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Final Reflection
Before this course, I never thought that there are so many deep meanings behind those everyday technologies we use. I am one of those spoiled children of technology, taking things for granted. The memes, remix videos I came across every day and the wikipedia I use to do my homework even the games I play all have deep meanings and relations to us. Writing these four blog posts gave me the opportunities to put the theories that I have learnt in the lectures in use to analyze different things I encounter in my everyday life. It helped to intensify the ideas and explores the internet world in a different point of view.
The most effective blog post
Out of the four blog posts that I have written, i think “Memes, memes everywhere” is the most effective one. In that blog post, I briefly discussed how an internet meme works and further discussed the process involved using the example of Neil deGrasse Tyson in a casual way. I pointed out that internet memes are not just pictures that make jokes, but they are the perfect examples of digital remixing. I reinforced the ideas I learnt in the lectures in this blog post. The idea of memeing, digital remixes and the idea from Lawrence Lassig were effectively explained using an lively example. There were clear explanations on how a meme is formed, how it is a process of digital remixing and the creators’ stances on copyright. Also, there were further readings related to the remixing and memeing issues provided at the end of the blog post. Readers can understand those ideas very easily through the examples provided.
The multimodality involved in that blog post is what makes it effective. Digital media allows us to incorporate more visual elements than before, we can use videos, images, soundtracks etc. to tell things. In “Memes, memes everywhere“, I have included various sources of multimedia materials such as numerous pictures and a YouTube video. Also, I made use of the top-down format. A brief introduction of the topic was put in the top, followed by a number of visual resources to support the idea. Each small paragraph was separated by a related picture. The short paragraphs make it easier to read. And as readers scroll down, they can see how I went deeper in that topic step by step.
The use of hypertext links also made this blog post effective. Hypertext allows readers greater flexibility to create their own reading paths. They can click on the hyperlinks and jump to a new website to read, or stay at reading the original passage. I included several hyperlinks in my blog posts to link to the definitions from wikipedia and several popular discussion boards that I have mentioned. Readers can read the text smoothly without clicking. They can ignore the hyperlinks if they have well knowledge of what that hyperlink is referring to. Readers who have no idea of what they are can click the link and get further information before continue in reading the text. The use of hyperlinks makes it easier for me to get my message across without writing a lot of explanations and definitions. It helps to provide sufficient materials and resources for readers who are not familiar with the topic to dig into the subject. Thus, making my blog post effective.
Reflection on individual blog posts
Memes, memes everywhere
The points that I have discussed in “Memes, memes everywhere” have strengthened. I talked about how internet memes are actually digital remixing of different media and how the original creators feel about copyrights. In fact, a recent example can be added to this blog post to illustrate the ideas.
The video above, Gangnam Style by Psy, has recently gone viral worldwide. It became the most viewed video on YouTube and you could almost hear this every where. The dance and the song were covered by countless people, even celebrities. People remixed the video and the song in various ways, such as making a dupstep version of the song or making an 8-bit video (as shown below),etc. The 8-bit video creator remixed the real-life 3-D video into a digital-based 2-D 8-bit video and it has gone viral as well. I would like to point out that digital remixing provokes and encourages creativity. One viral internet video can lead to countless creative productions. If you search “Gangnam Style” in YouTube, you can find hundreds and thousands of covers or remixes of the original video. The original video and the remixed version helped each other grow.
Also, same as Neil deGrasse Tyson, the original creator of Gangnam Style is happy with all the remixes seen on the internet. Because these videos actually help in promoting the original video. Thus, extending the life-span of a viral video (which usually has short life-span). This again strengthened the points that I have talked about in my blog post, creators usually want people to further remix their products in order to help promoting their creations.
The Internet hates emoticons and online language
In “The Internet hates emoticons and online language“, I have talked about the phenomenon of how internet users react negatively towards emoticons and online language. However, I came across several ACG (Animation, Comis, Games) discussion boards like Komica a few days ago and I found out that the phenomenon I discussed could not be applied there. The users of these discussion boards mainly put their interests in Japanese ACG. And they followed many conventions of Japanese online language. The use of emoticons (especially emoji – Japanese style emoticons) such as （・∀・）and (；д；) is widely accepted. The emoticon “XD” that I have talked about in that blog post is even more commonly used in those discussion boards. Also, the users would use Japanese online language such as “wwwwwwwwwwww” to stand for “hahahaha”. The attitudes towards emotions and online language in these ACG forums are completely opposite to those in mainstream discussion boards. One possible reason would be the users’ fondness of Japanese culture makes them follow the way Japanese internet users talk. And since almost all the users in those ACG discussion boards are ACG fans, they can tolerate this kind of behaviour, or even see it as a norm. After looking at these discussion boards, I would say that the phenomenon that I have described in my previous blog post only exists in mainstream forums where most users are adults or young adults. And the phenomenon could not be found in Japanese-culture-based or teenage discussion boards, in fact, the situations are completely different.
Don’t be another Leeroy Jenkins
In this blog post, I have discussed that one has to be able to cooperate well with others and interpret codes efficiently in order to become a good player. I used some examples to talk about the collaborative skills and texts within games that were mentioned in the textbook. And I have implied that the reason why bad players are bad players is that they failed to collaborate and interpret texts within the games efficiently. However, there is one common phenomenon in games called trolling that I did not mention in the blog post. Players or even internet users that are “trolls” will deliberately do something to piss others off. I always come across this kind of players in the video games that I play. And I always get pissed off by these kind of players. In this case, bad players in video games might not be playing bad because of the lack of skills and collaboration but because of intentionally trolling. Players of this kind might have the ability to interpret different texts within the games well such as subtle cues and different semiotic codes. They might also be good at collaborating with others. But they are just not willing to perform them.
As you can see from this video, this player clearly knows how the game works. He can change weapons well, he knows how the bomb works. Instead of playing the game seriously and collaborate with his teammates, he chose to troll and mess with them. He took all the health packs alone, he threw bombs at his teammates. When he saw a teammate in need for some help, he set fire on them. This is the typical kind of trolling behaviour. A good player deliberately messes up the game for his/her own fun. And this is the point I would like to add to that blog post. Some players can play well, they know how to collaborate and understand texts within games but they just want to mess things up.
The balance of seeking and paying attention
After revising this blog post, I think there is one point that I could add into discussion, that is the identity people present and build online. As mentioned in the textbook, there are generally two kinds of identity management: equipment for displaying information and equipment for concealing information. The issues of seeking too much attention and paying too much attention are directly related to online identity management. People who seek too much attention, that is the “attention whore” I mentioned in my blog post, wanted to build a vulnerable image online. They post vague statuses about being upset and lost in search for comforting comments. These kind of statuses build them a vulnerable image. Also, the kind of girl who posts way too many photos online is also building her own online identity. This kind of girl wants to present the fun part of their lives. Photos showing them going different places, with different friends help in building a positive image which the poster is outgoing, fun and confident. On the contrary, people who pay too much attention without seeking attention actually tried to conceal the information and not to build an online identity. They chose to be those people who only read but not reveal. They want to conceal their information, they do not want to reveal their lives to the people on the internet or in their social network. These would good points to add into that blog posts as the online identity management is closely related to the attention structure online.
Conclusion
To conclude, I appreciate the opportunities to write blog posts. To craft a good blog post, I need to understand the ideas taught in the course thoroughly and use lively examples to illustrate them. After writing those blog posts, I understand the ideas more deeply and I am able to use the theories taught to analyze different internet phenomenon. This whole course has been a fun and useful experience which I can explore different aspects of digital media that I encounter every day. As an addict of social networking, video games etc., this course introduced me the meaning, development and thought process behind these things. I hope you feel the same way as I do. Thanks Dr.G.
The balance of seeking and paying attention
Social networking websites take an important part of our lives now. We have to constantly check our feeds to keep up and interact with others. You may think that updating statuses or uploading photos is nothing more than sharing about your lives. But this actually shapes your identity, people have different impressions of you based on what you post on these websites.
We all have that friend on facebook (usually girls) who always post pictures, status fishing attentions. They usually present the emo side of them. They posts from pictures of them crying, wallpost with over-exaggerated statements to vaguebooking statuses like “I’m sad…” , “Had the worst day ever…”, but when you ask them what is wrong, they will just tell you “it’s really personal, so don’t ask”. Every time I see stuff like this, this is my reaction:
Michael Holdhaber (1997) said that we are living in an attention economy where value is created from the exchange of attention. We seek attention, obtain attention and pay attention. Every thing is dying to get our attention so that we will spend a little time on them. Most of the social networking websites are built upon this concept. What’s the point of updating your status on facebook? People want attention from others. They will talk about interesting thing happened that day, post some pictures, or share some funny videos. You show that you have paid attention by liking or commenting, so that the original poster won’t look like he/she is talking to himself/herself. We all need to manage a balanced attention structure. We have to seek, obtain and pay attention at a right level. Seeking too much attention or paying too much attention is annoying.
The internet users came up with a term “attention whore” to refer to people who crave attention to an extent that they become annoying and would almost do anything to get attention. These people are usually in their early adulthood, insecure, emotionally unstable and needy. Some common symptoms of this “attention whore” disease patients are that they always upload excessive amount of self-portraits wherever they go and vaguebooking. They post status updates fishing attentions. Usually, their status updates are vague, you don’t know what they really want to say and you want to ask them what really happened. They lure you into asking them questions so that they get the attentions they want. This is how this whole trap works. If one person asked, these “attention whores” succeeded. They do this in order to get attention, to feel secured.
This “attention whore” term exists because most of the internet users are annoyed by these “attention whores”. Those meaningless whining, photos that look all the same annoy others because these “attention whores” clearly violated the whole balance of the attention structure. People might be interested in what they are up to in the first few times. But after posts after posts, statuses after statuses, it becomes annoying. They seek way too much attention, and other people eventually lose their interest in these “attention whores”.
Paying too much attention is not a pleasant thing either. It is creepy and annoying. This happens the most on facebook as the users can see photos, videos of a particular user other than just status updates. This kind of people pay an excessive amount of attention to other users. Some of them like every thing, comment on every thing, read every thing; some of them just stalk without being noticed but they actually saw every thing that you’ve posted on facebook. The internet users call this kind of people “facebook creeper”. According to the urban dictionary, a “facebook creeper” is “someone who uses facebook but is looking at other peoples profiles, going through their pictures, reading their messages. It’s a little like stalking.”
This kind of behaviour might be more acceptable among close friends. But it is actually still very rare to see close friends liking or commenting every single posts by each other. Again, this behaviour is another example of losing the balance of attention. Paying the right amount of attention to others is a very pleasant thing, it helps you to become popular, to build a friendly image. But paying too much attention is just creepy as hell. It annoys others. And people might actually think you are a creep, a stalker or a psychopath.
So if you don’t want to see people ignore you because you are posting too many annoying stuff on facebook, or don’t want to see people avoid you because you are stalking them, remember to maintain a good balance between seeking attention and paying attention. Too much of each can kill your facebook life.
Don’t be another Leeroy Jenkins
Leeroy Jenkins, a true internet legend. This video existed before YouTube. And this is the first viral video I watched on the internet when I was a kid. In the video, you can see a bunch of people gathering at the gate of a dungeon kind of thing, getting ready to slaughter some monsters. They were checking their items, their equipment. A guy (possibly the leader) talked about how he is going to cast his aoe spells, which means spells that deal Area of Effect damage. And one guy even did the math. But suddenly, a player yelled “LEEEROY JENKINS!” and rushed into the dungeon like he had gone mad. The rest of the team were in shocked, they had no choice but to follow him while cursing and swearing about how stupid Leeroy was. And then, it was the sad story of how a fully prepared team got slaughtered by the monsters.
This player, Leeroy Jenkins, is the perfect example of a bad video game player or what video game players called rambo, noob (the opposite of pro, usually suck at playing). As mentioned in the textbook, a good video game usually requires the players to collaborate with others to achieve a certain goal and players can learn the collaborative problem-solving skills. This is very true for the team in the video, they were well-prepared, they discussed the strategies. However, Leeroy Jenkins clearly did not collaborate. Instead of following his leader, he ran into the dungeon alone like Rambo, causing the death of the whole team.
When we talk about video games, we mostly refers to consoles like xBox, PS etc. and PC online games such as WoW or LoL. One common thing about these two types of games is that they both require the player to have good team work. No team work = GG. One noob is all it takes to ruin the game.
Teamwork is crucial especially in first-person shooting (FPS) games. You can always play by yourself and go against computer bots, but that’s no fun. The real fun of video games is that you can go online and play with other players around the world. But to experience the fun, you have to have good collaborative skills. In many FPS games like Counter-Strike or Left 4 Dead, the game emphasis is on teamwork. Like many other FPS games, there are not just normal guns that you can use but many other weapons like grenades, flashbang, grenade launcher, flame thrower etc. In order to be good at playing the game, a player must know how to use these weapons, at least have a basic knowledge. Using them in the wrong way, in the wrong time may cause death.
I will give you an example from my own experience. Well, I suck at FPS games. The two FPS games mentioned above are the FPS games that I have played. When I was playing CS about 6 or 7 years ago, I loved buying a lot of grenades and flashbangs. But i suck at throwing them. There was once when my teammates had low hp, running away from the enemies, and I tried to scare them off with a grenade. So I threw, feeling glorious for saving my teammates lives. But I threw too high, the grenade hit the wall and bounced back. BOOM. Instant deaths. After that, there was a huge wave of cursing and swearing at how bad I am, calling me noob and I got kicked out of the room.
So this is the game that I am playing every day now. It is called League of Legends (LoL). It is one of the fastest-growing and the most popular online video game in the world now. It has an embodied story behind the game, telling the story of a virtual world where different Champions (characters) joined the League to compete against each other, and can be summoned by a Summoner (player). Each Champion has his/her/its own back story.
As shown in the image above, at the bottom part of the screen, you can see the items you own and the abilities you could use. This is an iconic interface that was mentioned in the textbook which players can use to direct action in that virtual world. The abilities are fixed, every player gets the same thing if they choose the character that I chose. But it is up to the player of what items to buy and how to sequence in using those abilities. You have to make decision, adjust your strategy in different situations. When I was new to this game, I did not understand when my teammates said “mia“. After numerous defeats and asking, I finally know how to interpret this cue. Other than simply telling “an enemy is missing”, it carries a wider range of meaning such as “be careful, he might be coming to gank(to try and kill an enemy by surprise, often with more than one player) you.” etc.
I scored a penta-kill in that match. (Yes, I’m awesome.) This is the result of experiential and active learning in game. To be a good player in an interactive online game, you have to be collaborative and understand various cues. And this is how I became a carry from a noob like Leeroy Jenkins.
The internet hates emoticons and online language
Yes it does. If you don’t believe this, just go onto those biggest, most influential discussion boards or forums, comment or reply on a popular thread with a “^o^” emoticon at the end of your sentence. Wait for a couple of hours, then check your comment again and you will experience the hate, i guarantee.
Although emoticons give digital texts a higher level of media richness as emoticons re-present different human facial expressions, most internet users find them childish. You could take a look at the discussion threads in those leading internet forums and you won’t find any emoticons in any of the replies. If you happened to find one, then you will see tons of users teasing and mocking that particular user. Even though the rules of the forums did not state that emoticons are strictly forbidden, there are shared understandings among the users to avoid using emoticons or even to hate emoticons.
This does not only happen in the English speaking countries, it is also very common in the internet world of Hong Kong. The image above was a conversation taken from one of the biggest internet forums in Hong Kong – Hong Kong Golden Forum. The user “bmth” asked a question with a emoticon “=.=” at the end of the sentence, clearly unaware of the fact that internet users hate emoticons. Then the user “游離分子” replied to “bmth”‘s comment saying “( Show Blocked User – bmth )”, showing “bmth” that he has been blocked because he used an emoticon.
The possible reason of the internet users hating emoticons is that they think emoticons are childish and immature. Using emoticons is especially popular among teenagers. Huffaker and Calvert have proven it true, they have found that teenagers are more likely to use emoticons than adults. Therefore, using emoticon became a childish and immature move in the eyes of adult internet users.
Come to think of it, I used to use a lot of emoticons to communicate with people online or via mobile phones too when I was a teenager, but now I find them childish and annoying just like what those fellow internet users think. I didn’t force myself to get rid of the habit of using emoticons and hate them, it just happened naturally. And imagine when you are reading a thread about, say, economic policies which is full of serious comment and suddenly you come across a comment like “I agree! The government should cut taxes XD”. How would you feel about it?
What the internet also hates is the excessive use of online language e.g. acronyms, abbreviations etc. There are only so much commonly acceptable acronyms and abbreviations in the “adult internet world” such as tbo, imo, brb etc. But when it comes to the teenagers, there are countless acronyms and abbreviations. And these phrases are not standardized. Using too many words into acronym and abbreviation forms makes the texts end up looking meaningless like a bunch of random letters combined together, it will be difficult to comprehend and it would take a lot of effort to read it. Just try reading the youtube comment above and see if you can understand what that person was talking about. If you do, I strongly suggest you joining user “13579jams”‘s science team.
Here is an example of how the internet hates how people are using acronyms excessively and try to make fun of them. There is a popular online acronym “OMGWTFBBQ” that stands for “oh my god what the f**k barbecue*. It is more or less a jumble of meaningless acronyms or gibberish. The phrase is the parody of the popular internet acronym “omg” and “wtf”. But this phrase is actually created to mock the excessive use of the acronyms “OMG” and “WTF” (in caps, girls like exaggerating) of teenage girls.
The excessive use of one of the online laguage – letter homophones, caused problems that bother the internet users too. It is very common to see people use “u” to stand for “you”, “r” to stand for “are”, “ur” to stand for “your” and “u r” to stand for “you are”. But they are all combined by the same two alphabets, and as I mentioned before, the way the type is not standardized. People always mix them up and cause huge confusion, e.g. using “ur” to stand for both “your” and “you’re”. When it was so excessively used, it even affects people’s ability to spell the original form correctly.
Many users are concerned about the worsening grammar standard on the internet, and they took action to correct them. Those internet users who constantly point out other users’ grammatical mistakes are called Grammar Nazi. The image above is a good example of this. The top part of the image is a screen capture from tumblr which is a very popular site among teenagers. There was a photo with the caption “IMAGINE YOUR HERE”. Clearly, the original poster wanted to say “IMAGINE YOU’RE HERE”, so an internet user added the bottom part image to the original image to correct the poster.
It is kind of ironic how internet users hate emoticons and online language when these two things came from the internet. Even though internet is free and you can be anonymous there, it still has rules.
Memes, memes everywhere.
A meme on the internet, according to the wikipedia, is a concept that spreads via the internet. It is most commonly seen in a derivative work form such as pictures and videos etc., and it can easily go viral in the internet through popular discussion boards like 4chan and Reddit or sites like tumblr.
Well, it is hard to understand what a meme really is just by looking at the definition above. So let’s see an example.
The above image is a viral internet meme categorized as rage comic called “Watch out, we got a badass over here.” featuring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. This image was originated from a video in which Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about how Sir Issac Newton invented calculus before his 26th birthday.
(Skip to 1:30 if you are too lazy to listen to it)
People on the internet found his expression so funny (and “epic”, according to what they said) that they drawn the comic of him, and then it started to go viral. People often use this image for mocking or being sarcastic to those boastful statements, pictures or comments.
This badass meme is actually a very good example of the digital remixes that we have learnt during the lecture. The creator of the “watch out, we got a badass over here” image created a new picture out of an existing video, people on the internet then used this image to put it in a different context, give it a new meaning and create new pictures. This kind of remix is “a process of altering or re-engineering aspects of an existing work” (Jones and Hafner 45).
This kind of creation can be considered as derivative work which is very popular nowadays as almost everyone is on the internet now. Certainly, this has provided a lot of fun to the internet users. And it also encourages and provokes creativity. Every one can make these kind of pictures, every one can be the artists, creators (whatever you want to call them) behind all these. The American legal scholar Lawrence Lassig has also pointed out more or less the same thing, he said that the barrier of publishing has been removed as the internet becomes popular, so that thousands and millions of “amateur” publishers can contribute to the creation. Also, people on the internet make these remixes because they love doing it, they are not asking for any monetary return or registering any copyright stuffs. Lassig also mentioned that those people who are involved in these kind of productions for the love of it, not asking for any monetary return. In most of the time, what the creators want is just making people laugh, discuss, or share the image to others.
Lassig proposed a system called “Creative Commons Licensing”, it basically is system to protect the creators in which it describes what intellectual property rights the creator wants to reserve. Copyright stuff. But the fact is, creators of internet memes, pictures or videos etc. seldom use this system or any other licensing system. They don’t care about copyright of their works. They mostly post their works on internet discussion boards or image sharing sites without specifying the terms of sharing because they want people to share it so that the work can go viral on the internet. The more people share their work the better. This again proved what I’ve mentioned above that the creators make these images because they love to do it.
Most of the time, the owners of the original contents are upset when the contents got remixed and spread around and some of them even see remixes as a kind of stealing. This maybe true in some ways. But just think about how many people are browsing the big forums like 4chan and reddit, MILLIONS, and I’m talking about people from all around the world. So having your work remixed and posted on these sites is actually is a very good publicity and a huge opportunity to promote yourself or your products. There is no such thing as bad publicity, all publicity is good publicity.
See how Neil deGrasse Tyson took this whole meme/remixes thing? He is cool with it. And it actually gave him tons of publicity that his book sales has gone up and became more famous.
Of course, not every one is as badass or as awesome as Neil deGrasse Tyson. There are a lot of people who are not happy about all the remixing stuff. They tried to stop this by proposing treaties called SOPA, ACTA to restrict a lot of actions on the internet. The internet users, however, are not chickens. They stood up against these treaties and raised huge concerns. It is impossible to say who is the winner since the treaties were signed by numerous big countries while the remixes on the internet are still going viral. But one thing is for sure, the internet will never surrender.
Further reading:
Keep calm and drink beer
Curiouser and curiouser 