Greentext: The Internet's Own Form of Literature

Ever since the first child was captivated by an interesting tale, there has been literature. Men carried literature with them wherever they went and settled; it differentiated cultures, transmitted values, communicated thoughts. And as man washed up on the shores of the virtual frontier of the Internet, he created enough literature to fill libraries, and also enough new forms of literature to fill treatises. This essay discusses the "Greentext", a form of literature created by the anonymous users of 4chan, of narrow awareness but wide influence, little organization but great depth, shallow recognition but broad appeal.

What are the essential features of greentext?

Greentext is, in short, a story told in bullet points. It would take more words to describe by what usual distinctions between forms of literature greentext is not defined, than to actually lay out its essential features. But to continue. These are:

• Greentext is told in sentence fragments, but this is not a strict rule. A key feature is the use of phrases beginning with an infinitive verb, such as the stock opening "be me", when it is clear the subject is "I", one shared with a large part of colloquial writing. > is used to introduce items; it may lead full sentences or clauses, equally as it may lead fragments.
• Greentext may be fiction or nonfiction; it may take the genre of a memoir, instructions, list, even history, but most commonly short story. It may not abide by structural conventions, but the wide dissemination of literacy and public education among the populace of the Internet in comparison with that of previous eras in "real life" means at least a few literary devices are employed, consciously or unconsciously.
• Its author is in nearly all cases anonymous; no more identification than may be necessary to establish a separate identity from commenters, by using a "trip code", is used by tellers of long stories.
• Most greentext is in English, but heavily saturated with memes; instead of belaboring a detailed description of panic, a simple "panic.exe", conjuring an image of the brain running such a hypothetical program, may be sufficient to state that the narrator was panicked.
• It is usually told in the first person, though "I" is frequently omitted.

What is greentext not?

Not many things! But:

• It is not racist, sexist, homophobic, technical, juvenile, prurient, or proscribed. It can be used to spread racist, sexist, homophobic, technical, juvenile, prurient, or proscribed ideas, just like the novel or the short story may be used to spread racist, sexist, homophobic, technical, juvenile, prurient, or proscribed ideas. It can be a medium for any kind of idea. Even if it uses racial slurs, they are simply par for the course. For all but a sizable minority of channers, they are used in an ironic fashion and intended to put off oversensitive people.
• It is not confined to one genre of text. In length it can range from one-liner >implyings to thousand-post epics. In content it can range from comeback, to satire, to creative nonfiction, to science fiction. While most authors are either American or European, imageboards are surprisingly diverse; there is a presence of every condition and nationality of people in greater or lesser numbers, the exact figures of which are not, or will ever be known.
• It is not written in the form of a dialogue, though it is told as part of a dialogue, and its author will usually take questions and otherwise engage in dialogue with commentators. It is usually propagated via "screencaps", short for screen captures; these serve to condense the whole thread or threads in which the greentext is contained into only these posts necessary for its understanding.
• It is not confined to imageboards. The >implying and >tfw formats are well known and understood by a large part of the internet, including many who recoil in revulsion of some of the coarser aspects of chan culture. The greentext story can also be told on websites where a majority or substantial minority of the userbase is familiar with imageboards.
• It is not particularly technically intricate. However much journalists and some anons may like to pretend, using an imageboard is not particularly harder than using an average Internet forum.

What are the different formats of greentext?

There are many. For example:

• Stock formats. These include: ">implying", which responds to an argument by contending that it assumes the existence of something that is not actually true, ">tfw" and ">mfw", short for "that feel when" and "my face when", presented in accompaniment with an image, to express an emotion, ">??? >profit" appended to a usually unrealistic course of action, ">ever" indicating that an action should never be done, and many, many more. There are at least dozens of stock formats, a full knowledge and context of which can only be acquired by experience.
• The "bamboozle" greentext. They are elaborate stories, which "set up" the reader for a song lyric, meme, or otherwise familiar cultural expression.
• The "tendies story". The main character is an adult male living in his mother's basement, making unreasonable requests upon her and receiving "Good Boy Points" for not excreting in his pants. If there are illustrations, he is depicted as a variation of the "Pepe" meme, and his mother as a variant of the "Wojak" meme.

Why study greentext?

Frankly, that's the wrong question to ask (and yes, I know I asked that.)

Why study literature at all? Because humanity, since the first day it could have been called "human", has appreciated the power of language: to inspire, to condemn, to announce, to distract. The study of literature is simply a thorough dissection and analysis of why language has that power to inspire, to condemn, to announce, to distract; in order to extract techniques to do so, or in order to understand why a good work is good, and what separates it from a bad work.

To answer this question, we must use a bit of circular reasoning here. Because people have cared enough about it to preserve it, thus it is worthy of further preservation. Because of its longevity and permanency as a form, it is worthy of analysis of the reasons why it has existed so long. Insofar as it has already entertained many, it is worthy of preservation so it may entertain many to come, and hopefully so that minds greater than ours can further delve into and examine the power of language as manifested in greentext.

What are its future prospects?

This may be overly optimistic, but I believe it has attained a life of its own: a term of existence coterminous with, if not beyond, the medium on which it was created. By the multiplicity of imageboards that have been created, we know imageboards have achieved a term of existence coterminous with, if not beyond, the generation by which they were populated. For it has gained the ability to cross genres and contexts and retain some of its essential unity, the first step towards immortality of any literary form. And even if it hasn't, that makes preserving it even more important. If it's just lost forever, then it can't be revived someday like ragtime was in the 1970s.