Internets, These Here Internets — a Meme referring to local Internet communities, and in a broader sense — the informal, "parochial" part of the Internet. It serves as a counterweight to the concept of the "official internet".
The essence of the phenomenon
The union of small, more or less isolated internets produces the general internet known to everyone. A typical example of such an internet is the Nizhny Novgorod Internet), in whose honor the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day festival is held annually.
Background
"Internets" is a so-called Bushism: the meme arose from a verbal slip by George W. Bush — «I hear there's rumors on the, uh, Internets…» — which can be rendered as "I hear there's rumors going around in these… uh… Internets…"
In Russia, "Internets" has also been invoked at the official level — for instance, by Yuri Knyazev, senior assistant to the prosecutor of the Komi Republic:
| «They've simply cluttered up all these Internets with statements of the "no tsar in one's head" variety,» Knyazev explained the prosecutor's office's position to Gazeta.ru. |
Official definition
| All internets that are connected to the single world-wide Internet must use network numbers assigned by the NIC. |
Interesting facts
- Passages in George Bush's speeches stand out for giving listeners the impression of total incompetence on the speaker's part. Many such quotations contain factual geographical or historical errors and reflect a view of the world in which it is often difficult to tell whether one is hearing a simple slip of the tongue or a display of ignorance, illiteracy, and cynicism. If at first the term "Bushism" appeared only in books and articles by American authors about George Bush — serving as a repository of speech quotations — it is now increasingly used by foreign authors as well, especially in pieces containing criticism of the American president and his doctrines.
Most Bushisms are little known to the general public, but some have become memes. "Internets" is one such example — in two speeches Bush used the word "internet" in the plural on more than one occasion, for instance: «We can have filters on Internets where public money is spent».