Out in the wilds of Kyrgyzstan, cell reception is more common than you might think. You’ll see young men on horseback, riding through the steppe, posting on Instagram. Kids film TikToks from their family’s yurt camp in the rolling hills.
Those kids are often posting their videos in Russian. They’ve realized that if they post in their native language, they may only reach a few hundred thousand people. But if they can tap into a language spoken by more than a hundred million, they have a better shot at connection.
Whether the goal is finding community or simply monetization, the end result is the same. A bigger language gets you in a bigger room. This has become the grand bargain of the internet. By speaking one of the few languages that have become platform-dominant, you can transcend the inherited limits of your homeland.
Dominant languages can be useful as much as they’re imposed. The cultural promise of globalization was that the world would open cleanly if people translated themselves into whatever language had the greatest scale.
