Although I have not been uploading anything new to my DeviantArt, I have been trying to get a feel for the community. I have been logging in every two weeks or so and favoriting works by some artists that I have followed, which helps to show support.
Additionally, one of the artists (the afore-mentioned Loish) joined a project called “Masters of Anatomy.” Did you hear about it? Although the kickstarter is now expired, it is this wonderful project where they reached hundreds of artists and commissioned them to just draw the front, side, and back of the “ideal” man and woman. This is meant as a reference book to show how many different ways that can be interpreted! Here's a video of some of the other artists:
To show my support, I even purchased the book and eagerly await its arrival in the Spring!
I have also left a few comments for some fan artists of the television series DeathNote… I would probably have received some favorites if I had created/posted more images/works, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm way too shy.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Bronies and Breaking Free
The internet acts as a remix board for culture-- people share, re-create, and develop further ideas and media relics within the interface, taking culture from all media outlets. While the web does allow access to traditional media elements, as well as re-mixed versions of them, there is an entirely separate culture underlying this mode of information sharing. The forums of “4Chan” and “/b/” (pronounced as, simply “B”) are by far the largest, most internet-literate sub-groups around. Their members created the “anonymous wave,” the use of “memes” which mimic the subculture, the “rules of the internet” and so much more. The largest manifestation of these groups are the subcultures. As Lawrence Lessig stated, “the internet has induced an important and unrecognized change in that process” of “how culture is made” (7). Today, we’re going to talk about the “Bronies.”
Lauren Faust, creator of Power Puff Girls, created “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” (MLP) for girls and young women. It began as a television show, and after an article criticizing animated television as purely commercial, the board 4Chan sparked with hundreds of “pony threads,” posting reaction images. The subculture spun out from there, leaking into /b/, the users of which had been called “btards.” These supporters of MLP have since been dubbed “Bronies,” /b/ lovers of my little ponies. Whenever any sort of culture, web-based or not, comes around and is heavily emphasized, there develops an anti-culture. 4Chan refers to the MLP outbreak, and the conflict thereafter, as the “flame wars.”
Relentless posting, trolling, spamming and spamming of “endless pony threads” ensued, and when 4Chan banned these threads, they retaliated with “Mods are asleep! Post ponies!” images. They ended up migrating to a newly-formed “PonyChan,” and 4Chan later lifted the ban. Stepping away from the Bronies for a brief second, let’s discuss the theft and piracy of these images. If you think the word “theft” is a bit harsh, it’s just the linguistic term used to express “whenever I take something of value from someone else” (Lessig 18). The entire discourse is surrounded with harsh words, such as “piracy,” and it criminalizes nearly an entire generation. “Every realm was governed by copyright law, whereas before most creativity was not.” Anyone in Lauren Faust’s place, judging by how the music industry has been functioning, could have a) discouraged, b) ignored, or c) fought the use of her images.
What is most interesting about this particular phenomenon, is how Lauren Faust handled it. Rather than trying to sue for something not there, she embraced the male demographic that her show had spread to, even creating a special spoof of Katy Perry’s “California Girls” for Ponychan. She has been creating the show along with her consumers. For instance, one of her characters in the pilot episode accidentally glitched, resulting in her eyes going in different directions. Fans dubbed her “DerpyHooves” and Lauren has since included this new character. As Henry Jenkins coins it, this is a prime example of a “participatory culture.” Peers comment upon one another’s work, and culture therein ensues, evolving. He discusses how the media tends to handle reproductions of their work as PonyChan has been doing to Lauren Faust:
Fans embrace Lauren, referring on her DeviantArt page that she must be singing “dance, puppets, dance!” However, this cooperation between consumers and producers (although, nowadays, everyone is a producer) should be prevalent in other media outlets. Rather than shun this participatory culture, why not embrace it? I chose the MLP/Brony/PonyChan subculture because I feel that it exemplifies an attitude that most other media outlets have yet to achieve. We can learn from Lauren that the use of your images is not necessarily a bad thing, and can actually be utiltized in various ways. The most important thing to take away, however, is the evolution of culture. If she had stopped the viral spread somehow, the entire culture would have been killed.
Current media outlets should consider what they’re doing to their own industry, and consumers.
Lauren Faust, creator of Power Puff Girls, created “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” (MLP) for girls and young women. It began as a television show, and after an article criticizing animated television as purely commercial, the board 4Chan sparked with hundreds of “pony threads,” posting reaction images. The subculture spun out from there, leaking into /b/, the users of which had been called “btards.” These supporters of MLP have since been dubbed “Bronies,” /b/ lovers of my little ponies. Whenever any sort of culture, web-based or not, comes around and is heavily emphasized, there develops an anti-culture. 4Chan refers to the MLP outbreak, and the conflict thereafter, as the “flame wars.”
Relentless posting, trolling, spamming and spamming of “endless pony threads” ensued, and when 4Chan banned these threads, they retaliated with “Mods are asleep! Post ponies!” images. They ended up migrating to a newly-formed “PonyChan,” and 4Chan later lifted the ban. Stepping away from the Bronies for a brief second, let’s discuss the theft and piracy of these images. If you think the word “theft” is a bit harsh, it’s just the linguistic term used to express “whenever I take something of value from someone else” (Lessig 18). The entire discourse is surrounded with harsh words, such as “piracy,” and it criminalizes nearly an entire generation. “Every realm was governed by copyright law, whereas before most creativity was not.” Anyone in Lauren Faust’s place, judging by how the music industry has been functioning, could have a) discouraged, b) ignored, or c) fought the use of her images.
What is most interesting about this particular phenomenon, is how Lauren Faust handled it. Rather than trying to sue for something not there, she embraced the male demographic that her show had spread to, even creating a special spoof of Katy Perry’s “California Girls” for Ponychan. She has been creating the show along with her consumers. For instance, one of her characters in the pilot episode accidentally glitched, resulting in her eyes going in different directions. Fans dubbed her “DerpyHooves” and Lauren has since included this new character. As Henry Jenkins coins it, this is a prime example of a “participatory culture.” Peers comment upon one another’s work, and culture therein ensues, evolving. He discusses how the media tends to handle reproductions of their work as PonyChan has been doing to Lauren Faust:
Media producers are responding to these newly empowered consumers in contradictory ways, sometimes encouraging change, sometimes resisting what they see as renegade behavior. And consumers, in turn, are perplexed by what they see as mixed signals about how much and what kinds of participation they can enjoy” (Jenkins 19).Thank goodness, Lauren has not taken this approach. In fact, I’d say the show has snowballed into a glorious compilation. Thousands of pony threads and reaction images run rampant, often taking elements of her show and spreading it to other walks of life. For instance, one episode included “parasprites” which consume everything and annoy everyone-- reaction images including “parasprites” spread to refer to all of the “brony haters.” Lots of vernacular terms have arisen as well, such as “brohoof” (spawned from “brofist”) and “bronies before hoenies.” Original, creative, boring, or exciting, all of these images have amounted into a greater subculture-- far greater than the original show Lauren Faust created could have achieved on its own.
Fans embrace Lauren, referring on her DeviantArt page that she must be singing “dance, puppets, dance!” However, this cooperation between consumers and producers (although, nowadays, everyone is a producer) should be prevalent in other media outlets. Rather than shun this participatory culture, why not embrace it? I chose the MLP/Brony/PonyChan subculture because I feel that it exemplifies an attitude that most other media outlets have yet to achieve. We can learn from Lauren that the use of your images is not necessarily a bad thing, and can actually be utiltized in various ways. The most important thing to take away, however, is the evolution of culture. If she had stopped the viral spread somehow, the entire culture would have been killed.
Current media outlets should consider what they’re doing to their own industry, and consumers.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Artificial Connections
Connection. When we first strived to close the geographic divide separating humanity, with wheels for faster transportation, followed by boats and cars and aero-planes and so on, we never could have imagined the internet. We realized that what we craved wasn’t necessarily to be there in person-- we would be fine with a superficial sense of “being there” because of how time-saving it is. Cue telegrams, telephones, radios, televisions… all “tele-inventions;” we loved the ability to interract at a distance. The internet is the current epitome of this yearning passion for instantaneous human connection, and until we invent virtual reality and/or teleportation, it’s what we have. The purpose of the internet is to connect the human race via a break-down of boundaries and creating alternate personas, so that we feel as though we are genuinely experiencing the people on the other side of the screen.
It is an undeniable fact that humans are social creatures and crave interaction, and history has shown that we will use any available means to socialize.
Let’s look at the beginnings of the internet: ARPAnet. Initially started as a military project in 1972 to keep the country under control in a post-nuclear war state, it quickly degraded from a research meca to a method of socialization: “The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing. Instead, it was news and personal messages. Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate on projects, to trade notes on work, and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze. People had their own personal user accounts on the ARPANET computers, and… they were very enthusiastic about this particular service -- far more enthusiastic than they were about long-distance computation” (Sterling, pg. 2). The technology quickly spread, exponentially growing as more and more people joined in on the fun. Mailing lists of different social groups were created, and Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web sprung off hundreds of social media outlets. Although originally segmented by race, these social media sites quickly fell into generalized categories in which anyone may participate. This leads to a sense of leaving your body behind, and just talking, with your mind, to others, and their minds. From the beginnings to present-day, we’ve flooded the internet with not research, but social interaction.
Is this social interaction as genuine as face-to-face interaction? Many would argue not. There are special features of “hanging” with someone in person that cannot easily be captured online at the same time-- body language, voice intonation, or even just physical interaction (even just hugs or pats on shoulders can be needed sometimes). Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 1846, felt quite strongly against air-tight stoves, feeling that society was losing an important social gathering place with open life to a fire. (You know watching an open fire is different than sitting around a stove- who sits around stoves, anyway?) He continues on with a prediction that I can’t help but think rings with modern-day truth: “Domestic life--if it may still be termed domestic--will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip--the merry, yet unambitious jest--the life-long, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way--the soul of truth, which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word--will disappear from earth.” Let’s talk about family dinners. Families sat down together and talked with one another. It seems that today an increasing number of families in America sit immersed in their technology, on their smart phones, laptops, tablets, music players, gaming devices, you name it.
The idea that we’ll “seek separate corners” may not be physically correct, but I feel that it is mentally correct. When you are talking with someone and pull out your phone to reply to an e-mail, facebook post, or text message, you are half-heartedly listening to the other person. If you’re really immersed in the conversation, you’d hardly pause and would be actively engaged. We’ve lost this increasingly, proportional to our increasing use of portable technology. This replacement of social interactions and human connection is nothing but artificial. A TED Talks that we watched in class reviewed the concept that we build technologies to make things in our lives easier. For instance, if I’m feeling sad, I can go play my online video game and ignore it. If I have been jaded and am filled with mistrust for everyone, I can go online and have multiple “friends” and get that interaction, but never face my fears. The internet is very dangerous in that it lulls us into a false sense of well-being and security, but I fear that we will end up feeling very empty a decade or so down the road. Losing abilities to attentively hold a conversation, to deal with social pressures and relations, to face our fears… all of this is so detrimental to us as people.
Of course, we like it. Just like we enjoy drugs-- yes, it may be bad for us. But it is good right now. However, when is the stopping point for technology? Just because we can contact everyone 24/7, does that also mean we should? Ask yourself next time that you are surfing the web or stuck in your phone: what are you missing out on? IRL?
Let’s look at the beginnings of the internet: ARPAnet. Initially started as a military project in 1972 to keep the country under control in a post-nuclear war state, it quickly degraded from a research meca to a method of socialization: “The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing. Instead, it was news and personal messages. Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate on projects, to trade notes on work, and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze. People had their own personal user accounts on the ARPANET computers, and… they were very enthusiastic about this particular service -- far more enthusiastic than they were about long-distance computation” (Sterling, pg. 2). The technology quickly spread, exponentially growing as more and more people joined in on the fun. Mailing lists of different social groups were created, and Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web sprung off hundreds of social media outlets. Although originally segmented by race, these social media sites quickly fell into generalized categories in which anyone may participate. This leads to a sense of leaving your body behind, and just talking, with your mind, to others, and their minds. From the beginnings to present-day, we’ve flooded the internet with not research, but social interaction.
Is this social interaction as genuine as face-to-face interaction? Many would argue not. There are special features of “hanging” with someone in person that cannot easily be captured online at the same time-- body language, voice intonation, or even just physical interaction (even just hugs or pats on shoulders can be needed sometimes). Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 1846, felt quite strongly against air-tight stoves, feeling that society was losing an important social gathering place with open life to a fire. (You know watching an open fire is different than sitting around a stove- who sits around stoves, anyway?) He continues on with a prediction that I can’t help but think rings with modern-day truth: “Domestic life--if it may still be termed domestic--will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip--the merry, yet unambitious jest--the life-long, practical discussion of real matters in a casual way--the soul of truth, which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word--will disappear from earth.” Let’s talk about family dinners. Families sat down together and talked with one another. It seems that today an increasing number of families in America sit immersed in their technology, on their smart phones, laptops, tablets, music players, gaming devices, you name it.
The idea that we’ll “seek separate corners” may not be physically correct, but I feel that it is mentally correct. When you are talking with someone and pull out your phone to reply to an e-mail, facebook post, or text message, you are half-heartedly listening to the other person. If you’re really immersed in the conversation, you’d hardly pause and would be actively engaged. We’ve lost this increasingly, proportional to our increasing use of portable technology. This replacement of social interactions and human connection is nothing but artificial. A TED Talks that we watched in class reviewed the concept that we build technologies to make things in our lives easier. For instance, if I’m feeling sad, I can go play my online video game and ignore it. If I have been jaded and am filled with mistrust for everyone, I can go online and have multiple “friends” and get that interaction, but never face my fears. The internet is very dangerous in that it lulls us into a false sense of well-being and security, but I fear that we will end up feeling very empty a decade or so down the road. Losing abilities to attentively hold a conversation, to deal with social pressures and relations, to face our fears… all of this is so detrimental to us as people.
Of course, we like it. Just like we enjoy drugs-- yes, it may be bad for us. But it is good right now. However, when is the stopping point for technology? Just because we can contact everyone 24/7, does that also mean we should? Ask yourself next time that you are surfing the web or stuck in your phone: what are you missing out on? IRL?
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Memes.. Internet.. Culture everywhere
Second social media site? Totally making an I Can Haz Cheezburger profile. There is not a single site out there more all about the Internet than this MemeBase site (besides maybe google).
Lolcats? Got 'em. Rage Comics? Got 'em. Histories of memes, what they are, and examples thereof? Got 'em. Government shutdown memes? They have those too.
Here's my site: "Teh Zone of Facutal Shackality"
My profile will probably never have OC (original content), but my site will be bursting with funny crap-- archaeological evidence that I, for various hours, had roughly no life.
Sadly, this site bears almost no difference from my Facebook feed-- memes. Yay internet.
Lolcats? Got 'em. Rage Comics? Got 'em. Histories of memes, what they are, and examples thereof? Got 'em. Government shutdown memes? They have those too.
Here's my site: "Teh Zone of Facutal Shackality"
My profile will probably never have OC (original content), but my site will be bursting with funny crap-- archaeological evidence that I, for various hours, had roughly no life.Sadly, this site bears almost no difference from my Facebook feed-- memes. Yay internet.
DeviantArt FTW
Alright, make a social media profile on a site other than Facebook or Google+? Clearly that means make a DA account.
DeviantArt, as according to Urban Dictionary: "An empire of mostly average art, though there are quite a few that are good. Sadly, this empire is overruled by fanart rather than creative, original art. Anything else other than fanart hardly ever gets noticed."
http://factualshackle.deviantart.com/
Here will lie my "mostly average art," with "a few that are good." Currently I have my interests, profile picture, and first journal entry fleshed out. I've used DA before, and it really is a warm community, once the ball starts rolling. Not the best site for critiquing work, but if you can make it big on DA, you can make it big anywhere.
I haven't been on DA in years, but I still remember 4 special people's names who are talented beyond belief. Let me highlight some awesome people.
Yuumei: Beautiful, gorgeous, BEAUTIFUL works of arts. (also DN fanart ftw)
Loish: funky, awesome, MORE AWESOME works of art. (also Disney fanart ftw)
Hellobaby: hnnnnng ALL HER ARTWORK IS WITH PENCIL. FREAKING COLORED PENCIL. Her sheer talent blinds me. With Beauty.
CelestialValkyrie: All his pieces have a sort of ephemeral beauty to them (which is great since they aren't really ephemeral and I can gaze at them all the time)! The colors melt off each other and I adore his composition... SO GORGEOUS. And sometimes haunting. And sometimes ad'awwable. <3
You guys rock.
DeviantArt, as according to Urban Dictionary: "An empire of mostly average art, though there are quite a few that are good. Sadly, this empire is overruled by fanart rather than creative, original art. Anything else other than fanart hardly ever gets noticed."
http://factualshackle.deviantart.com/
Here will lie my "mostly average art," with "a few that are good." Currently I have my interests, profile picture, and first journal entry fleshed out. I've used DA before, and it really is a warm community, once the ball starts rolling. Not the best site for critiquing work, but if you can make it big on DA, you can make it big anywhere.
I haven't been on DA in years, but I still remember 4 special people's names who are talented beyond belief. Let me highlight some awesome people.
Yuumei: Beautiful, gorgeous, BEAUTIFUL works of arts. (also DN fanart ftw)
Loish: funky, awesome, MORE AWESOME works of art. (also Disney fanart ftw)
Hellobaby: hnnnnng ALL HER ARTWORK IS WITH PENCIL. FREAKING COLORED PENCIL. Her sheer talent blinds me. With Beauty.
CelestialValkyrie: All his pieces have a sort of ephemeral beauty to them (which is great since they aren't really ephemeral and I can gaze at them all the time)! The colors melt off each other and I adore his composition... SO GORGEOUS. And sometimes haunting. And sometimes ad'awwable. <3
You guys rock.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Watching Me Yet?
Vampirestats trafficked most of my page views for the first two weeks, and then disappeared-- they are apparently a "domain appraisal service." I have no idea how the site tracked to me, but it's disappearance probably means my new site was of little value. Now Dr. Stanovsky's blog, my music player's site, and Google are my main traffic pathways to my North American readers.
Speaking of traffic, I'm ranked at 325 page views in total, but a lot of those must be from my updating the site and checking the site for comments (before I turned off the feature counting my own page views). More accurately, I had 244 views last month (some of which are from my being on the library computers). Yesterday, I had 5. Most-viewed post? App State Memes. However, my Eye-tracking Software post has had the most views recently-speaking.
I have no followers yet, but I haven't really highlighted that added feature-- must look too built-in to notice that it's a customized feature (it's at the bottom-left).
Hoping to change that!
Speaking of traffic, I'm ranked at 325 page views in total, but a lot of those must be from my updating the site and checking the site for comments (before I turned off the feature counting my own page views). More accurately, I had 244 views last month (some of which are from my being on the library computers). Yesterday, I had 5. Most-viewed post? App State Memes. However, my Eye-tracking Software post has had the most views recently-speaking.
I have no followers yet, but I haven't really highlighted that added feature-- must look too built-in to notice that it's a customized feature (it's at the bottom-left).
Hoping to change that!
Monday, September 16, 2013
Games, E-mail, and Google
My earliest memories of the old computers consist of two things: Video games, and E-mail.
My preschool and elementary classrooms each had two PCs, which both looked a little older than the one pictured on the right. We had the Magic School Bus games, like "Magic School Bus Lands on Mars," and a few Jump Start games. Both of these video game series were targeted as educational, and I continued playing the Jump Start games until 6th grade. At home, I played Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, some Winnie the Pooh Bear and miscellaneous Disney games, and some random cereal box games.
All game play tended to involve interactive screens that you would click on, causing things to happen. The puzzle portions had moving animation, but certainly it was not like the graphics of today.
Here's a video of the beginning of Jump Start Third Grade, to give you an idea of these games' graphics:
As much as I loved them then, I am too accustomed to the fast-paced graphics of today to even tolerate playing these games-- they seem so slow and boring. My little brothers are growing up on the Lego Star Wars games and Skylanders, and have little to no patience for games like Jump Start.
Something I do still use? E-mail. However, I used it in the AOL subscription area-- it was slow and awful, but I could talk with my friends without actually talking (cue the invention of texting). That cute boy that I liked? Totally chatted with him about teachers and video games and stuffed animals. However, it was so slow that it was hardly worth my time to use frequently.
Now I can access a whole slew of different E-mail providers, and don't have to go through America Online to do it.
But what about the internet access itself? To me, Google was just there... My first research paper was in 3rd grade, and I don't remember being surprised about or confused on how to use Google (I typed in "hamster" and got pictures of hamsters), so clearly it seemed a no-brainer to me. Google was the internet to me-- if asked, I would have said that Google stored all of the websites inside of it (whatever "it" was, I couldn't have said). I didn't realize that the internet was created until much later on in life-- life without it seemed silly and archaic.
These advancements in both graphics, speed, and content seem to be breeding these Internet-literate generations, and the Internet is becoming inseparable from most people's daily lives.
My preschool and elementary classrooms each had two PCs, which both looked a little older than the one pictured on the right. We had the Magic School Bus games, like "Magic School Bus Lands on Mars," and a few Jump Start games. Both of these video game series were targeted as educational, and I continued playing the Jump Start games until 6th grade. At home, I played Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, some Winnie the Pooh Bear and miscellaneous Disney games, and some random cereal box games.All game play tended to involve interactive screens that you would click on, causing things to happen. The puzzle portions had moving animation, but certainly it was not like the graphics of today.
Here's a video of the beginning of Jump Start Third Grade, to give you an idea of these games' graphics:
As much as I loved them then, I am too accustomed to the fast-paced graphics of today to even tolerate playing these games-- they seem so slow and boring. My little brothers are growing up on the Lego Star Wars games and Skylanders, and have little to no patience for games like Jump Start.
Something I do still use? E-mail. However, I used it in the AOL subscription area-- it was slow and awful, but I could talk with my friends without actually talking (cue the invention of texting). That cute boy that I liked? Totally chatted with him about teachers and video games and stuffed animals. However, it was so slow that it was hardly worth my time to use frequently.
Now I can access a whole slew of different E-mail providers, and don't have to go through America Online to do it.
But what about the internet access itself? To me, Google was just there... My first research paper was in 3rd grade, and I don't remember being surprised about or confused on how to use Google (I typed in "hamster" and got pictures of hamsters), so clearly it seemed a no-brainer to me. Google was the internet to me-- if asked, I would have said that Google stored all of the websites inside of it (whatever "it" was, I couldn't have said). I didn't realize that the internet was created until much later on in life-- life without it seemed silly and archaic.
These advancements in both graphics, speed, and content seem to be breeding these Internet-literate generations, and the Internet is becoming inseparable from most people's daily lives.
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