English did not win the internet because it was the most useful language for the most people. It won because the keyboards were built for it, and then the search engines, and then the APIs, and then the text fields, and then the model training pipelines. The world adapted to a tool. Then we mistook the adaptation for a fact about the world.
2025-10-21
The internet made English look inevitable
English became the default online because early tools made it easier, not because the world thinks in it.