Internet Social Sciences

An emerging interdisciplinary field studying social phenomena on and through the internet—how online communities form, how identity is constructed digitally, how power operates in networked spaces. Internet Social Sciences combine sociology, anthropology, communication studies, and data science to understand human behavior in digital environments. It asks: How do social norms emerge online? What is community in the absence of co-presence? How does the internet amplify or mitigate inequality?

"They studied the TikTok community like anthropologists studying a tribe—rituals, language, hierarchies, conflicts. That's Internet Social Sciences: applying the tools of social science to digital worlds. The internet isn't separate from society; it's society transformed. Understanding it requires new methods, new theories, new questions."

by Dumu The Void March 4, 2026

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Internet Human Sciences

An interdisciplinary field applying humanities perspectives to internet phenomena—studying digital culture, online identity, virtual ethics, and the human experience of networked life. Internet Human Sciences draw on philosophy, history, literary theory, and cultural studies to ask: What does it mean to be human online? How do digital technologies shape our sense of self, community, and meaning? What stories do we tell about the internet, and what stories does the internet tell about us?

"She analyzed Twitter threads as literature—narrative structure, character development, dramatic arcs. That's Internet Human Sciences: treating digital expression as human expression worthy of humanistic study. The internet isn't just data; it's culture, meaning, story. Understanding it requires the humanities as much as the sciences."

by Dumu The Void March 4, 2026

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Internet Cognitive Sciences

An interdisciplinary field studying how the internet affects cognition—attention, memory, reasoning, and decision-making in digital environments. Internet Cognitive Sciences combine psychology, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction to ask: Does the internet change how we think? Is attention fragmenting? Is memory outsourcing to devices changing what we remember? How does online interaction shape social cognition?

"She couldn't remember phone numbers anymore—why remember when the phone remembers? Internet Cognitive Sciences asks: what happens to memory when it's externalized? What happens to attention when it's constantly divided? The internet isn't just a tool; it's an environment, and environments shape cognition."

by Dumu The Void March 4, 2026

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Internet Gang Up

A broader phenomenon encompassing any coordinated or emergent mob attack conducted through internet-mediated means, across platforms, protocols, and spaces. Where "digital gang up" might emphasize the digital nature of the attack, "internet gang up" emphasizes the network itself—the way information travels, mobs form, and coordination happens across the entire internet ecosystem. An internet gang up might start on Twitter, spread to Reddit, generate YouTube videos, leak into Discord servers, spawn blog posts, and result in doxxing, harassment, and real-world consequences. The target experiences not just a platform-specific attack but the full weight of the networked mob, amplified and sustained by the internet's architecture of virality and persistence. Internet gang ups are what happens when the mob discovers you and the network makes escape impossible.

Example: "The controversy followed her across every platform—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, even her professional email—an Internet Gang Up that demonstrated the network's capacity to coordinate destruction across every digital space she occupied."

by Dumu The Void March 14, 2026

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Internet Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about the internet that dominate digital discourse—the often-unexamined assumptions that the internet is liberating, that it democratizes knowledge, that it connects people, that it's inevitable, that more connectivity is always better, that the current internet (corporate, surveilled, centralized) is simply how the internet is. Internet orthodoxy includes commitments: that access solves problems, that digital natives understand technology, that platforms are neutral, that algorithms are technical rather than political, that the internet's problems are growing pains rather than design features, that alternatives (decentralized, non-commercial, community-owned) are impractical. Like all orthodoxies, it shapes how we understand digital space, but it functions as ideology—making particular internet arrangements seem natural and inevitable, obscuring how the internet could be otherwise, and delegitimizing visions of alternative digital futures. Internet orthodoxy determines what online spaces are "realistic," what digital policies are "forward-thinking," and who counts as "tech-savvy" versus "nostalgic."

Example: "He dismissed concerns about platform surveillance as inevitable—'that's just how the internet works.' Internet orthodoxy had made corporate control feel like the nature of technology rather than a choice."

by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026

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