First off, Happy New Year. In keeping that idea of what is new and fresh, and based on the following YouTube video, perhaps we should start rethinking that old expression “they fight like cats and dogs.”
(And, yes, this is partly an excuse just to post a really cute video, but, hey, I’m allowed one semi-pointless post a year.)
Check out this recent street-art activist campaign, The Pop-Down Project. As a response to the ever-increasing ad-creep that clutters our landscape and mentalscape, the project seeks to “symbolically restore” a user’s power to control their visual environment by shifting the context for how advertisements are viewed. In creating a false empowerment by offering the option for the ad to disappear, perhaps passer-byers will come to question the legitimacy of that ad occupying their field of vision.
It’s a fascinating case of internet literacy taking tangible and functional form at street level. Taken more wholistically, it’s interesting to note that the campaign seeks to wed the democratic spirit that is typically touted in street-art with the networking dynamics of Web 2.0 culture. The Pop-down project has blogspot site, a facebook page, and a slideshow on Picasa where people who have download the sticker from the site (shown below) can upload their finished product. I’d be curious to hear what you all think about the rhetorical maneuver being made here.
This campaign also brings to mind another anti-advertising street-art project, done by Graffiti Research Lab (who also has a strong web presence). Check out the video below, which seeks to collude street advertising with graffiti:
Ha! Gay penguins steal eggs from straight couples (via The Blogora).
I’m not even sure what to say. Just “hmm.”
Though, I did like the keeper’s attempt at political correctness when saying that the gay penguins would have to be separated from the other penguins:
“It’s not discrimination. We have to fence them separately, otherwise the whole group will be disturbed during hatching time,” he added.
Still, hmm.
Elfster.com is pretty much an online secret Santa, but the thing I find interesting is that you can list things that you want and things that you don’t need, which your secret Santa can look up in order to get the right gift for you. If you’re interested, then you can see it in action through their instruction video.
It makes me wonder if this changes how we go about gift giving. Part of the aim of a Secret Santa is to surprise your particular gift-receiver. I see a double-edged sword popping up. On the one hand, if you get them something that they listed as wanting or needing, then they aren’t disappointed at receiving, say, a fruitcake or something like that. (At one point, I thought this was more of a myth than anything else. People don’t really give fruitcakes. Oh, let me tell you that they actually do. [Which fruitcakes aren't actually that bad if properly prepared. Usually it's when they're to dry that it's just bad.])
However, limiting Secret Santa only to what’s on the want list may prevent a person from getting some wicked cool that they never considered. Having an already made list keeps the Secret Santa from being able to use their creativity or come up with something that the gift-receiver may actually need rather than merely want.
Eliminating that creative gift can take the fun out of secret Santa, because you can’t even begin to accurately guess who your secret santa might be. You see, a gift says as much about the giver as it does the receiver. Now, you can still say something about yourself even with a list. Let’s say that I listed headphones as an item on my want list. If my secret santa gave me some really nice noise reduction headphones, then that tells me that my secret santa a.) takes great pride in the gifts that they give b.) thinks quite a lot of me or even possibly c.) is an aficionado of headphones. Of course, there are other possibilities as well, but these are fairly good guesses. Based on these possibilities, I can then predict who I believe my secret Santa to be.
What I’m saying is that an unexpected gift can heighten this hypothesizing. You then have to tap into a person’s creativity, which can make your prediction totally off the mark and truly surprise you as to who your real secret Santa is. That’s what makes secret Santa exciting–in my opinion. It’s the mystery.
Yesterday as I was meeting with some students from my first-year writing and rhetoric class (which focused on analyzing narratives), they were joking about how their newfound rhetorical awareness had been messing with their minds. (And yes, I know that some of this was no doubt revealed with their yet-to-be-posted grades in mind.) One comment in particular gave me a warm holiday glow. To paraphrase:
“You ruined Rudolph for me. Here’s this guy who’s different from the rest, and marked physically by that difference — so he’s ostracized by the crowd, disrespected and disregarded… until, that is, he can help out some rich white authority figure. And then suddenly he’s embraced and accepted, just because he can contribute to their power. That’s some b.s.”
Rebel Rudolph (by shiny red type, Flickr)
Hell yeah, it is! Don’t get me wrong — I love Christmas specials. And Christmas songs. I’m a sucker for sparkly lights, eggnog-induced cheer, and the Island of Misfit Toys. But sorry, Santa — I’m an even bigger fan of critical college students.
Side note: Did you know “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was actually created as a marketing ploy by a department store? Yet, as Snopes.com points out, the original was rather less problematic in certain ways: Rudolph was not a resident of the North Pole, just an average reindeer with loving and supportive parents. He was well-adjusted and confident long before Santa stumbled upon him in a moment of need. Fascinating revision from there to the current version, right?!
Rudolph and his lady friend (by voteprime, Flickr)
This morning’s New York Times Magazine contains a fascinating look at “Google’s Gatekeepers”. Beginning with the case of Turkey’s insistence on a censored version of YouTube (ThemTube? UsTube? Some-of-YouTube?), law professor Jeffrey Rosen explores the limits of free speech in a web/world dominated by major capitalist corporations as (or more) invested in their own power than in the voices of “the people”:
“Today the Web might seem like a free-speech panacea: it has given anyone with Internet access the potential to reach a global audience. But though technology enthusiasts often celebrate the raucous explosion of Web speech, there is less focus on how the Internet is actually regulated, and by whom. As more and more speech migrates online, to blogs and social-networking sites and the like, the ultimate power to decide who has an opportunity to be heard, and what we may say, lies increasingly with Internet service providers, search engines and other Internet companies…”
In general, the article raises (kindly without pretending to resolve) important questions about the various versions of “free” speech, the limitations of the Internet as “public” sphere, the tensions among open access and accountability, data control and world domination, and (duh duh duh) the Future. Good stuff for a rainy Sunday.
The real meat of the matter is the issue of free speech in the Internet age, what counts as publicly acceptable or exceptional to a World Wide audience. Of course, Google and its subsidiaries have a policy of removing only porn, graphic violence, and hate speech — but in the reality of the virtual world, these already subjective determinations become even fuzzier. As Rosen points out, the international market mandates specific restrictions based on individual countries’ laws, and so Google has often had to filter content for specific contexts. For example, Germany and France have laws against Holocaust denial, so search engines cannot display sites devoted to such denial. To some degree, that seems reasonable and responsible… until you consider that those denials are merely submerged, not subverted, but their silencing. Moreover, as Rosen argues (I like this guy), “one person’s principled political protest is another person’s hate speech”; he illustrates this tension through demands by Joe Lieberman (this guy bugs me) that Google remove videos he judged to be “jihadist,” a concept on which I’m not sure his views are, well, balanced. Ah yes, best to just sweep pesky protesters under the rug.
These examples brings up the old question of whether silencing haters only lets them hate in silence or private — rather than exposing their hatred to the light of day and others’ responses that might challenge or even (optimistically) change those attitudes. I just had this discussion with one of my students: While it’s certainly important to “protect the innocent” from hate speech, does that offer true protection or a false sense of security? What are the dangers, for all sides, of denial? And can we ever really hope to negotiate oppositional viewpoints, let alone overcome them, without, well, engaging them in conversation?
(And how can we learn to ask such questions without feeling–or fearing to be dismissed as–idealistic and naive?!)
According to Yahoo News, “meh” has just been added to the Collins English Dictionary. I support this.
You know, I do have to wonder about the usefulness of adding colloquial language to dictionaries if that particular colloquial phrase is merely a trendy, faddish kinda thing. It’s not like I go around saying that so and so is the bee’s knees or anything. (Okay, I’ll admit to using supposedly “outdated” phrases like that just for fun at times, but as a predominant form of communication? No.)
So, will “meh” actually make it to the stature that other words such as “cool” have? Of course, I don’t know for sure, but I’d say yeah. Even if it doesn’t remain “meh” specifically, but transforms into “eh” or “uh” or something like that, it’s still a form of common communication that’s being used more and more readily. It’s often instantly understood too. Even without having a specific definition in some fancy British dictionary, the gist of the meaning is understood. It just works well.
Even I’ve been susceptible to its influences:
facebook status update
Oh, yeah. For Realz.
I mean, I could try to properly describe the kind of ambivalence and indifference that I was feeling, but “meh,” to me, is more of an expression of that indifference rather than a description of that same feeling. Ya feel me? “Meh” is like the actual tear, whereas saying “Kaitlin is indifferent” is like the word “crying.” Prospective readers understand so much about my particular state with just that one word without me going on and on about it.
Perfecto.
So, yeah. It deserves to be in the dictionary. And that’s not so “meh.”
Language Log has an interesting post on periods, that is if you find punctuation interesting. I can. I’ll admit it. And if you’d like a pretty cool book on the subject, then I’d recommend Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Hey, it’s got spunk.
Anyway, my stance on grammar is this. Grammar is meant to be utilized as a basis for us to understand each other. When that meaning gets muddled because the structure is crap, then correct grammar and punctuation would be beneficial, but if the meaning is still comprehensible even with supposed punctuation “mistakes,” then I’m pretty okay with it. Now, I won’t go so far as to say that I’m completely on board or anything. There are things that would stick out to me. It’s pretty hard for it not to with my background, but if grammar rules are broken for stylistic purposes and the meaning is still comprehensible, then cool. Lay your meaning on me.
Gauti Sigthorsson posted his Screen Studies Conference presentation creatively titled “Home is Where My Archive Is.” It runs about 20 minutes and is most definitely worth the listen. If not for the actual complications Gauti brings up, but also for sentences like: “you’re functioning as my 3D PowerPoint presentation.”
Maybe it’s being surrounded by fairly, hmm, let’s say “quirky” people, but it seems like I’ve been confronted with a Robotic vs Organic concept since my youth. In my earlier years, it was the infamous Ninja vs Robot Debate, which was a continuous argument about who would win in a fight. I was on the Ninja side.
Even now I belong to a forum that calls its members “bots.” Bots who type with robot fingers.
My experience is not an anomaly. Indeed, I can bring up a ton of examples of the Mechanical Anxiety that shows up in the media.
Um, Colbert anyone?
Even The Onion weighs in:
In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?
And the one that perked my interest:
CNN’s Scientists: Humans and Machines will merge in Future
As a writer, it peaks my interest. How is it that we’re all nervous about the same thing? Well, I guess this might be a purely American anxiety. I haven’t run into articles from foreign presses with the same kind of stance, but I also don’t look at foreign presses. It’s the language barrier. Predictable maybe, but true.
Anyway, I call it an anxiety, because none of these articles/videos really go out of their way to embrace the mechanical, the robotic. I mean, it makes sense to be nervous about something that effects everyone, yes. Like the economy right now–it impacts everyone. But something like this–where it seems so trite and trivial and downright silly. Have we all watched one too many matinee movies on the SciFi channel? Or is there something about our humanness that we’re trying to grasp onto, to cling to, to keep ourselves from forgetting. Through our own industrialization and our so-called technological advancements, we are still fragile. We are simply skin and bone and tissue.
Ah, but let me ask you this: does skin and bone and tissue really make you human?
Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion
2008