what I expected from this book was a lot of of explanations of online linguistic conventions, which honestly put me off from reading it for a long time, because I already know all that stuff.

now, there is a lot of that in this book, but the real reason I enjoyed it is because it draws connections between online language and the broader field of linguistics—connections which I'd made in some cases, but often hadn't. (for example there's a whole chapter about how emoticons and emoji are, essentially, gestures.)

basically it's just a fascinating (and, yeah, pretty fun) book to read if you're interested in language