Figuring out how Insomnia communicates within the dreamcatcher community
The world wide web is full of many communities that communicate in many different ways whether it be informal with emojis and abbreviations or formal with structured sentences. To understand how my community operates we must delve deep into how users communicate within the Insomnia fandom and how this language impacts Insomnia and or people who come to investigate it from the outside. The question that needs answering is how does the Insomnia community use this language to maintain itself as a whole. While being on V LIVE I have encountered many different forms of language communication, that I believe is truly unique to the Insomnia community, so let’s talk about them.
Typical language within the Insomnia community
After investigating how language works in the Insomnia community I was not at all surprised that there was informal and formal language both being used as I have already discussed the structure and nature of V LIVE. While being on V LIVE I never truly encountered any form of language I had not already seen because I have been using this application for years, so I already knew what to expect. Emotes, emojis, and gifs are heavily integrated in the informal language that Insomnia use while communicating. Most words that are being conveyed in the Insomnia community are mostly easy to understand as there isn’t much slang being used but perhaps more abbreviations. Sometimes users will only type comments such as “🤯😶 GUYS” or “😳😳😳” when they are trying to display shook or disbelief and all the users will almost immediately know what they are referring to. Usually when users type comments such as this they are usually referring to special announcements for upcoming concerts. When thinking about a K-Pop platform one might think that there isn’t any formal text but that isn’t entirely true. Insomnia mostly only use formal language when we address dreamcatcher. Some users might type things such as “dreamcatcher are really great, amazing vocals and beauty✨❤ Love them all, their music always make me smile, thank u🙏❤🌹”.
This comment might not seem formal at first, but it’s meant to be. It might sound grammatically broken but that’s only because this user is Korean, so they probably struggle with their English. I know this because I’m familiar with this user as I chat with them from time to time. These specific comments I believe best define how important discourse is on V LIVE because it shows how Insomnia can code switch between informal and formal language even on an application like this.
Ways in which Insomnia use this language to maintain the community
Overall, when Insomnia communicate amongst themselves it’s important to consider tone because this can also play into how membership in the community is evaluated. As Gretchen McCulloch explains it “we don’t want to sound like robots to our internet friends”. This is because when we communicate amongst ourselves we want to keep a certain tone that fit’s the communities mold. Although the Insomnia community is welcoming we expect a certain tone no matter what. In the broad perspective of things, the language in the Insomnia community is very easy to understand for the most part but sometimes there is language that could be of much importance. If there was a new member of the community that didn’t understand some particular terminology it would be a problem, but that member would still be allowed to join because everyone including myself could teach them. Some basic terminology would be some questions that are related to the group’s music or background such as “what did you guys think about minx’? To understand what a user might mean by that you would have to understand some language that might lead you to do some outside research. We welcome mostly everyone, and we are quite eager to grow the fandom. We don’t reject new members to the Insomnia community because we are a welcoming bunch if I might say so myself. As a community the Insomnia fandom is quite inclusive as we appreciate when new people join us in supporting dreamcatcher.
