysing this post.  It might not be a good post, but you like me, so you're going to share it on your wall.  Boom.  Cysage

Nor do you know what a cuban b is, which is really unfortunate, because you've ABSOLUTELY cuban b'd a boatload of stuff.  If I know you, I've probably done some shit to piss you off.  If we're still cool, you've cuban b'd my nonsense.

Both those terms come from Southeast DC.  I only know about them thank to the FiyaStarter Crew, hosts of the funniest podcast on the Internet.  Every Thursday morning, you can wake up and download three hours of unfettered opinion, presented by gentlemen not at all interested in how you think they should sound.  They're doing what groups of guys do every day: busting each others balls in language only they can understand

What's crazy is, these DC motherfuckers have absolutely changed the way I think.  I was reading something the other day that didn't make any sense, and I said, aloud, "man, what a cyse."  I called it a cyse because that's what it was.  It wasn't just bullshit, although it was that.  It wasn't just a pain in my ass, although it was that too.  It was someone writing something that they talked themselves into believing, and all my fellow FS heads are nodding right now, because if that ain't a cyse nothing is.

In other words, a podcast has changed my reality.  That was the squarest example I have yet seen of the Digital Age's direct influence on the deepest workings of my poor little brain.

I guess it surprises me every time I think of someone cysing or cuban b'ing some stuff, because some part of me clings to an antiquated view of the relationship between our physical and digital selves.  Often those of us who spend so much time on the Internet think of our real lives as separate from our online lives.  In my experience, that distinction is artificial.  There's not a whole lot of difference between Bryan Shelly, the entity who moves through the physical world, and the various bshelly logins I use in various corners of the digital world.  Really, the only difference is that bshelly is a little more prone to yelling.

What I find most interesting is, as what has happened with me and cysage, how my digital life influences my "real" life. For a long time I have realized the effects of, say, the choice the web sites one frequents impacts one's view of current events or even their evaluations of public figures.  But this was something different.  This was something akin to learning a word that has no counterpoint in my native language, like, oh, schaudenfreude.  Prior to learning the German word, I guess I could have imagined the concept, but the word itself distilled the concept to its essence and allowed it to be more fully integrated into my life.

Potential for good here?  As KBadd would say, "SURE!"  I find it kind of heartening that three regular dudes from DC can bring me into their world enough to change mine.  Maybe the loftiest dreams of the Internet as a place where people, rather than massive corporate entities, control the majority of the content are long dead, but my experience with Fiyastarter shows that normal people can reach out across time and space to shape other people's concepts of reality.