tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84172505386792333012024-03-05T18:55:51.256-08:00Internet AscentMusings from someone who spends too much time onlineAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-65755614833854778492013-12-30T06:17:00.000-08:002013-12-30T06:17:05.303-08:002013 In ReviewThis is my 52nd blog post on the Internet. I have regaled you, my captivated audience, for 52 weeks this Monday.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Oh boy, a meta-post!</span></div>
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Having blogged now for a full year, I'm ready to take a break on this project in order to focus on other things. So this is the last post that I'll be making on this blog (or at least, the last one on the usual once-a-week schedule).<br />
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I'd like to take this post as an opportunity to reflect on the past years' writings, where we started, and where we are now.<br />
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When I started this blog, I was looking for a more productive way to spend my free time. I already spent lots of time on the Internet, so I figured, why not use what I was already doing to create something new? At the time, I was beginning to learn about the inner workings of YouTube, so the first post was about that. I was nervous about my ability to deliver a new blog post on a weekly schedule, so I split the long post into three posts, giving me a nice head start.<br />
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The idea of the blog was to explain the Internet to people who don't spend a whole lot of time online. I had family members who fit this description pretty well, so they were a nice reference point for how I should explain things. Perhaps more broadly, as someone who spent a lot of my adolescent years online, it was interesting to see how the Internet had become so...mainstream. I thought I could offer a unique perspective as someone who was online when we weren't all so tightly networked. Back when online culture hadn't matured to what it is today, when the Internet seemed a little more mysterious.<br />
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There's definitely a correlation between what I've written about and what I was most intensely thinking about at the time. I wrote <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-dating.html">my post on online dating</a> at a time when I was getting frustrated with online dating. I wrote <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">my post on the Internet polarizing politics</a> after a conversation with older conservatives and being absolutely baffled at how disparate our perspectives are (I still think I'm right, by the way). I wrote <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/digital-research.html">my post on online research</a> when I started graduate school.<br />
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At the same time, some posts were definitely sort of churned out in order to keep writing going. I had some friends help me every now and then, especially on subjects that I didn't really know anything about. My post on <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/10/film-and-internet.html">film and the Internet</a>, for example, was the product of a long conversation with a friend who understands film on a level that I probably never will. I learned a lot in that conversation, and synthesized the information I was given into the thesis I eventually developed.<br />
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For all my criticisms about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/digital-jargon.html">the insularity of some websites</a>, I sure loved to cite myself a lot. I wonder which post I've cited myself in the most. I like the concept of my posts building on each other (which I think really showed up best in some of the later posts), but I probably got carried away sometimes.<br />
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But I managed to put something out every week, and I could always find something to talk about. It forced me to seek new perspectives on things that I'd only passively considered before. It inspired many a conversation with people. And, of course, it built up my writing chops.<br />
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I started things on YouTube, so I thought I'd end things on YouTube. YouTube's 2013 in review came out pretty recently:<br />
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Something about it feels a little less dense than 2012's iteration. A lot of the things in this video feel more...commercial, as compared to last year. It might be that instead of focusing on viral songs like Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe, this year just focuses on chart-toppers. We already knew that YouTube was getting to be a major contender in how artists distribute their music, and now YouTube's own self-reflection of its online culture involves these pop artists more heavily than ever before. It almost makes me wonder if next year, they'll just invite the actual artists to do a video with them.<br />
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A lot has changed on YouTube over the course of the year. Pushes against copyright infringement <a href="http://kotaku.com/youtubes-copyright-crackdown-simple-answers-to-compli-1485999937">have ramped up</a> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/12/19/the-injustice-of-the-youtube-content-id-crackdown-reveals-googles-dark-side/">in intensity</a>, but not in the way that you'd necessarily like to see. YouTube's recently implemented Content ID system is targeting YouTube channels that have been partnered with larger networks. This new system has disproportionately affected <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt1ubSVMwaw">content relating to video games</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0">may even be exploited by companies</a> in order to take down unfavorable product reviews.<br />
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YouTube is shaping its image, and it increasingly caters to commercial pop culture. Its tool for shaping itself is through automated copyright claims that <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/as-curiosity-touches-down-on-mars-video-is-taken-down-from-youtube/">don't actually</a> <a href="http://kotaku.com/5974112/youtube-shuts-down-popular-angry-video-game-nerd-channel">work intelligently</a>. The age of the viral success might be on the wane. If you're a consumer or someone trying to get their foot in the door as a content creator, it's hard to be optimistic about YouTube.<br />
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A part of me is saddened by what the Internet seems to be becoming. I feel like things are getting more centralized. It isn't really any one group's fault, though the current online population sure seems to do a good job pinning the Internet's troubles on government-related things, even if it isn't entirely fair to do so. Another part of me is skeptical of these feelings I have, since they sound dangerously close to a stereotype. It makes me think of the curmudgeonly old man, skeptical of newfangled things, complaining about lost values and ultimately not having the correct perspective on the forward motion of society.<br />
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That leads to an interesting question - how quickly does the Internet change? At one point, I started going on the Internet, developed ideas on how the Internet <i>is</i>, and then started feeling disillusioned when the nature of the Internet changed into something else. Let's call that cycle the equivalent of an "online generation". How long is an online generation? Is the duration of a generation cycle getting shorter?<br />
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Hoo, what a question! And not one that I really want to address in a casual, reflective meta-post.<br />
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Maybe one day, I'll go through old posts, replace pictures with more original content, and see if there's a place for my material on a more public space. Maybe I'll write some more posts a few months from now, if any new Internet-related thoughts come into my head. But in the meantime, I've got to give thanks to family and friends for being inspirations (whether intentional or otherwise), and thanks to the tens of readers who were following my ramblings this past year. Here's hoping for new lessons and fun conversations in 2014.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-51359569633574635512013-12-16T15:48:00.001-08:002013-12-16T15:48:21.052-08:00Widening EpicentersOnline culture is a fascinating thing. I've talked about it a lot, pointing out <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">individual community behavior</a>, the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lost-worlds.html">sizes and lifespans</a> of online communities, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">community regulation</a>, and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">community leadership</a>. But now I want to ask a broader question: How has online culture changed over time?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNYluvGLc3JXOF4VOhgNwP6AjIhoYoHj39f642tIluHwnIulgLOlAOpVBwbb3-G8DsuQXixOAdkU2t_fkYtajj2fyj8GlLQkgvUwNP-I1xnh-4GjdQzDZPY1va0MU9kvKfwZAJG1vwmhU/s1600/6a00d8341ca35253ef00e54f17f3ec8833-800wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNYluvGLc3JXOF4VOhgNwP6AjIhoYoHj39f642tIluHwnIulgLOlAOpVBwbb3-G8DsuQXixOAdkU2t_fkYtajj2fyj8GlLQkgvUwNP-I1xnh-4GjdQzDZPY1va0MU9kvKfwZAJG1vwmhU/s1600/6a00d8341ca35253ef00e54f17f3ec8833-800wi.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Different question from the <a href="http://www.exactcenteroftheinternet.com/">center of the Internet</a> or the <a href="https://www.endoftheinter.net/">end of the Internet</a>. (<a href="http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/06/how_many_licks_.html">Image source here</a>)</span></div>
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Once upon a time, I once drew a line between <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">"old" and "new" internet culture</a>, with Anonymous as the border between the two. 4chan used to be considered the epicenter of online culture on the Internet. Nowadays, that title might go to Reddit.<br />
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But that's just me talking about anecdotes. Can we demonstrate that there <i>is</i> such a thing as online epicenters? Where is it? Where has that title drifted to over the course of the Internet?<br />
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<a name='more'></a><u style="font-size: xx-large; font-weight: bold;">Part 1: The Word You Heard</u><br />
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First things first: What does the Internet say about Internet epicenters?<br />
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<a href="http://www.dailydot.com/">The Daily Dot</a>, an online newspaper dedicated to Internet culture news, features many online hubs - YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, and others - under its "communities" header. This tells us about the websites that a media outlet believe are worth the most attention. However, this only tells us what websites are particularly important <i>today</i>. We don't learn anything about what websites <i>used to be</i> important, which is important information if we want to track how the Internet's center of attention drifts.<br />
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Let's turn to Cracked, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/cracked-and-online-information.html">ever the surprising source for interesting information</a>. Cracked made two skits in 2008 where they imagined relevant websites to be attendees of a party. They did a follow-up skit with the same premise in 2013. Let's look at the websites that Cracked chose to represent online culture, and how their choices changes over five years.<br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">2008:</span></i></b><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: x-large;">2013:</span></i></b><br />
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There are some pretty clear differences in what websites are featured. Between 2008 and 2013, Facebook has overtaken Myspace, and Reddit <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/the-rise-of-reddit-4chan-and-digg-get-the-credit-while-reddit-booms">has overshadowed Digg</a>. 2008 covered a lot more websites than 2013 did as well (35 vs 19), though 2008 had the advantage of featuring <i>two</i> videos. A lot of 2008's featured websites are still around today, but not so prominently noticed in our time online, either because they are services that we've come to take for granted (Mapquest, Paypal), or because we simply aren't as amused with them anymore (Urbandictionary, Wikipedia).<br />
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2008 Internet's websites were fairly distinct from one another, but some website attendees were somewhat "redundant". For example, AskJeeves and Google are both present, despite essentially having the same functionality. 2013 Internet's attendees are somehow even <i>more</i> redundant, portrayed as visibly circling around themselves and their web content. How meaningfully different is Buzzfeed's content from Tumblr or Reddit, for example? These videos give us the impression that the Internet in 2013 is more insular; the website diversity of 2008 seems to have given way to multiple redundant websites that recycle lots of content from one another.<br />
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But these are just the perspectives of one group of people. Plus, 2008 <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">isn't even all that early</a> in Internet culture. We need more data.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJxKVXtHtINhSJfrFhKKTRgfh4f0ZjYBev0K6zQu2Ly_yQdd3R_R27MBmv4gpsOKb9W0ICEok_NZ2BbnPTvARuvpbP8jEZ5VBE5TpmXObPVbLM8Yoxq9tMVo14gfghF3tKFG3LTko5yqQ/s1600/binary380.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJxKVXtHtINhSJfrFhKKTRgfh4f0ZjYBev0K6zQu2Ly_yQdd3R_R27MBmv4gpsOKb9W0ICEok_NZ2BbnPTvARuvpbP8jEZ5VBE5TpmXObPVbLM8Yoxq9tMVo14gfghF3tKFG3LTko5yqQ/s1600/binary380.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Back in time, through the information superhighway!</span></div>
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<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><u>Part 2: Alexa Data</u></b><br />
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We have used <a href="http://www.alexa.com/">Alexa</a> before <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">for analyzing</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/gender-and-internet.html">trends online</a> (being aware of its <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/gender-and-internet.html#pointone">method</a> and <a href="http://d0x.com/alexa-vs-compete-vs-quantcast-vs-comscore-vs-hitwise-vs-nielsen.html">limits</a>). I've also previously cited things using the <a href="http://archive.org/web/web.php">Web Archive</a>, a website devoted to taking "snapshots" of websites over time. The Web Archive stores records of websites as far back as the '90s, preserving the original website format and content. It is the perfect resource for digging up forgotten online pages that may not be readily accessible anymore.</div>
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So if Alexa is a website devoted to gauging the popularity of websites, and if Web Archive is a website devoted to archiving old websites, then we can hypothetically look for archived versions of Alexa to gauge the popularity of websites over time, right?<br />
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Unfortunately, Web Archive is not perfectly comprehensive, so some data on website rankings really <i>are</i> lost forever. The Top 500 websites pages are usually the most consistently archived pages, so I looked through the top 500 list in various points of time that were available. These archives went as far back as 2002, a significant improvement to our old 2008-2013 mark.<br />
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Let's dive right into this data (and flail around in it, splashing data on our friends). Click any image to enlarge it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjioquSOSsEbyDkiZMflVoFRRxQA36smJ0EFJDPAMuFbQyy7EIuaXqTOY9VZNZeXrpgCFEL6-3lY1UrQU_i9ZwcVB5z9pYVaC_Ts52Vq7DoBwJH3mYWAAbQptdYGQzkOkkJCK9UuW7EJQ/s1600/Social+Networks.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjioquSOSsEbyDkiZMflVoFRRxQA36smJ0EFJDPAMuFbQyy7EIuaXqTOY9VZNZeXrpgCFEL6-3lY1UrQU_i9ZwcVB5z9pYVaC_Ts52Vq7DoBwJH3mYWAAbQptdYGQzkOkkJCK9UuW7EJQ/s1600/Social+Networks.png" height="473" width="640" /></a></div>
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With this first graph, we can observe the competition between social networks over the years. Friendster preceded them all, but Myspace topped the charts until about 2008. Facebook edged ahead after 2008, and the rest is history.<br />
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Friendster and Orkut seem to battle it out as the best second-tier social networking site until they both begin to fall off past 2010. Myspace, Friendster, Orkut, and Facebook all offered remarkably similar products, and ultimately the Western world chose Facebook. The only social networks that have stayed afloat since Facebook's rise to dominance are networks that offer specifically different functionality.<br />
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Twitter makes a huge jump from 2009 to 2010, now at the point where it <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/14/business/la-fi-tn-facebook-to-roll-out-hashtags-step-up-competition-with-twitter-20130314">directly competes</a> <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/shinal/2013/10/31/facebooks-results-should-give-pause-to-twitter/3324533/">with Facebook</a> for public attention. LinkedIn hovers around sub-100 rankings for several years until finally catching on like wildfire in 2010. Perhaps this was a <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/24/technology/hempel_linkedin.fortune/">delayed response to the economic recession</a>. Since Facebook is not built around the premise of professional networking, LinkedIn's functionality could offer a unique service in a time of great demand for it - job hunting assistance.<br />
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Perhaps now we should move on to a different sector of online interaction: blogs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkK3OHaM_0B5Ktz88RIjGx9lyNal1xf-OjAGBjj-h24WSMDUI6aMhsfpcUWAUqy3ZoeKmqfYBtJVecovROWFqw023M2sopEVI5y_DNqyrmIwxoCe9D_9lM83PAts0Z87XjktLhpP2Rgsg/s1600/Blogs.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkK3OHaM_0B5Ktz88RIjGx9lyNal1xf-OjAGBjj-h24WSMDUI6aMhsfpcUWAUqy3ZoeKmqfYBtJVecovROWFqw023M2sopEVI5y_DNqyrmIwxoCe9D_9lM83PAts0Z87XjktLhpP2Rgsg/s1600/Blogs.png" height="473" width="640" /></a></div>
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The blogging world has been consistently dominated by the Blogger/Blogspot domain since 2005, which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger_%28service%29#History">might have something to do</a> with Google buying them out in 2003 and some major site redesigns from 2004 to 2006. WordPress jumps into the public limelight around 2007, with Tumblr following in 2010. They currently co-exist, much like how we saw with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Their features keep them differentiated: Wordpress offers downloadable software and independent hosting, Blogger enjoys Google's popularity (and knack for ease of use), and Tumblr's micro-blogging that is better suited for networking and rapid sharing of information.<br />
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However, it seems as though there used to be a different trio of popular blogging software in the mid-2000s: Blogger, LiveJournal, and Xanga. Xanga had a good run in the mid-2000s, but probably sputtered out as the online audience collectively realized that they shouldn't write bad poetry and post it on the Internet. Meanwhile, LiveJournal continues to exist, though it seems to be on the steady decline.<br />
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Why did WordPress and Tumblr overtake Xanga and LiveJournal? It could have to do with Wordpress' <a href="https://wordpress.org/hosting/">superior</a> <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/">design</a> <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/28/161214/43">over Xanga's defectiveness</a> and Tumblr's faster reblogging/sharing capabilities, but a more definitive answer would require some research that isn't directly relevant to the point of this particular blog post. For now, we look at the next data set.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiXC4svXaWTP7t4X0c5YYjK21g5pFW_uZf8TaJfkGdo705_3JwW6rPMc9ZNZKBDWBA-gIWmU5SPzvb3ltCqDhQRsujrS2sOK-YkWUGGivwKRmbY5ju4-2hb1u_rG0swNZSBpymxNRhU3s/s1600/Picture+hosting.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiXC4svXaWTP7t4X0c5YYjK21g5pFW_uZf8TaJfkGdo705_3JwW6rPMc9ZNZKBDWBA-gIWmU5SPzvb3ltCqDhQRsujrS2sOK-YkWUGGivwKRmbY5ju4-2hb1u_rG0swNZSBpymxNRhU3s/s1600/Picture+hosting.png" height="473" width="640" /></a></div>
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Here's some data that highlights the rapid changes in image hosting during the past three years. There were many image hosting websites through the '00s, among them Flickr and Photobucket. Notice how these services are losing ground to the likes of Instagram, Pinterest, and Imgur. Imgur is very intimately tied to Reddit, being the website's image host of choice. Instagram and Pinterest saddle a line between social networking and image hosting, giving them an extra push in appeal. Photobucket appears to be facing certain decline in use, though it remains to be seen if Flickr will continue its latest downward trend.<br />
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Before we get to the last graph, I want to mention that there was some other Alexa data that I didn't bother to graph out. Some interesting ones include the Drudge Report poking its head into the top 500 from 2004 to 2006, disappearing, and then coming back 2010 onward. Perhaps the first hump had to do with the 2004 presidential election, and then 2010 had to do with the rising Tea Party movement? YouTube and Wikipedia also consistently rank very highly, and Dailymotion has managed to stay in the top 100 since 2007.<br />
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But now, I attempt to sandwich all the rest of the online community data into one big mess of a graph:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLMA0wgeCgyrxtyqHW7Y21CuvhxkbMRDk_1sAusPaYAvzvdZAFn4zi9vIzhB_W1349nvmK-PFOTBUZLpAnW_bcUK4M_D0-i-hTdqOZYQ-nJczGXZyoLbMc49402WIVsgoHxCdkoXKtCUs/s1600/Internet+Stats.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLMA0wgeCgyrxtyqHW7Y21CuvhxkbMRDk_1sAusPaYAvzvdZAFn4zi9vIzhB_W1349nvmK-PFOTBUZLpAnW_bcUK4M_D0-i-hTdqOZYQ-nJczGXZyoLbMc49402WIVsgoHxCdkoXKtCUs/s1600/Internet+Stats.png" height="392" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
DeviantART has been a consistent hit online, despite its <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/deviantart-and-teenage-psyche.html">strange, strange content</a>. I was surprised that fanfiction.net - a website devoted to hosting user-submitted fan fiction - managed to get into the top 400 rankings from 2007 to 2009. You'll notice that The Pirate Bay - a website functioning as a cache for pirated materials - enjoyed high levels of popularity until they were shut down a few years ago. <br />
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InvisionFree, a website that hosts free forums, saw its rise and fall in popularity from 2006 to 2009, while Digg and Reddit started gaining popularity. Ebaumsworld briefly featured in the top 500 in 2005 and 2006, but might have had <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyberbullying-and-old-internet-war.html">its "business" model</a> threatened when other video-hosting and image-hosting services started appearing. Meanwhile, 4chan has a very brief stay in the top 500...in fall 2007.<br />
<br />
Huh. That's funny. You'd think that a website as culturally hyped up as 4chan would be more prominent on this graph. And didn't their Time magazine stunt <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/21/4chan-takes-over-the-time-100/">happen in 2009</a>? Why can we only see evidence of 4chan's presence by a single data point in a year that wasn't even its most public?<br />
<br />
And now we run into the problem with Alexa data: everything is a <i>relative</i> measure. It isn't necessarily that 4chan wasn't popular enough for the top 500 for all those other years; it's more that every other site was attracting more traffic than 4chan. With the numbers of people using the Internet growing steadily over the years, it isn't that <i>fewer</i> people view 4chan, it's that the new people are being directed to places <i>other than</i> 4chan. Even 4chan users <a href="http://gawker.com/i-wrote-just-about-the-same-thing-in-your-comment-yeste-478388700">have taken notice</a> of how new sites like Reddit divert the attention of new online users away from them.<br />
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This is a huge problem for us, because it signifies that a lot of interesting online activity can still be happening below the top 500 mark. Using Alexa alone, we would think that the blips of data for some of these websites would represent the peaks of activity as well as impact, when we'd be wrong. In fact, 4chan is <a href="http://gawker.com/5925535/4chans-moment-is-over-even-though-its-more-popular-than-ever">more popular than ever</a>.<br />
<br />
This limitation of the Alexa data is even more evident when we note what <i>didn't</i> get mentioned in the Alexa graphs: CollegeHumor, Funny or Die, Vimeo, SomethingAwful, and Kickstarter don't register at all. What's more, Alexa's 500 list is a representation of the <i>globally</i> most visited websites. Western Internet culture tends to interact very little with websites <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/internet-in-middle-kingdom.html">outside of the</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-eastern-connection.html">English-speaking Internet</a>, which means that what seems popular on Alexa may not properly represent the state of Western Internet culture.<br />
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We must find an alternative source of data. Quantcast has been our alternative source for web rankings and served as a great resource for finding <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html">online racial demographics</a>. Unfortunately, Quantcast has WebArchive backups that only go as far back <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130915000000*/http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-1">as 2008</a>.<br />
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<br />
<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><u>Part 3: Google Trends Data</u></b><br />
<br />
Instead, we'll look into Google Trends, which will allow us to compare the magnitude of difference in popularity between two given search terms.<br />
<br />
A major shortcoming of this method is that we're strictly looking at <a href="https://support.google.com/trends/answer/92768?hl=en&ref_topic=13975">google searches for these websites</a>, not visits to the website themselves. Someone Googling 4chan would register as a data point in these graphs, but someone going straight to 4chan.org would not be included. If people have their favorite websites bookmarked, then we probably won't get to see their impact on the data. Also factor in that websites like Facebook get a lot of business-related attention, which would inflate their search numbers.<br />
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That said, Google Trends goes as far back as 2004 and provides a much-needed dimension of analysis that Alexa cannot provide.<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=SomethingAwful,+YTMND,+General+Mayhem&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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This first graph compares some important players in the older days of the Internet: YTMND, SomethingAwful, and General Mayhem. GenMay was a forum <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">that had seen its best days far before 2004</a>, though you can see a few spikes in activity around when the "Christopher Walken for President" campaign was in full swing. SomethingAwful, despite having some <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">serious</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-catch-redditor.html">cultural</a> <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/lets-play">clout</a> on the Internet, has very meager numbers even in the mid-00s, though this is probably mostly caused by their paywall. YTMND sees its greatest spikes in activity in 2006, around when <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/trolling-subtlety-and-lying-on-internet.html">Eon8 was gathering momentum</a> and when they <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyberbullying-and-old-internet-war.html">waged their internet war</a> on Ebaumsworld.<br />
<br />
Ah, yes, Ebaumsworld! What's their traffic like, by comparison?<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=YTMND,+ebaumsworld,+newgrounds,+collegehumor,+homestarrunner&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
<br />
As we go from graph to graph, I'll leave a website from the previous graph so that you can have a sense of the changes in magnitude. In this graph, YTMND is your benchmark. Be careful! YTMND went from being colored red on the previous graph to blue on this one, due to the quirks of Google Trends.<br />
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We see that, compared to YTMND, Ebaumsworld was very active. Perhaps this makes sense in the context of that old Internet war: Ebaumsworld was the larger entity, staying popular by aggregating the content from smaller websites. Running contrary to that narrative is Newgrounds, a popular flash-hosting website that exceeded even Ebaumsworld's popularity. Interestingly, the peaks in popularity for Newgrounds and Ebaumsworld seem to happen around the same time that YTMND peaks in popularity, around 2006.<br />
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I also included some extra websites. HomeStarRunner was a flash-hosting website that housed a recurring cast of characters. College Humor is a comedy website that hosts skits and funny pictures. Both of these websites saw their greatest peak in activity before 2006, with HomeStarRunner's greatest peak possibly occurring before 2004. Their overall online popularity seems most comparable to YTMND.<br />
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Newgrounds was an interesting fixture in the earlier Internet because of its ability to host animations and short videos. Video hosting used to be a rare and decentralized thing on the Internet, with videos spread across websites like Ebaumsworld, Albino Black Sheep, and a bunch of others. That is, until...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=newgrounds,+youtube,+albinoblacksheep,+funnyjunk,+ebaumsworld&date=1/2004+27m&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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...YouTube showed everything up. YouTube launches in 2005, and overtakes everything that preceded its video hosting services. Note that the window of data in that graph is from 2004 to 2006. If I had extended that window, then YouTube's numbers would have completely dwarfed the other figures. Moving on...<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=newgrounds,+digg,+fark,+livejournal,+4chan&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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Here, Newgrounds is our website of reference from the previous graph, in blue. <br />
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A lot of other websites seem to be approximately on par with Newgrounds in popularity. LiveJournal peaks in 2005, then begins its slow and steady decline. Digg seems poised to get bigger up until mid-2007, where it loses steam and also begins to lose popularity. Fark, a news aggregation website, experiences a fairly consistent level of online attention until 2009, where it abruptly shoots up in activity, plateaus, and then also begins to lose its audience.<br />
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Notice that, by mid-2008, 4chan surpasses Newgrounds in popularity and goes completely unmatched. Strangely enough, 4chan's activity seems to peak around 2011, also defying our expectations that 4chan's greatest moments <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">were in 2007-2009</a>. It also doesn't seem to obviously agree the Alexa data, which reports 4chan's highest Alexa ranking in fall 2007.<br />
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This seems to confirm the idea that despite 4chan's continued accumulation of new users, other websites in the Alexa top 500 were simply accumulating users more quickly than 4chan. It also says something very crucial about 4chan's lifespan: it had not yet attracted its fullest audience when it was doing its most infamous things. It's safe to say that this graph defines very clear borders on when 4chan was the "big thing" on the Internet.<br />
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But still, we press on.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=4chan,+xanga,+reddit,+gamefaqs&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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The torch gets passed from 4chan to Reddit in 2011. From that point on, Reddit's popularity surges at a rate much higher than that seen of its predecessors. Scroll back up and compare Reddit's graph to the first graph featuring SomethingAwful. <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-catch-redditor.html">When Pedogeddon took place in 2012</a>, Reddit was already larger than 4chan had ever been.<br />
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Xanga and Gamefaqs are included here for some extra comparisons. Xanga was evidently very popular back in its heyday, with its peak in 2006 (what is it about that year?) exceeding 4chan's 2011 peak. Perhaps this is a good time to start comparing blogging platforms.<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=xanga,+reddit,+tumblr,+wordpress,+pinterest&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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Reddit's success suddenly seems completely dwarfed as we zoom out to accommodate Tumblr. Xanga's natural peak seems absolutely squished as well. Even Wordpress gets left in the dust. Pinterest is interesting because of its extreme surge in popularity - check out that slope from 2011 to 2012. That's even faster growth than Tumblr. For whatever reason, Pinterest hits a ceiling, bounces down in popularity, and then maintains a more level amount of popularity.<br />
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At this point, what constitutes online subculture begins to get blurry. Reddit, the so-called "front page of the Internet", is quickly outdone by Pinterest and Tumblr. While Tumblr <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/10/identity-dunces.html">certainly has a place in the canon of online subculture</a>, can Tumblr users themselves be called a subculture anymore if Tumblr is <i>this</i> popular? To drive Tumblr's popularity home further, here's another one featuring the microblogging platform:<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=tumblr,+pinterest,+instagram,+deviantart,+neopets&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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Despite DeviantART's consistent appearance in Alexa's top 500 lists, the online hub is completely overshadowed by other websites. Neopets - an online game that also frequently appeared in Alexa's list - also can't compare to the modern successes of Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. Instagram threatens to overtake Tumblr in popularity, assuming that it doesn't immediately hit its peak.<br />
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But as we zoom out even further, we can find websites that even knock Tumblr down to size.<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=tumblr,+twitter,+myspace,+friendster,+orkut&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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Now we enter into the realm of social networks. Friendster is the only social network whose popularity could not contend with Tumblr. Oddly enough, Friendster got its most searches in 2009, well after the peak of its Alexa ranking as a social networking website. Orkut enjoyed modest success until sharply declining in 2012. Compared to Twitter, however, Tumblr never stood a chance.<br />
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This graph also gives us a clear view into the popularity of Myspace in its prime. Myspace hit its peak in mid-2007, and was gathering even greater attention than Twitter is today. That should tell us about the number of people using the Internet back then. Even while websites like Newgrounds, YTMND, and others were peaking in 2006, MySpace towered impossibly high above them, representing the masses of people who weren't necessarily engaged in Internet subculture.<br />
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<script src="//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US&q=twitter,+myspace,+facebook,+wikipedia,+porn&cmpt=q&content=1&cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0&export=5&w=500&h=330" type="text/javascript"></script></div>
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But even MySpace's impressive hump gets squished in comparison to Facebook. Facebook sits as the top social network in a time when more people are using the Internet than ever before. Nothing compares to Facebook's popularity. Not even porn.<br />
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Now scroll back up to the first graph, with YTMND, SomethingAwful, and GenMay. These sites were considered hotbeds of online memes. Look at how they compare to Facebook and the websites of today.<br />
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<br />
<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><u>Part 4: The Strange Conclusion</u></b><br />
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Every iteration of online culture has been greater than the iteration before it. The number of people using the Internet has gradually been growing over the past 10 years. The highest peaks of yesteryear's Myspace do not compare to the highest peaks of today's Facebook. There are ebbs and flows to the relevance of websites, but the most important thing to note is that the waves of popularity get larger every time.<br />
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We can't speak for online trends before where our data extends, but there seems to have been a definite era from 2004 to 2007 when websites like Newgrounds, Ebaumsworld, YTMND, and others were the Internet subculture. Xanga, Livejournal, and DeviantART was a broader part of that subculture where people posted writings, poetry and artwork. MySpace was the "mainstream" Internet, firmly towering above the tiny websites but not privy to the interesting things happening among them.<br />
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Back then, memes weren't even called memes. YTMND <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-DMIf-WZYU">called them fads</a>. Fark <a href="http://www.fark.com/farq/farkisms/">called them Farkisms</a>. Sure, <a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/02/42009">some online in-jokes could get more public attention than others</a>, but there wasn't any such thing as Internet-wide jokes. There wasn't any sense of a larger, global online presence.<br />
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4chan changed all that. 2007 to 2011 marked an online era where 4chan was the capital city of Internet subculture. It was in this era that the term "meme" started being used to describe what these online fads "really" were. Those memes spawned <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtOW1CxHvNY">strange government videos</a> and <a href="http://www.cheezburger.com/">new business enterprises</a>. So many memes were generated that people started <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/">feeling the need to keep track of them</a>.<br />
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Couple that with <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">the actions of Anonymous during this era</a>, and you begin to see the emergence of an online "identity". Before this era, an online user was most strongly defined by what websites you go to. During this era, the smaller online hubs began deferring to 4chan's online subculture. The <i>new</i> distinction was whether you spend your time on the Internet, or if you spend most of it offline.<br />
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In 2011 and beyond, even <i>that</i> question was rendered invalid. In this post-4chan era where <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z1c9z/i_am_barack_obama_president_of_the_united_states">Presidents go on Reddit</a>, <i>almost</i> <i>everybody is on the Internet</i>. It's not a question of whether you've heard of Reddit or Tumblr, or whether you "go" on them. You <i>have</i> gone on them. Everyone has. You might hang out on one site more than other sites, but at no point are you left unaware of what other websites are up to.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggLlwRX5W17niazA-5Rc0LtqhmeBKxvTv0fQThHnHSUgi7GHwH-K3a6Pgm4a_RCdQWodxs-HlT1kA-s1lZXAcGmlaT2pW49X1d7HYPJnvt6Uy40XftItLLu-8iPUtf4otH89YrPiETOJw/s1600/I+m+Using+The+Internet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggLlwRX5W17niazA-5Rc0LtqhmeBKxvTv0fQThHnHSUgi7GHwH-K3a6Pgm4a_RCdQWodxs-HlT1kA-s1lZXAcGmlaT2pW49X1d7HYPJnvt6Uy40XftItLLu-8iPUtf4otH89YrPiETOJw/s1600/I+m+Using+The+Internet.jpg" height="229" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">We all are, Jim. We all are.</span></div>
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There are ebbs and flows to the relevance of websites over the years, but the waves of popularity get larger every time a new website becomes relevant. If we compare them side by side, the popularity of contemporary Internet culture completely dwarfs the Internet culture of 2004-2007.<br />
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Online culture was so marginally small before the rise of 4chan that it doesn't even register on the graphs today. It's a shame that we can't look at data before 2004, because I would guess that we'd see one more "wave" of Internet culture in GenMay, LUE, and perhaps some others. Perhaps we could even go further beyond that, looking at Usenet and Gopher traffic. As popular as those online spaces may have been once, their numbers would be laughable today.<br />
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What's more, the line between Internet subculture and "mainstream" Internet is blurred to the point of incomprehension. There are clearly far fewer people visiting websites like 4chan and Reddit than there are people visiting social networking sites. Yet, the catchphrases and image macros that they create can freely propagate into the larger websites. Information flows freely into Reddit and Tumblr, filters into other websites, and then filters into even <i>more</i> websites.<br />
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This was observable even in the pre-4chan era of the Internet. Even if GenMay was a comparatively tiny community by 2005, its <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/general-mayhem">catchphrases</a> were still being used by people within that era's online subculture. The conclusion here is that it only takes a few people to start cultural trends. Perhaps, one day, we'll even be able to <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-data-dump.html">map how they propagate FROM these obscure online hubs</a>.<br />
<br />
Unless that's already happened, perhaps on a more rudimentary level.<br />
<br />
Take a look at websites like <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/">BuzzFeed</a>, <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/">Upworthy</a>, and <a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/">ThoughtCatalog</a> - websites with <a href="http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=buzzfeed">unoriginal</a> and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/why-are-upworthy-headlines-suddenly-everywhere/282048/">sensationally-titled</a> articles that <a href="http://betabeat.com/2013/10/dishing-out-insulin-how-feel-good-viral-machines-like-upworthy-and-buzzfeed-filter-reality/">spoon-feeds "content"</a> from around the web to its audience. These websites are designed less around <i>creating</i> content, and more about <i>sharing</i> content. They pop up in your Facebook feed and send you off to whatever list or video that got lifted from Reddit, Tumblr, or similar. Ebaumsworld was once disparaged for its flagrant theft of content; nowadays, Ebaumsworld's business model is the norm.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN56KvdWPsiyvhN9XyJt6kYzTnye51hks9SFPYmMpl5C3tzTEiahuWQlTKgzjOLWJwADBlCA1wA4BmsNM_b1x-tkkMHlCgpdInGFcv7LFwQz7UsIkjdjmA-nhJCcsGYq8npyvI20RgTcI/s1600/buzzfeed_lrg1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN56KvdWPsiyvhN9XyJt6kYzTnye51hks9SFPYmMpl5C3tzTEiahuWQlTKgzjOLWJwADBlCA1wA4BmsNM_b1x-tkkMHlCgpdInGFcv7LFwQz7UsIkjdjmA-nhJCcsGYq8npyvI20RgTcI/s1600/buzzfeed_lrg1.png" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">This. Goddamn. Website.</span></div>
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The attention economy is being tamed. People are seeking aggregation websites of aggregation websites. Information is curated and shaped many times over the course of its online lifespan, packaged and re-packaged so that people will click through the same regurgitated crap and think that it's something new. Content is cherry-picked and dressed up so that it plays into <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">your personal echo chamber</a> as much as possible, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-great-ad-problem.html">all for the sake of more ad clicks</a>.<br />
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These are websites that care more about the consumption of their content, rather than the generation of new content. Internet culture is shifting away from the old model of having many small, almost tribe-like online hubs. Reddit has made <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lost-worlds.html">most forums redundant</a>. Facebook and Twitter comprise the vast majority of online traffic, and are likely to grow. The variety of old Internet is giving way to behemoth websites.<br />
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Perhaps one day, we won't have a need for online hubs at all. Maybe most people will just be spending time on three or four websites, and the online landscape naturally conforms to the same restrictive model that television and radio channels follow. Only, it won't be out of technological limitation that we fall into this model - it will be out of creative and intellectual inertia.<br />
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And don't think for a moment that the people that run these websites are particularly concerned about this scenario. <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/12/left-to-obscurity.html">They don't care.</a> To them, the emergence of these larger, monopolizing websites are a <i>good</i> thing. It fits some twisted techno-utopian ideal that just happens to coincide with how much they personally profit. These behemoth websites <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/war-of-gatekeepers.html">fight each other for market dominance</a>. When you read about Amazon's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25180906">push for delivery drones</a> and Google's response of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25395989">buying a military robot-maker company</a>, it's hard not to feel like you're reading about an arms race.<br />
<br />
These enterprises are increasingly trying to exercise governance over the Internet, and it's working. The Internet <i>is</i> becoming more centralized, and nobody has made any real effort to fight against this.<br />
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Perhaps it's time for some regulation from our <i>real</i> government.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK5d6fv5VY6D4UkisPadMfSvauak1eU7Jjdmn0eMETGz4XVbRQjX9Iw3_5DEidAgqgfOpmP3n_HvgPlfD4JDGbFVuV6HQLzc65_bfaihTDWtrcE-wHRus82azLXTbZzhxIx40PuyMnIlI/s1600/capitol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK5d6fv5VY6D4UkisPadMfSvauak1eU7Jjdmn0eMETGz4XVbRQjX9Iw3_5DEidAgqgfOpmP3n_HvgPlfD4JDGbFVuV6HQLzc65_bfaihTDWtrcE-wHRus82azLXTbZzhxIx40PuyMnIlI/s1600/capitol.jpg" height="228" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm told those are famous last words.</span></div>
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We need to establish a functional checks-and-balances system between online business, national government, and individuals on the Internet. Libertarian rhetoric online has kept government mostly unwanted online, while the businesses have swelled to massive proportions. The massive failure of the RIAA and MPAA in trying to curb the rate of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-new-face-of-music.html">music</a> and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/10/film-and-internet.html">movie</a> piracy further demonstrates that government would have an easier time targeting businesses instead of individuals. It is the balance between government and business that needs to be most deeply rethought in the Internet age.<br />
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Let's just spitball some ideas: Copyright laws need to be amended so as to make certain intellectual properties - like memes - public domain. Novel ways to monitor the scope of a business's online presence need to be devised, and hard caps to the amount of information output for large online enterprises need to be implemented. Regulations on machine learning algorithms need to be done so that users can opt out of targeted advertising. Limits on ads per web page could be set. Limits on content replication could be set, perhaps enforced by algorithms that scan uploaded content and cross-check against other uploaded content.<br />
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Governments, in turn, should not be able to censor content on the Internet. That said, illegal activity online should be sufficient to mark those particular content creators for arrest. Free speech should be a protected principle online. If you're concerned about movements like Anonymous, then <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/reddit-online-hubs-and-street-gangs.html">accommodate them instead of shutting them down</a>. Incorporate national goals <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/class-in-session.html">in fields like education</a> into the digital infrastructure. Everyone and their mother already concern themselves with governmental censorship online, so these talking points are far less interesting than the limitations on businesses.<br />
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Perhaps there are others we can consider as well. We already know that regulation <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">can produce better content</a> when the enterprise is actually willing to regulate. It might be time for some new laws.<br />
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I do not know how this latest Internet "era" will continue to unfurl. The alarmist in me is concerned that the Internet has lost something valuable that it used to have. There feels like there is more white noise, and it seems more regularly spoon-fed to us. As though the Internet were getting more centralized, less diverse, more pandering to its constituents that make money, more out to encourage consumption over production.<br />
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But then, another part of me reminds me that I was 15 years old in 2005. The things that I thought were cool were probably really dumb. So, who knows? I could be seeing the old Internet through rose-tinted glasses. I'm also certainly not qualified to talk about law, or the state of government. Sometimes it's important to remember that I'm just someone who spends too much time on the Internet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com369tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-75000415237380199272013-12-09T20:45:00.001-08:002013-12-09T23:22:24.623-08:00Left to ObscurityThe other day, I read an article about <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/12/cyberlibertarians-digital-deletion-of-the-left/">libertarians, the Internet, and how they're affecting leftist politics</a>. For a moment, I was thrilled - someone else on the Internet was <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">as upset about Internet libertarians as I am</a>! And then my friends started pointing out that the article wasn't very well-written, and my elation faded away.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Aw. Dead end.</span></div>
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Still, there's a talking point inspired from this article that is definitely worth addressing. Where <i>are</i> the Leftists in the age of the Internet? And how has the seemingly dominant ideology of the Internet affected Leftism?<br />
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Here's a long, scatterbrained, and probably off-point diagnosis on the state of leftist thought on the Internet, and what might possibly improve it.<br />
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Let's define what it means to be a Leftist, for the sake of this post's discussion. A Leftist is someone who does not believe that capitalism is a good or sustainable system for our society and would like to see it replaced with something else. A Leftist could want to see capitalism replaced gradually and peacefully, or they could want to see it replaced suddenly and violently. A Leftist could want to see capitalism replaced with something more top-down, a la socialism, or they could want to see it replaced with something more decentralized, a la anarchism.<br />
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The main thing that defines a Leftist is that they don't believe in capitalism, which should meaningfully separate them from liberals (who share similar goals to Leftists but don't think it is necessary to displace the capitalist system), conservatives, and libertarians. And yes, things like the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism">libertarian Left</a>" and "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism">anarcho-capitalism</a>" exist, but their viewpoints mostly resemble libertarianism. And, for full disclosure, I'm someone who probably fits my definition of liberalism pretty strongly, but with sympathies towards a gradual socialist shift.<br />
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So, back to our question: Where are the Leftists on the Internet?<br />
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Perhaps there's a broader question here that is more relevant: where are the Leftists, period? The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window">Overton window</a> in American politics - that is, the range of political ideas that are acceptable for public discussion - has been getting pushed farther and farther into right-wing territory. Conservative political commentator and think tank fellow <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Trevino">Joshua Trevino</a> has spoken on this phenomenon, even alluding to <a href="http://archive.redstate.com/story/2006/4/29/54117/5208">an organized strategy within think tanks</a> to keep pushing the Overton window as far to the right as possible.<br />
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We can see it reflected in mass media such as television. I've written before on how <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">the schism in media use between generations</a> may account for the increasing conservatism of radio and television news. Perhaps, in addition to changing media use, there might actually <i>be</i> an agenda among the right-wingers. Whatever the case, Leftists are mostly absent in public spotlight. The Tea Party is somehow a media-worthy force that can <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_Caucus">get actual political support</a>, but Occupy Wall Street mostly attracts media attention <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/17/occupy-wall-street-99-percent">when people want to</a> <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/02/study-suggests-occupy-wall-street-movement-undone-by-liberals-need-to-feel-unique/">talk about why it failed</a>. This is despite the fact that OWS hasn't actually gone anywhere and is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt">still pushing against the system</a>.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/QPKKQnijnsM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Well, there are always Internet viral videos, right? ...Right?</span></div>
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Leftism has some online presence, but they're generally drowned out by more conventionally liberal websites. For every <a href="http://jacobinmag.com/">Jacobin</a>, there's a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/">ThinkProgress</a>, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/">TheDailyKos</a>, and, ugh, <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/">Upworthy</a>. Seeing as what constitutes "Left" can span a wide and splintered array of viewpoints, and since a lot of Leftist terms are fairly unfashionable (see: any and all hubbub about the word 'socialism'), it can be hard to find firmly leftist material. Sometimes you can find hints of anti-capitalist musings in places like <a href="http://www.alternet.org/">Alternet</a> and other places, but it seems mostly out of sight.<br />
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Online hubs with left-wing perspectives are even rarer. SomethingAwful's Debate and Discussion forum, beyond all expectations for a comedy website, is dominated by both anarchists and socialists. However, the SomethingAwful forums <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">are not designed to be widely accessible</a>, so this left wing of their community remains fairly isolated. In contrast, the Anonymous movement is <i>too</i> widely accessible. Anonymous <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">may have an anarchist bent</a> to it at times, but then again, it can have a fairly libertarian bent to it too. The whole point of the anonymous moniker is that <i>anybody</i> can be an Anonymous, so it isn't defined by or limited to anarchism.<br />
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There's an <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/socialism">r/socialism</a> on Reddit, but it seems almost token. Like, <i>of course</i> there's an r/socialism, there's a subreddit for everything! Look at this <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/relatedsubs#wiki_partisan_subreddits">grab bag of political subreddits</a> - the volume of Left-leaning subreddits pale in comparison to the libertarian or libertarian-leaning subreddits, especially when you skim through the subreddits past the strictly "partisan" category. As far as Reddit rankings go, r/anarchism sits as the <a href="http://www.redditlist.com/page-4">393rd</a>-highest subscribed subreddit, while r/socialism <a href="http://www.redditlist.com/page-5">doesn't even make the top 500</a>. Of course, r/Libertarian sits at <a href="http://www.redditlist.com/page-2">165</a> at the time of this writing.<br />
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Leftism on the Internet, much like Leftism in real life, is mostly diluted, mostly scattered, and mostly unpopular. That should be strange to us. The Internet excels at bringing splintered minority groups together, often allowing them to develop a sense of community. It's never actually <i>mattered</i> if the community is based on a sound premise - <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-new-nerd.html">they're usually not</a>! Even if you're one of those people who thinks that Leftist thought is completely loony, you'd still expect the Leftists to have <i>something</i> to themselves online. So why don't they?<br />
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A part of it might just be that I'm looking for Leftist material in 2013, while we have a Democrat president. Maybe having a Republican president would inspire more fervor among lefties. The <a href="http://democraticunderground.com/">Democratic Underground</a> forums got their most press back when George W Bush was president, mostly for saying things that are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/international/worldspecial4/03bloggers.html">just as loony</a> as what tea party conservatives get away with today.<br />
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But I think another, more crucial, part of the lack of Leftism on the Internet is how absolutely, blindingly outnumbered they are by libertarians on the Internet.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Just in case you forgot that this exists.</span></div>
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We've talked about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">the general libertarian atmosphere of online communities</a>, but we really should re-emphasize just how <i>easy</i> it is to be a libertarian. The <a href="http://capitalism.org/tour/">language is so vague</a> that nearly anybody can identify with the ideology to some token degree.<br />
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Did you dislike the Iraq War back when Bush was president? Do you have trouble understanding why marijuana is illegal? <a href="http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-atheist-libertarians-are-part-americas-1-problem">Congratulations!</a> You have something in common with libertarians! Never mind that those are some of the most banal political opinions you could possibly have, and that plenty of non-libertarian people would probably agree with you. The libertarians are the easiest ones to relate to because they keep it simple - they get that it's about personal freedom. You like freedom, don't you?<br />
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Are you a generally accepting person? You don't see yourself as a racist, sexist, homophobe, or whatever else, right? Then I guess you could call yourself pretty liberal on social issues. But wait, you don't like the idea of wasting money either, and if the government is spending lots of money, then it might be wasting lots of money too! These are both <i>incredibly</i> novel opinions to have, and <a href="http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz.php">a shitty political quiz that some libertarian put together</a> says that these opinions make you a libertarian! Now you have a label that falls out of the binary American party system, which definitely shows that your opinion is more nuanced and thoughtful than the opinions of anybody who's chosen to conform as "democrat" or "republican".<br />
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Perhaps some more thoughtful libertarians are cringing at the idea that they're being grouped with the legions of people online that only have a token sense of their ideology and call themselves libertarian. But that's the very problem - <i>there are legions of people online that do this</i>. The ideology gets very well-publicized online and the language is kept ludicrously simple. This creates a very low barrier of entry for people to identify as a libertarian.<br />
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It's a brilliant recruiting strategy. Libertarians end up drawing tons of attention to their ideology. Their sheer numbers make it impossible to avoid hearing about the ideology in most contexts. They end up having a command over political language on the Internet. What's more, libertarianism <i>doesn't</i> have a stigma to it like Leftism does. Leftist thought is much older, has been integrated into our academic canon, and has experienced plenty of valid criticism (as well as fear-mongering, like with McCarthyism) over the years. Libertarianism is relatively young, hasn't yet seen public spotlight like Leftism has (unless you want to count Somalia as the current shining example of a libertarian nation-state), and does a better job in capturing the hearts of young affluent people who don't like getting told what to do. The result is that leftist thought tends to get overlooked in favor of the new, shiny, freedom-loving libertarian mantra.<br />
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But wait a minute - who's doing the recruiting for libertarianism? There are plenty of libertarian spokesmen - as I've mentioned in the previous blog post on libertarianism, examples of outspoken libertarian personalities include <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2006/12/05/south-park-libertarians">South Park's founders</a>, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080503183904/http://jewsrock.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=words.view&wordid=5C400234-ACA1-4A3E-8CDCC1A3C6B074C4">Rush</a>, and magician <a href="http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9456">Penn Jilette</a>. But there are other libertarians that probably have an even <i>higher</i> profile online: <i>The founders of your favorite Internet websites.</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">You can't escape.</span></div>
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The Jacobin article from the beginning of this blog post drops some names of famous libertarians who aren't Ron Paul. The rank and file of online libertarians include people like <a href="http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1042">Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales</a>, Paypal co-founder <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_packer">Peter Thiel</a>, Google engineering director <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil">Ray Kurzweil</a>, and others. Reddit's co-founder Alexis Ohanian, though never explicitly identifying as a libertarian, certainly <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/02/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanians-rosy-outlook-on-the-future-of-politics/">seems to embrace the libertarian presence on his website</a> and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-catch-redditor.html">was resistant to top-down intervention on Reddit's child pornography problem</a>, so you can probably infer a libertarian leaning.<br />
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Maybe you don't know all of these people by name, or haven't seen any of their writings or speeches or anything. But you <i>have</i> used their handiwork. These people are behind the websites you use. They have a direct hand in curating the style and content of their websites. They manage teams of people that are presumably like-minded enough to work under them. Their work makes them <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">leaders of great services</a> that millions get to use for free. Established businesses and business outlets <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/02/tumblr-david-karps-800-million-art-project/">praise them</a> in much the same way that they praise CEOs of other companies.<br />
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Their success isn't <i>really</i> lost on us. We vaguely know that these people exist, and we like them for their services. What's more, their success is derived from our efforts. If you've ever contributed to Wikipedia, then you've contributed to the phenomenon that gives Jimmy Wales a cultural platform. But contributing to Wikipedia isn't a bad thing at all! Wikipedia <i>is</i> useful and good. The confusion comes when we make a logical leap and say that, because Wikipedia is useful and good, Jimmy Wales' opinions are <i>also</i> useful and good.<br />
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It's one thing that these people associate with libertarianism, but their brand of libertarianism is uniquely Internet-flavored. In addition to the generic advocacy of personal freedoms, they tie in technology as the key to personal liberation. This so-called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_utopianism">techno-utopianism</a>, or <a href="http://techliberation.com/2009/08/12/cyber-libertarianism-the-case-for-real-internet-freedom/">cyber-libertarianism</a>, emphasizes the role of the Internet (and other technologies too) in actualizing an ideal society of empowered individuals.<br />
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And they're not totally wrong either. Modern technology - especially technology of the Internet - <i>is</i> very impressive. It's allowed us to connect with each other in ways that we've never been able to before. Worlds upon worlds of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/as-real-as-it-gets.html">human experience</a>, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/arguing-on-internet.html">intellectual discourse</a>, and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-data-dump.html">large-scale information</a> are at our fingertips. The <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/internet-vigilantism.html">vigilante movements</a> and the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-age-of-collaboration.html">open source projects</a> have revealed enormous amounts about our sociology that can soften people's attitudes on the idea of mass-cooperation and progress. These are powerful tools that <i>can</i> make us better.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">ohhhh no here we go again</span></div>
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So when these people - these Ray Kurzweils, these Peter Thiels - talk about the power of this technology, we're very inclined to hang on to their words. Because it's mostly true - the Internet has changed the world, it has benefited us as people, it's made us smarter and more connected with each other. Maybe it <i>can</i> bring us closer to an ideal society.<br />
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If you're a libertarian, then you're probably already in love with this rhetoric. If you were already politically inclined that way - even in the casual sort of way that I described above - then these people probably push you further in a libertarian direction.<br />
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But if you're a Leftist, then you want to be in love with their words too. You want to believe that the Internet is a disruptive force to the status quo, that the availability of information is empowering the common person in previously unseen ways, that the capitalist dogma is finally being eroded away in favor of a more cooperative world.<br />
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And you want to believe this while these website founders <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8562379.stm">climb the financial ranks</a> like business people before them, while YouTube <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-future-of-youtube.html">develops and empowers an upper crust of performers</a> that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfgoDDh4kE0">can bypass YouTube regulations</a>, and while websites <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-great-ad-problem.html">shove increasingly better-targeted ads in your face</a> to get you to buy their products.<br />
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The emergent infrastructure on the Internet certainly <i>could</i> subvert capitalism, but the people trying to sell us on the technology aren't actually interested in subverting capitalism at all. They're earning their livelihood off it. Nothing about these websites or their technology are ever going to directly address the deeper flaws of capitalist structure, because they work too well within the current system. Instead, these people continue to promote an ideology that is overly simplistic and disproportionately benefits themselves over the millions of Internet users.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">War. War never changes.</span></div>
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This is the really sinister part of online libertarianism: Leftists have just as much reason to be excited about the Internet as libertarians do. But the conversation revolves around using the technology for the promotion of libertarian ideals, because libertarians have so much more clout online than leftists. In other words, this celebration of technology ends up disproportionately benefiting the libertarian cause because <i>libertarians are the ones with power online</i>.<br />
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The best example of this horrible identity crisis can be found in the response to the NSA spying.<br />
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If you were one of the people outraged by the NSA's activities online (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/google-nsa_n_4227596.html">Google sure was</a>), then ask yourself <i>why</i> you were outraged. Was it the collection of information on you? Was it the lack of informed consent on the action? Was it just that you don't know what the NSA was going to do with that information, and that makes you uneasy?<br />
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Don't get me wrong, these can all be valid reasons to be upset about the NSA leak. But check your consistency: If you're mad that the NSA information database even exists, then are you also mad at Facebook for being <a href="http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-facebooks-applications-patents-give-away-its-designs-profiting-our-behavior">giant information databases</a> on millions of people? If you're mad about the lack of consent of using your information, then are you somehow more comfortable with how big data analysis with advertisers are at the point where <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/">they can figure out you're pregnant before you do</a>? If it was how you don't trust the government's values, then are you more okay with advertising companies whose very <i>goal</i> in mining your data is to more effectively manipulate you in buying their products?<br />
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If you hate the idea of the government putting together a giant database on Internet users using coercive means, but you don't really have a problem with the privately owned databases on Internet users using basic information to figure out more about you than you'd probably like, then there is some serious inconsistency in your viewpoint. That is, unless you trust the entrepreneurs. <a href="http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/facebook-and-microsoft-help-fund-right-wing-lobby-effort">Which might not be a good idea</a>.<br />
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Libertarians got very mad about the NSA. This is consistent with their belief system. Some - but not all - of those reasons translate well into a more leftist way of thinking. The online discourse about the NSA, motivated by libertarians, get Leftists talking about how they're equally outraged about the NSA based on those select shared reasons. If the Leftists steer the conversation deeper, then they leave the domain of discussion that interests most libertarians, and the conversation starts to die. The overall effect is the appearance of a louder libertarian base, with the issue of NSA spying remaining a fairly shallowly explored issue.<br />
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This should really tear you apart if you identify with the Left, but think that the Internet is promoting leftist ideology. You see the technology in front of you, and you know how it could be used as a fantastic, empowering tool. You see examples of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">online social justice</a> and the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">victory of secular thought</a> and you want to believe that the Internet is finally empowering the marginalized. But that isn't what's necessarily going on in the larger picture.<br />
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It makes perfect sense to be mad at the NSA for collecting data on people's emails without a warrant or without their consent. But Google <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/microsoft-attacks-google-on-gmail-privacy/">doing the same thing</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users-privacy-email-lawsuit">protracting their admission of it</a> doesn't attract nearly as much widespread ire. Why?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Or the vocal, Ron Paul-loving minority.</span></div>
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Does our technology fundamentally benefit us by virtue of its existence? To some degree, I'd argue yes. Certainly, having this technology in existence opens up more possibilities for people to sustain themselves. But it remains important to monitor who's manning the technology.<br />
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That's the really tough part when it comes to criticizing the Internet bigwigs. They <i>are</i> contributing amazing ideas. Look at <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-18/elon-musks-hyperloop-will-work-says-some-very-smart-software">Elon Musk's hyperloop</a>, or Ray Kurzweil's <a href="http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2005/02/66585">push for technologies that enhance human longevity</a>. Isn't offering up these amazing ideas - and using their power to actualize them - a net good?<br />
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Well, it would depend on what these entrepreneurs would like to <i>do</i> with their actualized ideas They certainly <i>could</i> let these technologies proliferate, which would strongly benefit greater society while marginally benefiting them. Or, they could introduce artificial barriers to the proliferation of that technology, which would give them greater personal profit while benefiting everyone else less. And hey, there's precedence for this!<br />
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In the 1950s, America was productive enough as a society where there was <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/28/051128ta_talk_surowiecki">serious discussion about how much people would really need to work anymore</a>. People were saying that we could get away with four day workweeks and maintain our standard of living. The technology was there. The fundamental obstacle to the common worker's ability to engage in higher pursuits - <i>time</i> - seemed to have been conquered.<br />
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Yet somehow, our levels of work never ceased. The workplace environment became <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16907584/">even more hostile</a> to our free time. But it isn't like old jobs suddenly re-emerged. Jobs with artificial purpose - your tech support jobs, your telemarketer jobs - began to find their niche instead. The demand for material consumption never actually ceased among the American population, and enough companies were willing to take advantage of that demand. They pushed their sales harder with more ads, they <a href="http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/newsroom/newsroom-content/2013/08/fast-food-television-ads-use-toys--movies-to-target-kids.html">preyed on</a> <a href="http://vimeo.com/73446465">more insecurities</a>, and they introduced more products that they could convince people were necessary to have.<br />
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Suddenly people were willing to work unnecessary amounts of time just so they could meet an artificially inflated standard of living. The Reagan years only served to fuel this fire - <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/greed-is-good-why-you-need-to-tap-into-your-inner-gordon-gekko/">greed is good</a>, they would say! <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-90s-really-werent-that-great.html">The 90s generation</a> - <i>my</i> generation - were born into a world that was literally <i>making up reasons</i> for us to buy more things and work more hours.<br />
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The history of American consumerism is one giant precedence for the willingness of some entrepreneurs to introduce artificial barriers to personal satisfaction for the sake of personal gain. Our Internet entrepreneurs might be introducing fantastic technologies that <i>could</i> make our lives better, and it probably <i>is</i> feasible for this technology to become widespread. But why should we expect these entrepreneurs to let such an opportunity for personal profit slide?<br />
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Perhaps the extreme of this technocratic capitalist nonsense can be found in <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/online-cults.html">online cults like Less Wrong</a>. They try to romance us with stories about the might of the singularity, about how a push for friendly artificial intelligence will make the world a better place. The Rationalists might in fact be pushing techno-utopianism to its logical conclusion, speculating on a technological force that could be free from imperfect human influence. But why would we believe that the picture is so simple? It assumes that these people are actually working towards what they claim to be working for, which, given MIRI's track record for productive output, might not really be true at all.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfa3FxMBQ1ZzjAGnMbKI5O5L61pJzNFH5GzDDxVm59H4E14pq3BlUGM0FHiwU0OetNmTp_A3nFC8JxF51OiIYtt99AXok9Qwf3SXGB7iKHAcNJ2CpwmOmcN_6X3hZckko6ZvntH5uou9w/s1600/thomas_edison_quote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfa3FxMBQ1ZzjAGnMbKI5O5L61pJzNFH5GzDDxVm59H4E14pq3BlUGM0FHiwU0OetNmTp_A3nFC8JxF51OiIYtt99AXok9Qwf3SXGB7iKHAcNJ2CpwmOmcN_6X3hZckko6ZvntH5uou9w/s1600/thomas_edison_quote.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Just in case you still had trouble imagining how an innovative entrepreneur <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_16072_5-famous-inventors-who-stole-their-big-idea.html">could end up</a> <a href="http://www.cracked.com/funny-3345-historical-figures-who-were-actually-dicks/">being a</a> <a href="http://bentcorner.com/more-proof-thomas-edison-was-a-dick/">giant asshole</a>.</span></div>
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I don't mean to disparage people on the grounds that they are wealthy, nor do I mean to disparage all Internet entrepreneurs. There are many people in power who don't subscribe to the current atmosphere of libertarian techno-utopianism. <a href="http://givingpledge.org/">The Giving Pledge</a> is a fantastic project, and includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Some tech entrepreneurs are even <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2013/11/20/tech-entrepreneurs-agree-its-time-to-regulate-the-internet-ecosystem/">calling for more regulations on the Internet</a>, contrary to the prevailing online atmosphere.<br />
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But despite these valiant efforts, the Internet remains a sickeningly libertarian place, and it cripples the heft of the left by exploiting the ambiguous nature of technological advancement. John Steinbeck once said that America doesn't have poor people - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-socialism-never-took-root-in-america-because-the-poor-see">merely temporarily embarrassed rich people</a>. The online medium has given us illusions about individualism, meritocracy, and technology as a saving force. But we forget about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html">racial disparities</a>, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-generation-of-men.html">gender tensions</a>, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/reddit-online-hubs-and-street-gangs.html">turmoil among the socially disadvantaged</a>, and other issues that we can deal with here and now, that simply require us to <i>care</i>.<br />
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There needs to be more serious discussion on what problems our technology <i>can't</i> solve, and I say this <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/digital-research.html">as a goddamned bioinformatician</a> - my <i>entire job</i> revolves around the idea that computing technology can provide new and amazing solutions to old problems in things like disease treatment and energy production. Also, <i>I run a goddamn blog about how great the Internet is</i>. I am not someone who doubts the capacity of technology to improve our world. I merely question how that technology will be used, once it comes about.<br />
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If the Left wants to find online relevance that can counter the libertarians, then it needs to find a way to denounce the perceived power of technology while still embracing technology. That should seem like a ludicrously uphill battle, because it <i>is</i>. As Vladimir Lenin once said, "What is to be done?"<br />
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There <i>is</i> one avenue of social current online that I think has potential in rekindling a push against the capitalism norm, and that is feminism. Particularly radical feminism - the kind that refers to patriarchy as an existent social system.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sickles are out of style.</span></div>
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Feminism on the Internet has managed to become an impressive force, raising very important discussions within <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/gamer-culture.html">gaming culture</a> and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">online atheism</a>. It's done an amazing job in raising awareness on issues of power dynamics in online circles that have traditionally been dominated by men. Their arguments are fundamentally based on issues that require empathy - that it's unjust that double standards exist, that it's unacceptable that rape culture exists, that it's ridiculous that women are expected to conform to a certain image on the basis of their gender in all instances.<br />
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Online feminism has jointly relied on an embrace of Internet technology while using arguments that transcend the use of that technology and critique the greater social structure. Their movement directly speaks for approximately half of the population, which can't be said about racial struggles (where minorities are...erm, a <i>minority</i> in real life and online) or class struggles (where it seems unreasonable to expect working class people to have the time or resources to deeply engage with communities online on an equivalent level as the affluent classes). Plus, since gender issues affect <i>both</i> men and women, feminists can gather plenty of feminist allies among people who aren't women. This is a movement that really <i>can</i> get people to talk about changing social constructs.<br />
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Sure, feminism is not a monolithic movement. There is such a thing as libertarian feminism, but they don't seem to be terribly widespread. Within the subset of the feminist Internet, you most strongly see liberals and leftists. Perhaps that's because the capitalist system, as it's implemented, helps reinforce some patriarchal norms. That makes feminist circles a particularly safe space for Leftist thought - because it's doubly clear how the system disparages them.<br />
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If mass media has pushed the Overton window towards right-wing perspectives, and if the Internet has helped push the Overton window towards libertarian perspectives, then maybe feminism can push the window back towards the left. With leftist voices online currently scattered and mostly drowned out, feminism can be a great rallying point.<br />
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But, of course, I'm not a woman. I can't speak for feminism. But even if I don't have the authority to confirm this belief, I believe this: that women are in a position to lead the Left into social relevance online. And I throw my full support behind them.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-2732013008696251242013-12-02T13:30:00.003-08:002013-12-02T13:31:06.566-08:00The Eastern ConnectionWhen people first start hearing about the "depths of the Internet", they inevitably start hearing about 4chan. 4chan has recently <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/business/4chan-10-years-christopher-moot-poole/">passed its tenth birthday</a>, and is one of the biggest social hubs that exists on the Internet.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">And then some!</span></div>
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However, the website's concept was never original. 4chan's founder borrowed the website's format and style from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2ch">2channel</a>, an imageboard in Japan. 2channel is just as <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/2ch.net">big in Japan</a> as 4chan is <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/4chan.org">in America</a>, if not <i>even bigger</i>.<br />
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As it turns out, we can trace a lot of online phenomena to the Far East - particularly Japan and South Korea, who have been functional on the Internet for as long as the West has. Today, we'll explore how Japan and South Korea have impacted our online culture, and how the tide for cultural dominance may be shifting in the coming decade.<br />
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Unlike China, a lot of East Asia has been online for a very long time. If you look at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20021209175730/http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500?p=Dest_W_t_40_L2">archives of Alexa's top 500 websites from 2002</a>, you'll spot a lot of Korean websites in the top 100 alone. In these early days, Seoul - South Korea's capital - was called the <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/korea.html">"bandwidth capital of the world"</a>. That position has yet to be conceded - in 2009, South Korea <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10434930-94.html">topped the world in Internet speed</a>, with Japan coming second, and the United States coming in 18th place.<br />
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From our faraway perspective, the online landscape of these countries mirror our own. The Japanese have their own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_Internet_personalities">online personalities</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixi">social</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GREE">networking</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ameba_(website)">services</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niconico">video hosts</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2channel">online</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futaba_Channel">hubs</a>. South Korea's most visible websites are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naver">Naver</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daum_Communications">Daum</a>, which are comparable to our Google and MSN, and offer a familiar scope of features.<br />
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I wouldn't be able to say anything interesting about their online culture, though. I face the same conundrum as I did when <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/internet-in-middle-kingdom.html">trying to talk about China's Internet</a>. I don't participate in it and I don't know anyone who does, so I couldn't possibly do it justice. I <i>can</i>, however, talk about how their online cultures have colored our own. To do that, we have to start with Japan.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja31qiECvXhR4cdvgcCle-asqs3I6zEqz8K11ULz25kDvRV44H4zweiE3jz_hWDm_f57ytfZOBzLvp1rX9QPARnzRNYxn39r44gyEIPeWsKJptN9L7TW6xXQ44KkxkcLCfauwZ1IQ8-IY/s1600/weeaboo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja31qiECvXhR4cdvgcCle-asqs3I6zEqz8K11ULz25kDvRV44H4zweiE3jz_hWDm_f57ytfZOBzLvp1rX9QPARnzRNYxn39r44gyEIPeWsKJptN9L7TW6xXQ44KkxkcLCfauwZ1IQ8-IY/s1600/weeaboo.jpg" height="320" width="290" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Pastels of collective embarrassment.</span></div>
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Even before the rise of the Internet, Japan had already been exporting its culture to the West. The NES <a href="http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=ConsoleMuseum.Detail&id=26&game=5">came out in North America</a> in 1985, and set the foundation for modern <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/gamer-culture.html">gamer culture</a>. Other media like anime and manga grew popular through the '80s and '90s. There consumer goods were coming during a time that was very crucially shaped by increasing consumerism. <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-90s-really-werent-that-great.html">A whole generation was defined by it</a>.<br />
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This generation - <i>my</i> generation, the Internet generation - would grow up to learn that these beloved consumer products came from this faraway little island country. They act different, they have their own history, and their culture is wildly different from our own, but they're producing all these amazing things that we like to consume! The result is a <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_20118_5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-living-in-japan.html">genuine fascination</a> <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/20-japanese-robots-probably-intent-on-murdering-you/">with Japanese culture</a> <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_19868_6-ways-japanese-wrestling-makes-wwe-look-sane.html">and its</a> <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-most-terrifyingly-homoerotic-japanese-music-videos/">many</a> <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_18567_6-japanese-subcultures-that-are-insane-even-japan.html">quirks</a>. To many, Japan is this strange "other" world, where the pop culture is an intriguingly different flavor than Western pop culture and the technology seems <a href="http://io9.com/an-infertile-woman-gives-birth-after-experimental-treat-1440661744">wildly ahead</a> and <a href="http://io9.com/life-imitates-anime-as-japan-starts-making-its-first-sp-1451383292">wildly imaginative</a>.<br />
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There are a staggering number of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-new-nerd.html">nerdy subcultures</a> that revolve around the consumption of Japanese media. Any gaming news outlet is going to have some portion of it devoted to Japanese news. Hell, one the more famous gaming news sites is named <a href="http://kotaku.com/">Kotaku</a> - you don't need too much imagination to wonder where the inspiration for <i>that</i> name comes from. It's a Western-made site, too!<br />
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You can also find a number of online hubs with heavily Japanese inspired content. 4chan was mentioned above, but we see the same general fixation on Japanese culture in <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/deviantart-and-teenage-psyche.html">places like DeviantArt</a>, where every other submission is some hackneyed attempt at anime. TV Tropes has sections upon sections devoted to trope entries in anime, manga, and video games. The <a href="http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/">Anime News Network</a> is a website that is devoted to all things anime. <a href="http://www.gaiaonline.com/">Gaia Online</a> is an anime-themed forum that would get <a href="http://gigaom.com/2007/04/22/move-over-myspace-gaia-online-is-here/">millions of unique visitors</a> in the mid-2000s.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Have you forgotten what it was like to cringe?</span></div>
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It is no stretch to say that a lot of online culture during the 2000s was defined by a fixation on Japan. There was even some reactionary backlash to its prevalence. The term "wapanese" was coined to describe white people (<a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html">of which there are a lot on the Internet</a>) who were obsessed with all things Japanese. Eventually the term evolved to "<a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/weeaboo">weeaboo</a>", and is almost always used pejoratively.<br />
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For a lot of people, Japan seemed like this place where their nerdy consumer habits were not only accepted by greater society, but <i>encouraged</i>. Lots of Japanese consumable exports during a time of heightened consumerism meant that some of those consumers were going to try to find an identity through Japanese media, just like any other nerd.<br />
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There are some problems (besides the shallow consumerism) that come with that - some regressive aspects of Japanese society begin to leak into our own. Japan's gender roles <a href="http://voices.yahoo.com/misogyny-japan-183179.html">come in a different flavor</a> than Western gender roles, and it can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYqYLfm1rWA&feature=youtu.be&t=42s">in</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_anime">their</a> <a href="http://www.1up.com/news/fumito-ueda-last-guardian-trivia-new-projects">media</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroge">exports</a>. Japan also currently has a problem with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23182523">hikikomori</a>, young Japanese people who withdraw from society and stay holed up in their room all day. Perhaps as a result of Japan's own societal problems, you see a lot of <a href="http://www.psfk.com/2013/11/erotic-maid-cafes.html">strange products</a> that seem to <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5954322/girlfriend-body-pillow-update-now-12-still-terribly-sad/1226988398">encourage personal isolation</a> and <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/dinner-with-waifu-otaku-dates">objectification of other people</a>. These products suddenly find an audience in the West, and suddenly these people have products that encourage their bad behavior.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Here, cringe some more.</span></div>
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But lately, tides have seemed to shift. The Internet in the 2000s may have been marked by Japanese culture, but I get the feeling that the 2010s Internet have been increasingly shaped by South Korean culture.</div>
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Th <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports">eSports</a> scene is a subset of gaming culture that describes video game competitions in organized tournament settings. Through the 2000s, eSports were a very niche interest in the West, but were <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/games/in-a-blizzard-of-warfare/2007/06/02/1180205566519.html?page=fullpage">extraordinarily popular</a> in South Korea. The non-governmental organization <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_e-Sports_Association">KeSPA</a> was founded in 2000 to manage South Korean e-Sports. The video game <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080402134120/http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/10-years-starcraft.html">Starcraft</a>, released in 1998, had sold 9.5 million copies by the time of Starcraft II's announcement, <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-05-21-starcraft2-peek_N.htm">with South Korea accounting for half of those sales</a>. South Korea was the undisputed eSports capital of the world, with prominent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Yo-Hwan">eSports</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jae-Dong">athletes</a> commanding <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_248/7378-BoxeR-in-Brief">massive resources</a> and cults of personality.<br />
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Nowadays, eSports popularity has begun shifting to the West. Games like <a href="http://na.leagueoflegends.com/">League of Legends</a>, <a href="http://blog.dota2.com/?l=english">DotA 2</a>, and <a href="http://us.battle.net/en/int?r=sc2">Starcraft II</a> are all very popular in the West. The company behind League of Legends, Riot Games, has been very public about <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/consistency-quality-accessibility-three-ways-league-of-legends-plans-to-dom">their desire to push eSports to new levels of accessibility</a>. The website Twitch has brought eSports spectating <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4719766/twitch-raises-20-million-esports-market-booming">to new levels worldwide</a>. The US visa bureau even recognizes professional League of Legends players <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/13/4520188/us-citizenship-immigrations-to-give-league-of-legends-players-sports-visas">as professional athletes for visa purposes</a>, as of July 2013.<br />
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Korea remains the leader, and stands as a <a href="http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Sci-Tech/view?articleId=100629">mecca of eSports</a>. This puts Korea in a uniquely powerful cultural position as the West increasingly embraces eSports. Large American companies like CBS Interactive <a href="http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/17/cbs-interactive-partners-with-twitch-tv-and-major-league-gaming-to-form-esports-behemoth/">have begun putting stakes on eSports success</a>. As they <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2013/02/07/cbs-interactive-games-exec-david-rice-sees-great-potential-for-esports-on-tv/">embrace the new medium</a>, they will find a lot of wisdom from the already-established Korean eSports scene.<br />
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Aside from all that, let's talk about Korean pop music.<br />
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Psy's Gangnam Style was the surprise meme of 2012. As of this writing, it sits at 1.8 billion views on YouTube. Somehow this Korean pop song has managed to top every individual Western pop song in online viewing and <a href="http://gma.yahoo.com/video/gma-psys-gangnam-style-dance-080000914.html">penetrate into mainstream Western society</a>. There's more where that came from, too - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/28/kpop-stars-lowdown-south-korean-pop">several other Korean pop groups</a> are finding global popularity. In 2011, one such group - Girls' Generation - became <a href="http://www.mtviggy.com/blog-posts/snsd-hits-us-media-bullseye-with-letterman-and-live-with-kelly-appearances/">the first Korean group to perform</a> in the Late Night Show with David Letterman.<br />
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There has been no Japanese pop equivalent to Gangnam Style or any of these bands. South Korea is wholeheartedly <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fast_track/9633298.stm">embracing a role as an exporter of popular culture</a>, a role that seemed to firmly belong to Japan only ten years ago.<br />
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So what's going on here? Did we collectively get bored of Japan's quirks? Has Japan's international audience stabilized into niche subcultures that hardly get any public attention? Is liking Japan too stigmatized with the pejorative "weeaboo" label?<br />
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Asian nations have long been known for their <a href="http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/1486/soft_power_matters_in_asia.html">"soft power"</a>, or their ability to influence foreign entities through the allure of their culture. Japan's worldwide cultural contributions span a long and colorful list dating back decades. It isn't as though their influence is suddenly waning, either - people are still excited for Pokemon and the PlayStation 4, and big names in anime can still get big Western names like Disney <a href="http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-08-27/disney-to-release-the-wind-rises-in-n-america">to back anime releases</a>. Manga sales <a href="http://io9.com/5874951/why-manga-publishing-is-dying-and-how-it-could-get-better">are dropping</a>, but that may reflect a change in publishing trends than it does a change in interest. And of course, things like sushi are still going strong.<br />
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Perhaps Japanese culture has become a "normal" thing to us Westerners. Japan might not be the conscious focus of our attention right now, but it's still there, in the background, providing very important components of our culture. For a little while, with the Internet allowing us to talk about shared interests in Japanese products, we started placing Japan on a pedestal of novelty. But the novelty <a href="http://kotaku.com/5484581/japan-its-not-funny-anymore">has worn thin</a>, and Japan has reverted from being the shiny new thing back into the old reliable thing. Weeaboos still exist, but perhaps we're too used to their brand of consumerism to care.<br />
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Korea is the new novelty. Perhaps the 2010s will be marked by increased imports of Korean culture. What lessons can we learn from the Internet's former love affair with Japan, as Korea enters into our public conscience?<br />
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Compared to Japan, <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/49755/a-startling-map-showing-the-state-of-homophobia-in-the-world">Korea's got a homophobia problem</a>. The <a href="http://seoulbeats.com/2011/11/homophobia-in-k-pop/">culture around K-pop</a> promotes this, and I'd be willing to bet that the eSports scene in Korea doesn't have particularly progressive views on the subject, either. For anecdotal evidence, I've known homosexual Koreans who are here because they were no longer accepted in their own country because of their homosexuality. If we've had to contend with problems in Japanese media, then we'll certainly have to contend with problems in Korean media as well, and homophobia is very likely to increasingly be in the spotlight.<br />
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But, in the meantime, maybe we'll have to come up with a new pejorative to make fun of white people obsessed with Korean culture. Worean sounds weird, and "gorean" is already taken by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor">a really creepy fanbase around some mediocre science fiction</a>. What would you suggest?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-24005104587205643832013-11-26T18:32:00.002-08:002013-11-26T18:32:31.269-08:00Reddit, Online Hubs, and Street GangsYes, yes, sensational title. Today's thesis is completely crazy and unlikely to actually be correct. But hey, I thought it might be interesting. Of course, this post's written mainly from an American perspective.<br />
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<a href="http://www.reddit.com/">Reddit</a> has a multifaceted reputation. As <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com">one of the most popular websites on the Internet</a>, the online hub has earned a name for itself as a place where you can find <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/">funny pictures</a>, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/">personal insights from celebrities</a>, and atheists. <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">Lots of atheists</a>. As we've also seen, however, it has its seedy underbelly, harboring <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-generation-of-men.html">MRAs</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/does-anything-go-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-racist-corner-of-reddit/277585/">racists</a>, and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-catch-redditor.html">literal pedophiles</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The things that lurk behind that friendly gaze...</span></div>
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We can praise or condemn the site as much as we want. Reddit's existence, for better or for worse, has overtaken the role of the traditional internet forum. Sure, social media has played a role in the decline of online forums in general, but Reddit is easily the most forum-like of the big sites today. Reddit's features make a lot of smaller forums redundant, and over time, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lost-worlds.html">forums have been dying out</a>.<br />
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What can we learn from this? Let's go way out into left field and talk about street gangs.<br />
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If you're like me and grew up in affluent white American suburbia, gangs are probably first presented to you through the romanticized lens of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_godfather">film</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sopranos">television</a>. As one wises up, the illegal and violent activities associated with gangs make them seem more like a threatening "other". Anyone who's watched <a href="http://www.history.com/shows/gangland">Gangland</a> can tell you that the threatening image is certainly more accurate than the romanticized one, but gangs require being aware of some nuances in order to be better understood.<br />
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Gangs often start out as neighborhood affairs, typically <a href="http://wdronline.worldbank.org/worldbank/a/c.html/world_development_report_2011/chapter_2_vulnerability_violence">in poorer areas</a> with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang#Motives">people that do not find adequate representation in mainstream society</a>. Ethnic identity is also a factor, but underrepresented minorities, by the fact that 'underrepresented' is in their very category name, fit into this generalization. Majority ethnic groups form gangs as well, but their members often <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_klux_klan">fear losing their representation in society</a>. Prison gangs, though technically outside of the scope of our discussion, also fit into the framework of being motivated by greater societal disenfranchisement, by virtue of being in prison.<br />
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When whole regions of the population are disenfranchised (or perceive themselves to be disenfranchised), they will typically find ways to compensate for it. When the system is not offering a path of adequate subsistence to them, they will seek their own path outside of the system. The result is a community-focused group that is willing to bypass legality for the sake of those that they represent. They carve out their own power structures and evolve into massive functional entities, complete with internal politics and economic demands.<br />
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Every now and then, I'll see someone online proudly showing their affiliation with one of these organizations - because, yes, <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/april_2011/human_sex_trafficking">gangs definitely use the Internet</a>. It throws me off at first, because I can't imagine why anyone would want to broadcast that kind of connection. But then I think that these groups mean something different to them than they do to me, a privileged outsider.<br />
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In the absence of benefits from greater American society, they turn inward towards their own societies. Where our governmental powers fail, they make their own governments.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Some gangs are more easily forgotten than others.</span></div>
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My intention, of course, is not to romanticize gangs - gang violence is a real and awful threat to many communities. I just want to make the connection clear between the existence of gangs and the shortcomings of our system. It is useful to think of gangs as micro-governments, existing in regions within our own official government's domain. In a way, gangs are to the disenfranchised as libertarianism is to entitled Americans. It's just that entitled Americans aren't particularly motivated to do anything more than <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">be whiny on the Internet</a>.<br />
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Mainstream society and our official government have a stake in keeping these gangs in check. Since gangs emerge in regions with poor social services, the best way to do that would be to render gangs redundant through better services.<br />
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So where would we be able to see such a strategy in action? For that, let's turn back online.<br />
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We've seen online hubs in action before - subcultures with <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">their own customs</a>, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">their own leaders</a>, and even <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyberbullying-and-old-internet-war.html">their own</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/to-catch-redditor.html">online wars</a>. The devoted members of online hubs get something out of their online hangout that had previously gone unfulfilled - identity, community, a perceived sense of power, or whatever else. For a long time, Internet forums and bulletin boards were the arenas for insular communities and online hubs to develop. But as we've mentioned in the beginning of this post, the advent of social networking - and, most pressingly, Reddit - has come along with the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lost-worlds.html">waning of forum use</a>.<br />
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Reddit's online infrastructure is instrumental to its success. The website allows for the use of pseudonyms, much like traditional online forums. Having an online handle keeps your personal identity private, but still identifies you as a distinct contributor. This allows you to accumulate a reputation online among your peers. Reddit's upvote/downvote system is a direct quantitative measure of your reputation as an individual. While similar systems exist on other forums (often in the form of <a href="http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/vbulletin-legacy-versions-products/legacy-vbulletin-versions/vbulletin-3-0-how-do-i-and-troubleshooting-forum/59134-karma-how-does-it-work">"karma"</a>), the upvote system also affects what gets globally displayed on the website. Upvoted, crowd-approved content floats to the top, while downvoted, crowd-rejected content sinks to the bottom.<br />
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And of course, to allow for more controllable spaces for niche interests, the subreddit system allows anyone to make their own unique bulletin board on the website. Each subreddit is independently regulated, and can be themed so that the subreddit can pertain to niche content. This subverts the issue of talking about less popular interests on boards with larger populations, where your content might otherwise be overlooked in favor for some cat pictures.<br />
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Now, there are certainly problems with Reddit's infrastructure - mainly, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">the lack of global regulation allows for subpar content on the website itself</a>. Despite this issue, the website administration certainly offers enough support and features to the website to keep people accommodated. This isn't a question of Reddit being a <i>good</i> service. It's just a matter of Reddit being a better service than other options.<br />
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And ultimately, it is Reddit's <i>capacity to accommodate</i> that makes it able to render most forums redundant. Although the website probably did not set out to become a great unifier of online circles, it's certainly done a good job in amassing nearly every type of community there is to find (though, funnily enough, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/14trt2/gang_membersformer_gang_members_of_reddit_what/">you won't find too many gang members on Reddit</a>).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Your so-called front page of the Internet.</span></div>
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So what can governments do to become great unifiers? Can our society do to gangs what Reddit could do to online forums?<br />
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Let's quickly go over why the online medium would make things easier for Reddit to do what governments could not. For one thing, the online environment is a lot more homogeneous than the gang environment. People who go on Reddit are <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html">most likely to be white</a> and <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130325231009/http://www.quantcast.com/reddit.com">affluent</a>. Gangs generally have socioeconomic disenfranchisement in common, but are more <a href="http://people.missouristate.edu/MichaelCarlie/what_I_learned_about/gangs/racial_composition.htm">racially and culturally heterogeneous</a>. Do we choose to believe that socioeconomic disenfranchisement is the more important factor than cultural differences? I'm willing to choose 'yes' - though that's certainly a choice that some people could disagree with.<br />
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Another issue is that the Internet is a bubble where scarcity doesn't really exist. It's easy for Reddit to adapt to the online environment, because implementing new features is cheap and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/energy-footprint-of-internet.html">has no real impact on physical resources</a>. For real political entities to institute new services, there needs to be investment of capital, resources, and manpower. This assumes that getting the new services passed through legislature goes smoothly, which is a massive assumption.<br />
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All that said, let's explore legal analogs to Reddit's digital infrastructure in order to critique our current system.<br />
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<i>The pseudonym and reputation system: </i>Perhaps this is the farthest removed concept from the real world. Having a pseudonym online allows you to separate your real identity - the one that you did not choose - from your online identity. The pseudonym is a fresh start, allowing you to define yourself in however way you'd like online.<br />
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Seeing as identity is a very strong component of gang culture, it would be very useful to offer a path to a new identity. Real-life pseudonyms - perhaps in the form of a more sophisticated <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_protection">witness protection</a> program - would be a great way to offer the benefits of the online pseudonym system in a real life setting (though, obviously such pseudonyms would take the form of a new first and last name). Such programs are likely to already exist, but a more targeted program towards disenfranchised individuals wanting to escape the gang lifestyle may be a very lucrative option for those looking to integrate into mainstream society.<br />
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<i>The upvote/downvote system: </i>This voting system allows for a measure of reputation to your pseudonym. It also determines which content is most visible to the community. The latter function, when translated to the real world, seems to be most tied to market dynamics and concepts of meritocracy and democracy. On the individual level, we likely would not need to monitor the equivalents of 'upvotes', but 'downvotes' would be important. To address potential abuses of the pseudonym pathway, there can be different weight put on repeated crimes when under a pseudonym.<br />
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<i>The subreddit system: </i>This allows members of niche groups to form "safe spaces" that won't be influenced by the opinion of the majority. Even under a pseudonym, we can't expect that a disenfranchised individual will suddenly be able to perfectly integrate into society. Repeated crimes under a pseudonym <i>may</i> be a sign of abusing the pseudonym pathway, but it may also be a consequence of having further trouble escaping disenfranchisement. We certainly wouldn't want to set people up to fail, so intermediary social programs with safety nets, with special legal stipulations, may provide the necessary "safe spaces" to ease the process of participating in mainstream society.<br />
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<i>Global rule domain: </i>Reddit offers all of these services as infrastructure. They are top-down services, managed by the website administration. Likewise, social programs in integrating gang members into greater society <i>must</i> come from our government. There needs to be global backing to these programs, and federal power is as "global" as one can get.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCX0dEzReyNcVQKcvTaNDGmHkJdZ8C_v4BIV9eXuxVT7-vtbAQyxy908w0mBjHItVcwjSUIJSMiY6jwTZ1lzQiWTPpmvDxfXzWcIpQHPBNRzgbceE15wB0THL7-dMJim-SQfcekGTvX-c/s1600/636x460design_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCX0dEzReyNcVQKcvTaNDGmHkJdZ8C_v4BIV9eXuxVT7-vtbAQyxy908w0mBjHItVcwjSUIJSMiY6jwTZ1lzQiWTPpmvDxfXzWcIpQHPBNRzgbceE15wB0THL7-dMJim-SQfcekGTvX-c/s1600/636x460design_01.jpg" height="287" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">...Wait, did I just waste everyone's time?</span></div>
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I'm writing all this out, and I'm thinking that I haven't really provided any earth-shattering insight on gang culture. Smarter people have been thinking on this for longer than I have taken to write this blog post. As I said earlier, my background is in affluent white American suburbia - my life experiences do not leave me properly invested to address this subject. I don't even have a clue as to what legal infrastructure already exists that achieve the things that I'm suggesting. I might even be proposing something that already exists.<br />
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But maybe there's something interesting in the concept of what I am suggesting here. Maybe we should be able to use online observations to solve offline problems. With the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-data-dump.html">amount of information</a> about ourselves online, it seems to make sense that we'd be able to do something like this with it. How insightful could such approaches really be? Well, it depends on the data we have.<br /><br />Reddit is interesting on multiple levels. Maybe something about its greater role in the online network is useful in guiding discussion about policy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-589030603745004442013-11-18T12:24:00.000-08:002013-11-18T12:42:59.574-08:00Race and the InternetLet's talk about race.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhouQ5e-fnW6lIRc7U39Rn4bW9AIe6h_gKyMedKE9JhIoj_Z91iPoj4KSsKHpg4RyZCBJsoRqciJdFtm5GEtc9zohBvFCRNzrCaIMGH2B5drZQ0Xl_tQjim3gc38UBQt6BIxPXE1bYAQM/s1600/diversityHome_pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhouQ5e-fnW6lIRc7U39Rn4bW9AIe6h_gKyMedKE9JhIoj_Z91iPoj4KSsKHpg4RyZCBJsoRqciJdFtm5GEtc9zohBvFCRNzrCaIMGH2B5drZQ0Xl_tQjim3gc38UBQt6BIxPXE1bYAQM/s320/diversityHome_pic.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Well, this'll be good.</span></div>
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The Internet is an arena where we are disconnected from defining physical characteristics. Things like race, gender, and other personal traits are only a part of your online identity if you want them to be. But of course, race still matters online despite being invisible.<br />
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How has the Internet impacted racial identity? How does race emerge on the Internet? As someone who couldn't possibly do the subject adequate justice, I will try to explore these questions.<br />
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First, let's employ some statistics. What is the racial breakdown of the Internet?<br />
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The U.S. census provides us with information on <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">general population demographics</a>, as well as <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf">the proportion of people in each demographic that use the Internet</a>. The census data is from 2010, and the online demographic data is from 2011, so there will not be a perfect way to compare the two sources of information. That said, this data can still give us a rough idea of the digital landscape.<br />
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Of course, not everyone we see on the Internet is going to be American, which is an assumption that we're making with this data. We would expect far more Asians on our graph if we include the hundreds of millions of Chinese users in mainland China. However, as we've mentioned before <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/internet-in-middle-kingdom.html">in my previous post on China</a>, mainland Chinese internet users and American internet users rarely interact with one another.<br />
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When Americans talk about the Internet, they are generally talking about a subset of the Web that they are capable of accessing and understanding. This means that the Internet to most Americans is just the part of the Internet written in English (just as the Internet to most of China is the part of the Internet written in Chinese). For the sake of brevity, I will be using the term "Internet" to refer to the English Internet in this blog post.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8417250538679233301" name="pointAReturn"> </a><br />
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The census data doesn't directly tell us the proportion of people actually on the Internet. That's where we'll need to employ some math. If you want to peruse my calculations, you can <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html#pointA">follow this link</a>. The result of those calculations is the following chart:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCNFqvpLNpy9uVRriprJwEgavZ8AbuJIvFEinopxgU6eSgSZgOxM_J0rQ6Ttrdmv8XWRMAftkENK0_gSg163V1YfdgI5YuFVXCmb6n4sBf78lcurNmU9jA0n5n18cDnpayktm1fAEBcv8/s1600/InternetRaceProportions.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCNFqvpLNpy9uVRriprJwEgavZ8AbuJIvFEinopxgU6eSgSZgOxM_J0rQ6Ttrdmv8XWRMAftkENK0_gSg163V1YfdgI5YuFVXCmb6n4sBf78lcurNmU9jA0n5n18cDnpayktm1fAEBcv8/s1600/InternetRaceProportions.png" /></a></div>
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This is the census of the Internet. This is presumably the picture you would get if the Internet were to conduct a census on itself.</div>
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The thing that should leap out to you is that the Internet is mostly white people. In fact, the Internet <i>over-represents</i> white Americans in general - America's <i>actual</i> population of white people <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">is 63% of the total population</a>. Asians also get over-represented online, jumping from 5.1 to about 5.9% - though, of course, there are far fewer Asians overall. These numbers are not so kind to blacks and Hispanics, however - the black population goes from 13.1 to 10.4%, and the Hispanic population goes from 16.9 to 13.7%.</div>
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I emphasize that this graph should be thought of as the <i>American</i> Internet's national census. In fact, limiting our Internet census to American users makes the Internet seem <i>less</i> white. If we want to talk about the "English Internet", then that will include the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries that have a lot of English speaking users. The countries I listed are all very white as well, and would probably contribute to the white majority.<br />
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Admittedly, what you <i>don't</i> see in this data is the extent of what is called the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/11/08/broadband.digital.divide/">"digital divide"</a>. This refers to how a lower proportion of blacks and Hispanics use the Internet compared to their white and Asian counterparts. For example, <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf">according to that 2011 census data</a>, more than 40% of black people reported not having a home Internet connection, while less than 25% of white people reported the same. Granted, this divide <i>has</i> been narrowing over time, especially with <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/increased-mobile-web-use-and-the-digital-divide/">the advent of mobile Internet</a>, but it still exists. Reports on the digital divide have been done before, as it carries pressing implications for <a href="http://www.carriermanagement.com/features/2013/06/18/108238.htm">marketing strategies</a> and <a href="http://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=govt_hist_wp">social inequalities</a>.<br />
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But notice what happens when we start looking at the American Internet population, rather than at the American population that uses the Internet. Although about 40% of black people reported not having a home Internet connection, it would only take a 3% increase in online black presence for the online demographics to numerically represent real life. The digital divide is a pressing concern in discussions of getting more people to use the Internet, but actual online representation isn't too off the mark from real life.</div>
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So how do different demographics spend their time on the Internet?</div>
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Alexa doesn't offer information on race for free, so instead we'll turn to <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/">Quantcast</a>. Quantcast compares a website's demographics to the demographics of the (American) Internet. For example, a website with a demographic value of 120 for white people means that a random visitor on that website is 1.2 times more likely to be white than a random Internet user. Quantcast's <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/help?jump=faqs_panelu0026fid=13983">most comprehensive visibility is in the United States</a>, and their averages primarily reflect American Internet habits. This is good, because it should match up with our use of the American census.<br />
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I fished around Quantcast's website listings for a bit, cherry-picked some websites that have been pertinent to previous blog posts, and corrected values based on our calculated Internet population. The results? Well...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVKvM-yxn0QBinz8f5EFsOMf6nlQpwqYp4kCg88ZxfnfwmKL-QHmNrV6DrdZIWFK-2TPWhlfMkTGlN9MkspTce27dNgDlHBS_eF7aj89ltu8mj399LhamoQ6Ui4V30DDVDwJRDQMH6W-Y/s1600/RaceBreakdown_TopSites.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVKvM-yxn0QBinz8f5EFsOMf6nlQpwqYp4kCg88ZxfnfwmKL-QHmNrV6DrdZIWFK-2TPWhlfMkTGlN9MkspTce27dNgDlHBS_eF7aj89ltu8mj399LhamoQ6Ui4V30DDVDwJRDQMH6W-Y/s1600/RaceBreakdown_TopSites.png" height="640" width="512" /></a></div>
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There's a lot going on here, so I'll explain it bit by bit.<br />
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Everything under "Raw Representation" is data straight from Quantcast. As explained above, each racial group is given a number that describes how the website population represents the general Internet population. Like Alexa, this is a very relative figure. The bars graph gives you a visual aid for how over-represented or under-represented each ethnic group is.<br />
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Everything under "Population" is calculated. I took each Raw Representation number and multiplied it by the proportion of the racial group of the Internet. This gives us a very rough look at the racial breakdown of each website. You'll notice that the percentage values don't quite add up to 100 - they usually hover between 95 to 110. Again, not ideal, but for our purposes, this is close enough to 100 to give us a general idea of the racial environment.<br />
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Some of these data say "internet average" while others say "US average". This is a quirk of Quantcast. The ones that say "US average" indicate websites that actively <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/help?jump=faqs_panelu0026fid=13984">work with Quantcast</a> to verify their user statistics. The ones that say "internet average" haven't contacted Quantcast at all. In this case, Quantcast is forced to <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/help?jump=faqs_panelu0026fid=13985">estimate the demographic information</a> based on third-party sources from around the web (hence, they use an average derived from Internet statistics to determine representation levels). The "internet average" data points won't be as good as the "US average" data, but again, they'll give us a general idea.<br />
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The "Updated" column represents the last time Quantcast updated their statistics on each website. Quantcast doesn't actually list its "internet average" data points anymore, so I had to fish around <a href="https://archive.org/">Internet Archive</a> to find archives of Quantcast pages back when they <i>did</i> post internet averages. The ones with November 2013 dates are often "US average" data points, so their information is of course better. But again, I'm comparing 2012-2013 Quantcast data to 2010 census data and 2011 web data. To parrot what I've been saying, this isn't ideal, but it's giving us a general idea.<br />
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So are you noticing any trends yet?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5JUPM-zWZjkgTmRf51bqyFXbgMlO5LZWww2TNLPnpR5QHUAhb5wl5S3_gds1lGOvooYwT421VsFCbU2SswLI3P9OUio_Q03ux6M6-NG10vvZhzWv34a3SNPs6uQ6qOlv7Uhc9fdzqaac/s1600/RaceBreakdown_GrabBag.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5JUPM-zWZjkgTmRf51bqyFXbgMlO5LZWww2TNLPnpR5QHUAhb5wl5S3_gds1lGOvooYwT421VsFCbU2SswLI3P9OUio_Q03ux6M6-NG10vvZhzWv34a3SNPs6uQ6qOlv7Uhc9fdzqaac/s1600/RaceBreakdown_GrabBag.png" height="640" width="512" /></a></div>
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White people have a strong presence in every popular realm of the Internet. Even when we account for the comically large range of error in my data (this data's usually within 5 percentage points of adding up to 100%, but a few here and there go all the way up to 110%), white people remain the majority of the audience in most of these websites. Even when they're relatively under-represented, Caucasian numbers very rarely go below 50% of the population.<br />
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This phenomenon goes both ways. Despite Tumblr's over-representation of Asians, Asians don't even break 10% of the total Tumblr population. YouTube, by representation, is very favored by non-whites, but by absolute numbers, white people still constitute a YouTube majority.<br />
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Going forward, it will be important to look at both the relative representation values as well as the absolute proportion values. OkCupid skews mostly white people, Hispanics really like DeviantArt, and the Bleacher Report (a sports website) approximately brings white people and black people together in the average proportions.<br />
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Some websites don't have any statistical data out there. Pinterest has nothing listed for demographic information, and doesn't even have any old demographic records in Web Archive. 4chan, Cracked, Buzzfeed, and several other websites are quantified with Quantcast, but have deliberately requested Quantcast to keep their demographics information private.<br />
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Still, let's work with what we've got. How do news venues stack up in terms of demographics?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgVy2GcX-c1996dZ5kemPnNKrndoHGvweZHpCJ4tpbgpbmsZYR2Asv4wUU9yA1MHYTKRfnR23SHxPln-3dE-16jZ8epDzESVq87znLIuFz0r3XB1p1L_BCCxHlwslmwlmTkB2KKvzUak/s1600/RaceBreakdown_News.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgVy2GcX-c1996dZ5kemPnNKrndoHGvweZHpCJ4tpbgpbmsZYR2Asv4wUU9yA1MHYTKRfnR23SHxPln-3dE-16jZ8epDzESVq87znLIuFz0r3XB1p1L_BCCxHlwslmwlmTkB2KKvzUak/s1600/RaceBreakdown_News.png" height="640" width="482" /></a></div>
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These are more progressive websites, ranging from traditional news like NBC News to vaguely-liberal video content like Upworthy. We do see some greater representation of Asians in the Guardian, but there is a striking lack of minority readership. You'd certainly expect this from conservative news (and surprise surprise, <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/rushlimbaugh.com?country=US">conservative</a> <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/glennbeck.com?country=US">news</a> <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/nationalreview.com">sites</a> <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130630021753/https://www.quantcast.com/foxnews.com">also</a> <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/freepatriot.org?country=US">lack</a> <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/washingtontimes.com?country=US">minority</a> <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/drudgereport.com?country=US">readership</a>), but progressive websites give us an expectation of seeking broader representation. Granted, progressive websites <i>do</i> boast more diversity than conservative sites, but you can hardly call them "diverse".<br />
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The unfortunate truth is that what is "progressive" can mean many, many things. The Left is hilariously splintered, to the point where progressive movements aren't necessarily always going to be friendly to minorities. We see this with trans-exclusionary radical feminists, for example. Perhaps minority groups generally don't feel like they're being spoken for in these websites. Perhaps some perspectives are missing from these progressive outlets that would draw more varied viewership in.<br />
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Where can we find more diverse news demographics?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsukxAGQ90tfKVIS_29CLvGC6ujMnNOmPHfttC3a_-SEn_velskKnJgxc3aNfdrT14zqSH7L_pY9Bj_O4VaQQiZpzx3t5goPujeRIh9qkhMWtadMvj-1ObaLF4LVs337rJBDpia0nHdkk/s1600/RaceBreakdown_News2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsukxAGQ90tfKVIS_29CLvGC6ujMnNOmPHfttC3a_-SEn_velskKnJgxc3aNfdrT14zqSH7L_pY9Bj_O4VaQQiZpzx3t5goPujeRIh9qkhMWtadMvj-1ObaLF4LVs337rJBDpia0nHdkk/s1600/RaceBreakdown_News2.png" height="640" width="494" /></a></div>
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The fact that Infowars seems to draw greater numbers of blacks and Hispanics than actual news sites should be worrisome. It could be a symptom of not having enough representation on actual news sites, and InfoWars happens to be one of the most high-profile "alt news" websites there is.<br />
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We should bear in mind that Infowars <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/10/digital-conspiracies.html">isn't a real news site</a>, while these other website examples are in fact legitimate. However, with the exception of Telemundo, these other websites aren't very prominent in broader public consciousness. NGB and Global Post are both websites that focus on international news. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution does a good job in appealing to black people, but this makes sense considering that <a href="http://abcas3.auditedmedia.com/ecirc/newstitlesearchus.asp">the AJC is the only major daily newspaper in the Atlanta area</a>, and Atlanta is widely regarded as a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/atlanta-emerges-as-a-center-of-black-entertainment.html">center of black culture</a>. As someone not from around Atlanta, I'd never heard of the AJC before.</div>
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That last one - the Grio - is a news website with content <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/10/paidcontent/main5076613.shtml">specifically targeting a black American audience</a>. There are in fact a <a href="http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/african-american-2/">number of these</a> around the Internet, though they tend to come in the form of an extra limb to a pre-existing web site. The Grio is an extension of MSNBC. Huffington Post offers <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/black-voices/">Black Voices</a>. Washington Post has <a href="http://www.theroot.com/">The Root</a>. These websites do succeed in drawing greater black viewership, but the fact that they're offshoots of larger news sites means that they aren't necessarily run by the people they're supposed to represent. It's also a bit strange that these websites are so partitioned from their main websites - if you actually look at The Root, you don't see mention of the Washington Post until the very bottom.<br />
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There are also a number of other, smaller websites that aim for a racially-minded perspective. <a href="http://colorlines.com/">ColorLines</a> is a fantastic resource for news analysis from a more diverse roster of journalists. <a href="http://www.racialicious.com/">Racialicious</a> is a blog that focuses on racial issues and pop culture. <a href="http://www.furiousandbrave.com/">Still Furious and Brave</a> is a group blog run by sociologists and activists that often features solid racial commentary. <a href="http://www.mixedracestudies.org/wordpress/">Mixed Race Studies</a> is an academically-minded blog that focuses on biracial and multiracial individuals. These smaller websites often have the advantage of being completely run by people who directly represent their audience.<br />
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Even in news outlets like the Grio, you see a strong white viewership, but this is a case where it's a net positive. This is perhaps the great victory of these news sites - not only do they have great racial representation, but there are white people actively reading about racial perspectives. Again, many things can fall under the progressive header, and it is heartwarming to know that there are news sources that can bring together a diverse audience. This would be a good place to have some values on actual website traffic by number of users, so that we could compare absolute numbers of visitors of websites, but unfortunately my analysis did not extend that far<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8417250538679233301" name="pointBReturn">.</a></div>
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I worked up some other data too, which you can find if you <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html#pointB">follow this link</a> into the footnotes (they're more for fun than for real discussion, though they're certainly interesting). It is important that we establish some data on online hubs before we move on, though.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEini501R6N8azab-hXhhHKdWpSpoaeHWa15YgKW48HeqRYZM1M-AmpxkGCaCL1yKlsVu3GRIh7BAQMfK10f42hOnFV-6xEd6_K62z7MOSdQb3DfThITuc8oRMj2fHdnmVr23MdwN84dLYc/s1600/RaceBreakdown_Hubs.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEini501R6N8azab-hXhhHKdWpSpoaeHWa15YgKW48HeqRYZM1M-AmpxkGCaCL1yKlsVu3GRIh7BAQMfK10f42hOnFV-6xEd6_K62z7MOSdQb3DfThITuc8oRMj2fHdnmVr23MdwN84dLYc/s1600/RaceBreakdown_Hubs.png" height="640" width="494" /></a></div>
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So, we've strongly established that there's a clear white majority on the Internet and on many popular websites. How does this manifest itself in the way we interact online?<br />
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An interesting thing about the online setting is that it's possible to interact with multitudes of people without ever knowing anything about their age, gender, or race. On the Internet, we are truly colorblind. Unfortunately, <a href="http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2013/02/how-to-raise-racist-kids-3/">being colorblind is not necessarily a good thing</a>. If you're in an environment with very little diversity but you can't <i>see</i> that there is very little diversity, then how can you be aware that your environment lacks diversity?<br />
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One can argue that the colorblind quality of the Internet removes any first impressions that might come with race. This is true, but it also enables users to project qualities about themselves onto other people online. In some ways this can be humanizing - but in other ways, it erases important differences in personal experiences. And yes, being unaware of differences in personal experiences <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SpF3cwJ86A">has been a problem since before the Internet</a>, but now even the <i>visual</i> cues for differences in perspective is gone.<br />
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Conversations about racial issues tend to pop up in online hubs like 4chan and Reddit. Given these demographics data, it's possible that the contributing perspectives on these discussions are going to be mostly white people. That means that any misconceptions about race that are common to white people are going to be present in these conversations with very few perspectives offering dissent or contradiction. Nobody is necessarily <i>aware</i> that they're just talking to other white people about race, so it becomes harder to call out the gaps in contributing perspectives. In this way, misunderstandings about racial issues continue to fester.<br />
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Over the years, these misunderstandings can build up. The online echo chamber can make these misunderstandings seem like a consensus on reality. The result of this is a gradual formation of <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/racists-on-4chan">a racist environment</a> in these online hubs. This toxic racial environment is capable of forming anywhere on the Internet. This echo chamber effect makes these hubs vulnerable to any bigot with an agenda online.<br />
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And yes, <i>of course</i> bigots have found their safe havens online. The website <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormfront_(website)">Stormfront</a> is explicitly devoted to white nationalism. It is considered to be the <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/2001-07-16-kid-hate-sites.htm">most visited white nationalist website on the Internet</a>, having been around since 1995. They'll occasionally rear their ugly head during <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101471.html?hpid=topnews">major public events</a>, but for the most part they're in the shadows of the Internet, seeking to proselytize as many as they can to their cause. On the Internet, <a href="http://www.vice.com/read/heres-whats-happening-on-the-internets-most-racist-forums">Stormfront and other white supremacist websites</a> can thrive. Since nobody really wants to deal with them, their websites continue to only accrue like-minded bigots. Hell, it wasn't until mid-2013 that Reddit finally started <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/does-anything-go-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-racist-corner-of-reddit/277585/">regulating its more unsavory racist corners</a>, taking some responsibility for the content on its website.<br />
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Granted, there is <i>some</i> self-awareness on the Internet. A UCLA girl <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/asians-in-the-library">making a racist video about Asians</a> was quickly <a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2011/03/24/go-after-the-privilege-not-the-tits-afterthoughts-on-alexandra-wallace-and-white-female-privilege/">mocked and shunned</a> among online goers. Reddit <i>is</i> continuously mocked for its blatantly racist corners (among other things). If the online racism is sufficiently overt, then you can expect it to get derided on the Internet.<br />
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You also have online racial humor focused around white people pointing out their own whiteness. The blog <a href="http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/">Stuff White People Like</a> was an exercise in white self-effacement, pointing out things that white people of a certain demographic like to do and say. <a href="http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/index.html">Black People Love Us</a> was a lampooning of white attitudes towards black people (though, looking through its fan mail, not every viewer seemed to be in on the joke).<br />
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However, there's also a gray area of ironic racism online. If you were to look through the <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/advice-animals/children">long list of advice animals in existence</a> (not restricted to animals, but often <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/digital-language.html">represent general archetypes conserved through social interactions</a>), you'll find a few centered around race. <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/successful-black-man">Successful black man</a> opens with a negative African American stereotype and then follows up with a statement that makes the previous stereotype seem like a misinterpretation. <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ordinary-muslim-man">Ordinary Muslim Man</a> does the same thing with a picture of a Middle Eastern Muslim man. <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/successful-white-man">Successful White Man</a> is similar, but instead opens with a positive stereotype and follows up with a negative statement.<br />
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Sure, these memes can be funny (hell, I find some of them funny), but we have to admit that they're only funny if you're in on the joke. What's the joke? That these individuals, because of their race, fit the (often negative) stereotype of the first line, but oh - surprise - they don't. This kind of content is certainly not as big a deal as the blatantly racist content that we mentioned earlier, but that doesn't mean that it isn't problematic. These memes can only exist in a context where these stereotypes are wrongly believed by some group of people. What's worse, they can end up inadvertently communicating these stereotypes to new audiences.<br />
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Then you have the meme <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/irrational-black-woman">Irrational Black Woman</a>, which seems to skip any pretense of irony. The meme does nothing but put down black women. The fact that it's a black <i>woman</i> might be more important here - <a href="http://www.houseofflout.com/memes-and-new-forms-of-sexism/">these image macros have a precedence for showing sexism</a>. Yet her race is specified in the title of the meme. <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/high-expectations-asian-father">High Expectations Asian Father</a> is another meme that seems to skip the conveyance of ironic racism, going straight for the Asian "model minority" stereotype.<br />
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In the mid-90s following the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1993">Mississippi River flooding</a>, a photographer took some very intense photos of a black homeless man. These photos eventually made their way to the Internet, and presumably because the black man in the photo looked so intense, someone plastered the phrase <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-gonna-get-raped">"You Gonna Get Raped"</a> onto one of the pictures. The picture quickly became a meme. Allegedly, by the time it had gone viral, the homeless man had cleaned up his act...and then lost his job over the photo.<br />
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Racist memes and pictures can come in many forms. Some are <a href="http://static.fjcdn.com/large/pictures/64/b9/64b920_1210745.jpg">less subtle</a> than others, but then again, that's how racism seems to go in general. Racism can be as subtle as <a href="http://www.danah.org/papers/2009/WhiteFlightDraft3.pdf">moving from one social network to another</a> because of the crowd you see online. Misogyny can be equally subtle, but since women constitute about half of the online population, they are more capable of representing themselves. Not only is the non-white audience so amazingly scarce online, it's also splintered into smaller racial groups.<br />
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Despite minority groups being in the, uh, minority on most websites, they can get their voices heard on social media platforms. For example, if you look at the data, you'll notice that Twitter's got a rather prominent representation of black people. This has allowed for the emergence of what's known as <a href="http://www.ksapr.com/black-twitter-activism-bigger-than-hip-hop">Black Twitter</a>.<br />
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Obviously, Black Twitter is <a href="http://www.complex.com/tech/2012/12/the-miseducation-of-black-twitter-why-its-not-what-you-think">a subculture in multiple respects</a>. It is not a monolithic representation of black people, nor is it a monolithic representation of Twitter, nor is every participant in Black Twitter a representative of everyone else on Black Twitter. It <i>is</i>, however, an interesting corner of the Internet that seems to have <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">similar cohesion as other online hubs</a>. Every now and then, members of black Twitter create waves in the greater online sphere by speaking on the issues that face them.<br />
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When word of Paula Deen's <a href="http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/06/paula-deen-racist-jokes-deposition/">blatant</a> <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/paula_deen_i_want_black_people_to_play_slaves_at_a_wedding/">racism</a> went public, word <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/19/paulas-best-dishes-twitter-reactions-allegations-of-racism_n_3467877.html">quickly spread on Twitter</a> under the <a href="http://storify.com/search?q=%23PaulasBestDishes">#paulasbestdishes</a> hashtag. Paula Deen ultimately <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/us/paula-deen-loses-major-endorsement-deal.html">lost several endorsements</a> from the whole affair, with several former employees coming forward to talk about her offensive behavior. Granted, those former employees might have come forward without the involvement of Twitter, but the wave of online presence must certainly have helped.<br />
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Then of course, there was the Geroge Zimmerman trial that (eventually) followed the death of Trayvon Martin. The Internet has had <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/trayvon-martins-death">an ongoing role in the developments of the case</a>. When Martin's parents had <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin">turned to Change.org</a> to focus attention on their son's murder, word of the case <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/21/trayvon-martin-killing-inspires-13-tweets-from-celebrities.html">quickly spread to Twitter</a>. When former talk show host Geraldo Rivera suggested that Trayvon was to blame <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/03/23/trayvon-martins-hoodie-and-george-zimmerman-share-blame/">because he was wearing a hoodie</a>, Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=fuck%20you%20geraldo">retaliated</a>. Finally, on April 11th of 2012 - nearly two months after the shooting - George Zimmerman was arrested. When George Zimmerman was acquitted in his 2013, <a href="http://www.ryot.org/opinion-trayvon-martin-white-people-and-the-internet/264157">Twitter flared up</a> in anger. Throughout the whole process, Twitter was <a href="http://www.furiousandbrave.com/2013/07/tweetfreedom.html">one prong in the multi-faceted push for activism</a>.<br />
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Even feminism for women of color has gotten use out of Twitter. In August of 2013, self-proclaimed male feminist Hugo Schwyzer <a href="http://twitchy.com/2013/08/10/bad-boy-male-feminist-melts-down-i-used-sex-and-charm-and-whiteness-to-scam-you-all/">had a public online meltdown</a>, admitting to taking advantage of several women during his career and calling out several women of color. Now, Schwyzer already had a <a href="http://globalcomment.com/why-do-some-feminist-spaces-tolerate-male-abusers/">bad</a> <a href="http://www.xojane.com/issues/hugo-schwyzer-controversy">reputation</a>, especially <a href="http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/33891884144/i-have-kept-my-mouth-shut-all-these-months-out-of">among women of color</a>. But when this Twitter meltdown happened, Schwyzer somehow continued <a href="http://twitchy.com/2013/08/12/twitter-fight-solidarityisforwhitewomen-calls-out-progressives-of-pallor/">to find support from white women</a> within the feminist movement. One woman of color noticed this, <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/22/214525023/twitter-sparks-a-serious-discussion-about-race-and-feminism">ranted to Twitter</a> about it, and the <a href="http://storify.com/niche/solidarity-is-for-white-women">#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen</a> hashtag was born. White feminists <a href="http://www.furiousandbrave.com/2013/08/skewaww.html">unaware of their own whiteness</a> have since become <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteFeminist">a running joke</a> among women of color.<br />
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The #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen tag was doubly important because it brought discussion about race and gender into a more public sphere. Women of color have been in the unfortunate position of being <a href="http://www.xojane.com/issues/why-solidarityisforwhitewomen-should-never-be-forgotten">routinely marginalized</a> in feminist movements <i>as well as</i> <a href="http://storify.com/AJAMStream/blackpowerisforblackmen">marginalized in racial movements</a>. The concept of being a part of multiple marginalized groups but not finding much solidarity within either community is explored in the study of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality">intersectionality</a>. Twitter was a great platform to bring some intersectional discussion to light.<br />
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Although Twitter is restricted by a short character limit, Twitter's hashtag infrastructure allows for rapid sharing of themes and ideas. Tumblr has similar functionality, though its freer-form blogging format allows for more substantial content to be shared. Both Twitter and Tumblr have <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">important roles in online social justice</a>. The hashtag infrastructure has enabled a minority with a righteous message to find a voice.<br />
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But of course, racial representation isn't just about social justice. There's also the rabbit hole of media representation.<br />
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Asian Americans are in an interesting position online, in that while they have a smaller population in America compared to other minority groups, they are proportionally represented - if not over-represented - on the Internet. There's also been an unfortunate tendency to <a href="http://everydayfeminism.com/2012/10/how-the-rules-of-racism-are-different-for-asian-americans/">exclude an Asian perspective</a> <a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2013/08/27/solidarity-is-for-white-women-and-asian-people-are-funny/">from discussion on racism</a>, despite Asians having to face <a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/07/asian_girlz_is_quite_possibly_the_worst_video_on_the_internet_right_now.html">fetishization</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority">model minority</a>-related stereotypes. The Internet has been a great platform for Asians to assert themselves as individuals beyond the traditional stereotypes.<br />
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Perhaps this has been most visible on YouTube, where <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-new-culture-of.html">one of the most prominent site-wide YouTubers</a> is run by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/nigahiga">Ryan Higa</a>, a Japanese American from Hawaii. In addition to his incredibly successful YouTube channel, Higa and other prominent Asian YouTubers founded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/YOMYOMF">YOMYOMF</a>, a YouTube network that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/youtube-channel-yomyomf-launches-focus-on-asian-american-pop-culture/2012/06/15/gJQAhEbKfV_story.html">focuses on Asian-American pop culture</a>. Unaffiliated with the YOMYOMF group of Asian YouTubers is fellow YouTuber <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew">Freddie Wong</a>, whose works have evolved over time to include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAjKT8FhjI8&list=SPsMtUWKCmBPTvxsBqT9jvPylbdWW6qgD-&index=1">full-length webseries</a> and a <a href="http://www.rocketjump.com/">sprawling network of YouTube shows</a>.<br />
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When we talk about media and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6">the big names that run it</a>, we know that we're talking about a very established industry that has not always been quick to shed problematic representations of minority groups. YouTube, however, falls outside of that establishment, and several people at the helm of new media creation are minority groups. The number of Asians on the platform could mean a brand new ownership of what it means to be an Asian American, <i>by</i> Asian Americans.<br />
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YouTube, of course, is a wide and varied place. In addition to the prominent Asian Americans that I listed, you can also find <a href="http://socialblade.com/youtube/top/100/mostsubscribed">very popular Hispanic channels</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Holasoygerman">YouTube</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/werevertumorro">personalities</a>. You can also find several <a href="http://madamenoire.com/236066/black-and-brilliant-10-of-our-favorite-youtube-vloggers/">great black YouTubers</a>. Beyond YouTube, there's Twitter's own video service, Vine, which allows Twitter users to make videos about six or seven seconds in length. Looking through some Vines, it's clear that the platform also has a pretty diverse array of contributors that make some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1MLpsU7QWs">hilarious video shorts</a>.<br />
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But...at this point, I think I'm drifting pretty far from what I'm qualified to talk about. As far as my own background goes, I'm a Middle Eastern American guy, so my experiences only really extend into that realm. That's not to say that there aren't some online quirks to be had on that subject - usually when middle easterners are brought up online, it's usually about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring">the Arab Spring</a> or some kind of racism. But, as far as what it means to be Middle Eastern in America, I think that I'm basically a white guy - hell, <a href="http://www.aaiusa.org/pages/not-quite-white-race-classification-and-the-arab-american-experience">the government thinks so too</a>. Honestly, before 9/11, I don't think being Middle Eastern in America even really meant anything to most people. That kind of goes to show you how arbitrary racial distinctions can be.<br />
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Ultimately, my musings on how some people from other racial groups use the Internet come from an under-informed outside perspective. If you want to hear real discussion on black culture and the Internet, talk to black people online. Same for Asians. Same for Hispanics. Same for Native Americans (but, uh...I hear the digital divide <a href="http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/11/19/report-on-internet-use-in-native-american-communities-shows-huge-broadband-gap/">impacts them pretty hard</a>).<br />
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The universal point here is that the Internet has empowered the individual to define themselves in however way they like. Race's default setting on the Internet is "invisible". In some ways that's empowering. In some ways it lets sinister ideas come to light. It takes deeper examination to see how our cultural backgrounds translate into the online sphere. I think it shows promise to let racial dialogue find a broader audience and empower our society to understand - not merely tolerate - one another.<br />
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In the age of the Internet, race is a new beast with old problems. I'm <a href="http://www.hastac.org/collections/crowdsourced-book-review-race-after-internet">not the first to write about this</a>, and I won't be the last.<br />
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<b><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">Footnotes</span></u></b><br />
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<b><i>How I calculated the general Internet demographics:</i></b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8417250538679233301" name="pointA"> </a><br />
Here's an example calculation. Say I wanted to figure out how many people on the Internet are white. That's like asking the following question: If I were to pick a random person from the Internet, what are the chances that the person I choose will be a white person? In terms of probability, we'd write that like this:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">P(You're white | You're on the Internet)</span></div>
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In other words, this represents the probability that you're a white American <i>given that</i> you're on the Internet. Now, if you look at <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf">Figure 2 of our census data here</a>, we are given the following information:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">P(You're on the Internet | You're white) = 0.762</span></div>
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Ah, it's <i>close</i> to what we were looking for, but not quite what we want. In the census data, they asked every white person about their Internet activity, so we already knew that these were white people being asked. This data represents the probability that you're on the Internet <i>given that</i> you're a white American. It's flipped from what we want!<br />
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This is where we can use something called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_Law">Bayes' Law</a> to proceed with getting the info that we want (and yes, the last time I mentioned Bayes' Law was when I was telling you about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/digital-jargon.html">a certain</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/online-cults.html">online cult</a>, but let's not let math get ruined by crazies who don't know what they're talking about).<br />
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Let's remember that all of our information is confined to American demographics here. We are interested in white <i>Americans</i> and <i>American</i> Internet users. World data <a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm">certainly exists</a> for the Internet, but American census data is limited to Americans. Plus, let's be honest, I think the demographic proportions would be a bit of a landslide if we included <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/internet-in-middle-kingdom.html">the statistics of countries like China</a> anyway.<br />
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The probability that you're a white American is <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">also in census data</a>, and the probability that you're an American Internet user is in <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">Figure 1 of that previously mentioned census document</a>. The calculation becomes easy: The probability that you're white given that you're on the Internet is about 0.67, or 67%.<br />
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We repeat this for all of our demographics (except for "Other" - Other just ends up being 1 minus the rest), and we get the chart in the blog post.<br />
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If you got to this footnote from the link within the blog post and would like to return to the place you were at in the article,<a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html#pointAReturn">follow this link here</a> to go back to the Internet census chart.
<br />
<br />
<b><i>Some other fun website statistics:</i></b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8417250538679233301" name="pointB"> </a><br />
How do different music websites stack up in terms of demographics?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-pFPQohKDMRAqCJmPDtYNGlcnplwbZRc5TH-wcBHgFxIsEbz9zncybPRV61b6KXClorHnY5k2RRbqZuFH9u7IzzeR2DS_rVNl1N68dThRcmVwanbBo-XSOygtDWT0AmHiM5Sg5T4I14/s1600/RaceBreakdown_Music.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-pFPQohKDMRAqCJmPDtYNGlcnplwbZRc5TH-wcBHgFxIsEbz9zncybPRV61b6KXClorHnY5k2RRbqZuFH9u7IzzeR2DS_rVNl1N68dThRcmVwanbBo-XSOygtDWT0AmHiM5Sg5T4I14/s1600/RaceBreakdown_Music.png" height="640" width="482" /></a></div>
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Okay. What about photos?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvXNTK2AVQWzl3VCuxKI8yY8wktZwUEWeVcGi0h9AhO6M_ODOurLc_Mw2Q-iCl8PsRBmoEpE4vptfHlt2hOq0_mOFQ-P8pmaDrPlBcwkVsLPef1JRaIats5TeW_XihVxnuiFLqdTYNCc/s1600/RaceBreakdown_Pictures.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvXNTK2AVQWzl3VCuxKI8yY8wktZwUEWeVcGi0h9AhO6M_ODOurLc_Mw2Q-iCl8PsRBmoEpE4vptfHlt2hOq0_mOFQ-P8pmaDrPlBcwkVsLPef1JRaIats5TeW_XihVxnuiFLqdTYNCc/s1600/RaceBreakdown_Pictures.png" height="640" width="544" /></a></div>
How about other social networks/online dating sites?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS51pJ_TtiiFhRMEvd2u8qc5NgiDaba_mKF39dadYWD6aTNo879v6BjdzjrlyTNxD8yIv9dW0Q-86mbRvSA7jhCmwcpo9TF2gSYDDp8Jar66wcx3K8F0o7QNRXPJ7XiLNN4fgYbJs1aRg/s1600/RaceBreakdown_OtherNetworks.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS51pJ_TtiiFhRMEvd2u8qc5NgiDaba_mKF39dadYWD6aTNo879v6BjdzjrlyTNxD8yIv9dW0Q-86mbRvSA7jhCmwcpo9TF2gSYDDp8Jar66wcx3K8F0o7QNRXPJ7XiLNN4fgYbJs1aRg/s1600/RaceBreakdown_OtherNetworks.png" height="640" width="544" /></a></div>
<br />
How about some general gaming/anime/nerdy stuff?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgodW0JfwlOghmBMTHvpy49rB02l4nsKR5RjYRb9NoxdzwFAzUVG4HRTjamkpNKzeD2-1CQhefJaq0JXEI8ykJPCcbY6qSMjFYoDVGz3rf_RiHrIzNtyvkYL3GogHDwHDqG0Vws65D6Ees/s1600/RaceBreakdown_NerdyStuff.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgodW0JfwlOghmBMTHvpy49rB02l4nsKR5RjYRb9NoxdzwFAzUVG4HRTjamkpNKzeD2-1CQhefJaq0JXEI8ykJPCcbY6qSMjFYoDVGz3rf_RiHrIzNtyvkYL3GogHDwHDqG0Vws65D6Ees/s1600/RaceBreakdown_NerdyStuff.png" height="640" width="544" /></a></div>
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If you reached this footnote from clicking the link within the blog post, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/11/race-and-internet.html#pointBReturn">follow this link here</a> to return to analysis of individual website demographics.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-78453820069676093392013-11-11T14:11:00.001-08:002013-11-11T14:11:08.446-08:00War of the Gatekeepers<div>
Although the Internet <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/network-of-networks.html">encompasses many things</a>, we often colloquially use the term 'Internet' to refer to what is known as the Web. The Web is the specific part of the Internet where you have <i>web</i> pages and <i>web</i> sites (aha, it all comes together!). The interface that most people use to interact with the Web is a web browser.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdbAj97o7h3IKDtLpjmNq9jgQ9NeiticcH_q4U7tsFg1wwQEVILPn4EKU3PfLKSjuKZeu3EpCmfwFhDROvrhfjgNxC0HiWK01RCs0nUdmWL7T4exRZYxkabroPMBycn2S8O46NhK94F5k/s1600/Netscape-2007-logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdbAj97o7h3IKDtLpjmNq9jgQ9NeiticcH_q4U7tsFg1wwQEVILPn4EKU3PfLKSjuKZeu3EpCmfwFhDROvrhfjgNxC0HiWK01RCs0nUdmWL7T4exRZYxkabroPMBycn2S8O46NhK94F5k/s1600/Netscape-2007-logo.png" height="103" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">You know what's nostalgic? Market failure.</span></div>
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Your web browser is one of those things that you tend to take for granted. They're sleek, they're nondescript, they're just a natural part of our online routine. Being your browser of choice, however, is like getting to be your personal gatekeeper to the Internet - all web traffic must go through you first.<br />
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Naturally, many have vied for being the gatekeeper of choice. The so-called "browser wars" unwittingly became one of the most visible business struggles on the Internet - as well as a business struggle that would likely color all online business struggles to come.</div>
<div>
<a name='more'></a>The first browser - known as <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html">WorldWideWeb</a> - was made in 1990 by <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Overview.html">Tim Berners-Lee</a>, the man responsible for the Web technology that encompasses most of our Internet use. In its wake came many <a href="http://viola.org/">different</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwise">web</a> <a href="http://www.w3.org/History/1992/WWW/MidasWWW/">browsers</a> with varying functionality and design. In 1993, the <a href="http://home.mcom.com/MCOM/index2.html">Mosaic browser</a> was released and practically set the standard for browsers to come, being the first to lay out a lot of common browser features we see today - the URL bar, the reload button, and other basic things. Mosaic imitators would emerge, but the original developers of Mosaic - and their dinosaur logo - would move on to a different team and work on a new browser: Netscape Navigator.<br />
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Netscape Navigator was the <a href="http://berghel.net/col-edit/cybernautica/jan-feb96/pcai961.php">dominant web browser of the mid-1990s</a>, just as the Internet began taking flight in collective conscience. For many, Netscape was one of the main gatekeepers to the World Wide Web. When you were first going online, chances are one of the first logos that would greet you was Netscape's signature "N" beyond the hill. It was functional, relatively aesthetically pleasing, and had widespread visibility.<br />
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This was a privilege that many companies came to envy, particularly company giant Microsoft. Microsoft <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/1996/apr96/iemompr.aspx">released Internet Explorer</a> (IE) in the mid-90s and kicked off what would become known as the browser wars. Microsoft already had a stranglehold on the market for operating systems, and having their browser come along with their OS was a no-brainer.<br />
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The teams behind both browsers had heated rivalries. Upon the release of a new version of IE, the Microsoft team set up a giant ten-foot "e" logo in front of the Netscape work building. Netscape's team fired back with their own logo - a dinosaur named Mozilla - <a href="http://home.snafu.de/tilman/mozilla/stomps.html">stomping down on the "e" logo</a>. The two browsers would have specialized code, often forcing consumers to use one browser or the other in order to properly view certain websites. Netscape had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_element">blinking text</a>, IE had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquee_tag">scrolling marquees</a>, and <a href="http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes-in-web-design/">nobody was amused</a>.<br />
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Through its sheer heft as a company, Microsoft pushed its way into the browser scene and by 2002, it <a href="http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox4.html">dominated 96% of the browser market share</a>. With its near-monopoly, IE could be complacent with its platform, resulting in very little innovation within the browser through the early 2000s. Netscape Navigator lost official support from its parent company <a href="http://blog.netscape.com/2008/02/20/netscape-9-users-time-to-flock-or-firefox/">in 2008</a>, but it was clear much earlier that Netscape had lost its role as the web's main gatekeeper.<br />
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But even back then, Netscape sowed the seeds for its eventual rebirth.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Lyc45hkduCzU3xPKieLej847EkGqBenxKf8AtwJi4JNcEynf_q-mgkoxmaJlGaYsXupD_-2ZIDf53OJXRMasxVtz0yquEffENNTXNoB_W2odKBeaDgyYABVljUv5PnITT1H53to0P40/s1600/feuerfuchs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Lyc45hkduCzU3xPKieLej847EkGqBenxKf8AtwJi4JNcEynf_q-mgkoxmaJlGaYsXupD_-2ZIDf53OJXRMasxVtz0yquEffENNTXNoB_W2odKBeaDgyYABVljUv5PnITT1H53to0P40/s1600/feuerfuchs.jpg" height="309" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Though I gotta say, going from dinosaur to fox was kind of a logo downgrade.</span></div>
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In 1998, Netscape made their browser code open-source and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-209666.html">gave it to the Mozilla foundation</a>. Fueled by the collaborative power <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-age-of-collaboration.html">that the Internet would come to make famous</a>, Netscape's code would become something unrecognizable from its parent browser. In 2004, Mozilla <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/1.0.html">released Firefox 1.0</a> and leapt into the Microsoft-dominated arena (though, fun fact, it was originally going to be called <a href="http://browsers.about.com/od/historylesson/a/firefoxhistory.htm">Phoenix</a>).<br />
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Firefox was the populist answer to IE's empire. Being open source meant that anybody could design new features for the browser and post them online for people to use. Frustrated consumers could finally circumvent IE's performance issues by adopting a browser that they could customize for themselves. The Mozilla foundation joined forces with another marginalized web browser team - Opera - to push for <a href="http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3361141">new definitions for Web standards</a> that would provide an <a href="http://developers.slashdot.org/story/04/06/01/0119212/mozilla-and-opera-team-up-for-web-forms-standard">open alternative to IE</a>. By 2005 Firefox pushed itself into <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine/story-firefox-underdog-superhero?page=0,2">10% of the market share</a>. By 2008, it pushed even further into 20%, especially having popularity <a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2007/04/firefox_users_a.html">among younger Internet users</a>.<br />
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Microsoft took notice. In 2009, IE was up to its eighth version and came with an ad campaign seemingly tailored for a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjUzzxAKs20">younger</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aA_PEltVTw">more net-savvy</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyQolo0Xdqw">population</a>. This would be a pattern that we'd come to see of IE - stellar ad campaigns that would <a href="http://www.browseryoulovedtohate.com/">poke fun at its previous deficiencies</a> and brand itself with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFE4rkSaKOY">more socially commanding image</a>. They would <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DbgiOCTQts">conjure memes</a>, incorporate <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEidqRQP-8U">trending music styles</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkM6RJf15cg">play up 90s nostalgia</a>. Their most recent ad is a two minute Japanese animation of an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHTUlF7NA2o">anthropomorphic IE schoolgirl</a> fighting robots in an indeterminate dystopia.<br />
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Microsoft's attempts to recapture their lost audience fell completely flat. Although people <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/167617/microsoft_ie_8_ads.html">took notice</a> of their ads, Firefox's value as a product kept shining through. Internet Explorer had <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200909-201009">dipped below 50% of the market share</a> by September of 2010, with Firefox sitting at a comfortable 31%. Netscape, from beyond the grave and through its progeny, has taken revenge on its old foe. More pressingly, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2010.499431#.UoClq_l4wfw">contrary to conventional business wisdom</a>, open source had toppled an empire.<br />
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Of course, those percentage points only add up to 81%. The rest of the market share was comprised of Opera, Apple's Mac-specific Safari browser, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers">myriad of niche browsers</a>. There was also a fairly new addition to the browser roster, quickly gaining momentum and showing little sign of slowing down: Google Chrome.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirV5KydO9Wi6uCD7zCh1hpFVqFCKshwXdTrA3q4tpSjvlisKtqIhNfm7wm4DNv7vr4VMcxovyUDLeeK44IZ7T0RRrt2fmJ8Phc-l5nP-DhJKTBkv8gD650ygbAW0YlLVgDQdswIPPYPP0/s1600/Google-Chrome-Toolbar-400x400.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirV5KydO9Wi6uCD7zCh1hpFVqFCKshwXdTrA3q4tpSjvlisKtqIhNfm7wm4DNv7vr4VMcxovyUDLeeK44IZ7T0RRrt2fmJ8Phc-l5nP-DhJKTBkv8gD650ygbAW0YlLVgDQdswIPPYPP0/s1600/Google-Chrome-Toolbar-400x400.png" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Not to be confused with a pokeball or anything.</span></div>
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Chrome's rise to prominence has not been nearly as interesting as IE's rise and fall or Firefox's strange ancestry. Since its release in 2008, Chrome has <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/12/the-rise-of-chrome-the-decline-of-firefox/#.UoDI8Pl4wfw">steadily amassed its market share</a> until, in 2012-2013, it <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/download/StatCounter-Internet-Wars-Report.pdf">surpassed both Firefox and IE</a>. This rise has come with hardly any fanfare or controversy - perhaps it's a less interesting story than something like Firefox, which was pegged as an underdog from the conception of its very business model. Or, perhaps we're avoiding making parallels between Google and 90s-era Microsoft, where we see a large company push its resources into a new arena and find rapid success.<br />
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The truly interesting thing about the browser wars is how <i>visible</i> it was to anyone who uses the Internet. A common topic in online hubs would be to talk about what your browser of choice was. This is how word of mouth would spread about alternatives to IE in the 2000s. Browsers were such a fundamental part of the online experience that it was impossible to avoid discussing them.<br />
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It isn't like there weren't colorful business competitions before the Internet - the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars">console wars</a> in gaming gave us an equally visible rivalry between two brands of product. Something about the browser wars ran deeper than trying to outdo each other's ad campaign. No reasonable online consumer had brand loyalty to their browser. The arena is purely utilitarian - which gatekeeper offers the most functional gates? To this end, the browser wars was a relatively equal playing field. On such an open and information-centric platform as the Internet, the brand with the more favorable information about it won the day.<br />
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This is a tantalizing notion - the idea that the best product ultimately wins out in the end. It's a very capitalistic idea, so it is very deeply embedded in our Western culture. The Internet gives us the feeling that equal opportunity in business really has been achieved. Perhaps the browser market will soon find equilibrium, but I bet very few people will mind if Google Chrome keeps rising and ushers in a second near-monopoly. Because, in our perspective as consumers, it is the "best product" and deserves to win. After all, that's what brought IE down, right?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizM41zRv-6lW2cmAPS4d390lHjZXL_5XyB3ydTcyoHggG6F4nlopN-cz4NmpsBgmQ8mpI4ggOd9-HoVjj3dNbTIIu_3QOFxenuwg6iqXBaxT-ybHJkO9lBpADVmsCammWkOElDNvEQd4M/s1600/Market-Dominance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizM41zRv-6lW2cmAPS4d390lHjZXL_5XyB3ydTcyoHggG6F4nlopN-cz4NmpsBgmQ8mpI4ggOd9-HoVjj3dNbTIIu_3QOFxenuwg6iqXBaxT-ybHJkO9lBpADVmsCammWkOElDNvEQd4M/s1600/Market-Dominance.jpg" height="220" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Somehow more palatable when it's an Internet company.</span></div>
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We saw a similar complacency as search engines came into their own. There used to be <a href="http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/popular-search-engines-in-the-90s-then-and-now/">a ton of prominent search engines</a> - AskJeeves, Lycos, AltaVista, DogPile, to name a few - but over time, Google emerged dominant. Even now, as search engines <a href="http://searchenginewar.net/">continue to compete</a> <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5976014/facebook-just-declared-war-on-google-meet-your-new-search-engine-updating-live">with</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/technology/bing-search-engine-to-be-revamped-as-war-against-google-intensifies.html">one another</a>, Google <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2289560/Googles-Search-Market-Share-Shoots-Back-to-67">retains its top spot</a>. When we talk about <i>why</i> this is the case, the first thing that comes to mind is "because Google was better than those other engines". It's kind of nice that Bing has emerged as a high profile competitor to Google, because assuming that a company is dominating due to being the "better" service has clearly not always been the case.<br />
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This also happened with social networks. So too did MySpace find <a href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/r-i-p-top-10-failed-social-media-sites/">many emergent competitors</a> in social networks - Facebook, Orkut, Badoo, for example. Of course, in that battle, <a href="http://allfacebook.com/janrain-social-login-study_b125666">MySpace ended up losing pretty badly</a>. Facebook's firm positioning at the top has also given it a place where it can <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/facebook-refines-ad-targeting/">refine its targeted advertising</a>. Perhaps that might make you uncomfortable, but if enough of your social circle uses Facebook, your options for social networking services end up having a soft limit.<br />
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Is this soft limit <i>really</i> because Facebook is the best service? Or is it a begrudging complacency with using a common platform? That isn't to say that common platforms are bad or that uncommon platforms are inherently better (bitcoin, for example, is completely awful), but is there a certain inertia that comes with settling with a common platform just because it's common?<br />
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There is another factor, though - the relative transparency of online business. Businesses have been vying for market dominance since the beginning of capitalism, but the most successful online businesses tend to have been founded online. The history of Google is still about as old as most people born in the 90s. Facebook's founder is younger than a significant fraction of the website's user base. We've watched these website companies climb from the bottom to the very top while actively participating in their services. In some sense, we feel like we're a part of something, much like how members of online hubs <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">feel like they're a part of something</a> when their online hangout of choice gets popular.<br />
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Compare this to older businesses. Most other consumable media <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-owned-ten-companies-graphic_n_1458812.html">are owned by</a> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6">a handful of companies</a>. These older business networks are incredibly opaque, are probably older than most of the online population, and have narratives that have accumulated over multiple decades. Something about that is fundamentally less accessible to a wider audience. AT&T - and even something like Coca Cola - don't have the same cultural power as something like Google or Facebook. The Internet is young, so its businesses simply seem more <i>human</i> to us.<br />
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But the Internet won't be young forever.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4UNHvAcaegiLvr6qVLZLMYaG7MNNpGlwLaiuFrORvFkDYAd33XD6iiSevMM9LzwYpKImVwRteibGf5pUxu5wrVw7ryVeo6y3CsuKepPIN-nurI3-NsKHHh751_Ft8D-HaGPrBrvv6XLI/s1600/keep-calm-and-be-forever-young-176.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4UNHvAcaegiLvr6qVLZLMYaG7MNNpGlwLaiuFrORvFkDYAd33XD6iiSevMM9LzwYpKImVwRteibGf5pUxu5wrVw7ryVeo6y3CsuKepPIN-nurI3-NsKHHh751_Ft8D-HaGPrBrvv6XLI/s1600/keep-calm-and-be-forever-young-176.png" height="320" width="274" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Keeping calm's got nothing to do with it.</span></div>
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The next generation isn't going to have the luxury of growing up with Google. They're not going to hear about the triumphs and milestones of online business innovation. They're going to hear about property battles, buyouts, and market exchanges. The magic of something like the browser wars - competitors vying for market dominance through the superior product in a brand new arena - isn't going to be around for much longer.<br />
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In fact, it's already begun. The inter-company conflicts on the Internet have gotten far more complex than browser functionality and weird mascot pranks.<br />
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Google's recently gotten <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/patent-war-goes-nuclear-microsoft-apple-owned-rockstar-sues-google/">involved in a patent war</a> with Microsoft, Apple, Sony, and some other companies. Facebook <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/05/16/facebook-the-smart-money-exits/">jumped into the stock exchange</a> in May 2012 and Twitter followed suit <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24857497">earlier this month</a>. Individual online companies get bigger as they swallow other online companies - <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324787004578493130789235150">Yahoo now owns Tumblr</a> and <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/">Google bought out YouTube in 2006</a>. CNET has established itself as a technology network through the 2000s by <a href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/03/06/04/1438227/gamefaqs-acquired-by-cnet">buying out sites like GameFAQs</a>, but CNET was in turn <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9944882-7.html">bought by pre-existing media conglomerate CBS in 2008</a>.<br />
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The companies have grown in size and influence. Nobody bats an eye yet. Are we hanging on to the whimsical optimism that came with the browser wars? Why do we feel so uncomfortable with media giants and mega-corporations but feel fine with online businesses that are on track to join their ranks?<br />
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The counter-argument to all this is Open Source. Chrome's market dominance may come with about as much enthusiasm as the newest Pepsi product, but Chrome also isn't a product that anyone but Google has business getting excited about. Firefox's rise, on the other hand, was entirely user-driven. Thousands of independent collaborators had reason to be happy as Firefox stuck it to IE.<br />
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The problem with this is that open source doesn't exist in a vacuum. Chrome came about after Firefox established itself, and could design its product by learning from what Firefox was doing right. Open source might be a hotbed of innovation, but it also gives companies an accurate representation of what's in demand. Since Google will always have more resources on their side than Mozilla and its individual contributors, Google will always be able to look at what Firefox is doing and do it better.<br />
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The Internet is approaching the day when it stops being a fantastic new experiment that mostly tolerates people's ventures. Accountability and influence are rising forces online - and soon there will be real exchange of policy that happens on the same platform where, years ago, we were casually bickering about browser speed.<br />
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Maybe that's not strictly either good or bad. The Internet is still powerful, open, and innovative. Products are still getting better over time. It's simply an awareness that the old face of business hasn't necessarily gone anywhere, and has already begun surfacing in our new platform.<br /><br />It began with the gatekeepers. So follows the rest of the kingdom.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-68432606768199065392013-11-04T08:49:00.000-08:002013-11-04T08:49:30.931-08:00Death and the InternetA family member turned 50 a little while ago. I don't really keep track of family members' birthdays outside of those in my immediate family, so I happened to find out about my cousin's birthday on Facebook. It was a little unsettling to see, because this cousin also happens to be suffering from a very terminal stage of cancer. There is a chance that it would be the last opportunity for our family to wish him a happy birthday.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM2YL34lxJ3AFrLDn-PEBVm3_ONWxlTDClR1ndnQIqM_nWFQTbp9S080iyt26l1V2pBXPIvwpCVJqNpqb4kizN3PmOJ8n5n3edHFzWsfSmdxHZxHoJLMIonttl07mYDPqaNKAAuD580NA/s1600/Happy_Birthday_Cake_2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM2YL34lxJ3AFrLDn-PEBVm3_ONWxlTDClR1ndnQIqM_nWFQTbp9S080iyt26l1V2pBXPIvwpCVJqNpqb4kizN3PmOJ8n5n3edHFzWsfSmdxHZxHoJLMIonttl07mYDPqaNKAAuD580NA/s1600/Happy_Birthday_Cake_2013.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Not to start the blog post off on a low note or anything...</span></div>
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Facebook wouldn't know that he died right away, though. My family isn't particularly tech-savvy, so it's possible that his Facebook page would persist in its current form for a while. Around the same time next year, Facebook might tell me that my cousin, though possibly passed on, is celebrating his 51st birthday.<br />
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My cousin's situation is not the first of its kind. There is a diverse range of traditions around the world for dealing with mortality, and the Internet has begun developing traditions of its own. With so many of our life experiences <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/as-real-as-it-gets.html">cataloged online in various ways</a>, it seems almost expected that these windows to our lives would also provide constructs for our deaths.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Historically, websites and online hubs have not been designed with mortality in mind, and didn't used to offer any real procedure for what happens to user information after those users die. In 2004, Yahoo! <a href="http://news.cnet.com/Yahoo-denies-family-access-to-dead-marines-e-mail/2100-1038_3-5500057.html">denied e-mail access to the family of a marine killed in Iraq</a>, as it was not within the bounds of the website's terms of service to share that access with anybody.<br />
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This issue has since begun getting attention from larger websites, as well as <a href="http://www.chi2009.org/altchisystem/submissions/submission_mmassimi_208_1232961565.pdf">academic attention</a>. The term <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatosensitivity">"thanatosensitivity"</a> was coined to describe the specific issue of mortality and technology. Outside of this, websites' terms of service have been evolving to include policies about death and information ownership.<br />
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Social networks have had <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/death-and-social-media-what-happens-to-your-life-online/">the most visible policies</a>, given how pervasive they are in our lives. Facebook pages in particular can be converted to memorial pages. The profile becomes private to everyone but confirmed friends, and disables further notifications about things like birthdays. It also preserves a person's online Facebook information, for the sake of remembrance. Proof of death usually has to be submitted to the website team, usually in the form of a newspaper obituary. Supposedly, this policy was devised <a href="http://allfacebook.com/death-on-facebook_b18311">in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings</a>. Prior to this, dead profiles were simply deleted.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6lbyscIaxLdmtcBTlAq-PMkwO6-A6RdPoRcJ_pehYNQCW4YZC-c-CdJskAeqPgK6SO6U7cfqeJaoqc0Lh_Gtf5VWLLTfNMblK2-dBTOkdbLy02RYxnCCQG5PbFg6LhCS-wwO6SqI-4eY/s1600/facebook-death.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6lbyscIaxLdmtcBTlAq-PMkwO6-A6RdPoRcJ_pehYNQCW4YZC-c-CdJskAeqPgK6SO6U7cfqeJaoqc0Lh_Gtf5VWLLTfNMblK2-dBTOkdbLy02RYxnCCQG5PbFg6LhCS-wwO6SqI-4eY/s1600/facebook-death.jpg" height="235" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Memorials that <i>don't</i> deprive the soil of nutrients? The Internet is just so green!</span></div>
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Google has a <a href="https://support.google.com/mail/answer/14300?hl=en">lengthy legal procedure</a> where they'll alter or take down information of a deceased user's Gmail, Google+, Blogger (don't do this, family!), and other Google-linked content, so long as you can verify that you are a lawful representative of the deceased. Twitter offers a <a href="http://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-a-violation/topics/122-reporting-violations/articles/87894-how-to-contact-twitter-about-a-deceased-user">similar legal procedure</a> for deactivating Twitter accounts. MySpace profiles of the deceased cannot be accessed by loved ones, but representatives can contact MySpace to have them review and remove any content that the family wants gone.<br />
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Beyond these larger websites, policies on death become less visible. SomethingAwful, for example, will perma-ban accounts whose owners have been confirmed dead, eliminating the possibility of anyone trying to impersonate the user, but is usually done out of courtesy to the family's request and not outlined in any official terms of service. It may be safe to assume that "smaller" websites handle these things on a case by case basis, whenever family members actually show concern over how their loved ones used to waste their time on random internet websites (they probably don't, usually).<br />
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Some websites exist for the sole purpose of remembrance. The <a href="http://go.fold3.com/thewall/">Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial</a> represents a digital leap from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_wall">the famous Wall in Washington D.C.</a>, dedicated to posting tributes, stories, and other humanizing memories of dead or missing soldiers who fought in Vietnam. <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/index.html">FindAGrave</a> is dedicated to recording final deposition information from around the world, creating a sort of virtual cemetery. The website <a href="http://mydeathspace.com/vb/forum.php">MyDeathSpace</a>, not actually affiliated with MySpace, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/05/news.theobserver">catalogs the deaths of people with MySpace profiles</a>, putting in significant research in how the person died and even occasionally exposing convicted murderers with MySpace profiles.<br />
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The biggest of such websites is <a href="http://www.legacy.com/NS/">Legacy.com</a>, a general online memorial website. The website gets <a href="http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/article_4c8b4493-115a-537f-a3a3-7107ab11421c.html">considerable</a> <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/legacy.com">traffic</a>, and hosts obituaries for <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/04/28/idUS139175+28-Apr-2008+PRN20080428">hundreds of newspapers</a>. Each obituary also gets a guestbook for people to pay tribute to the deceased. Sometimes the guestbooks posts <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/us/05memorial.html">get ugly</a>, leading to people revealing past scams, grievances, infidelities, and molestations.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeZa-USu8w6w40Fk0OGiHWwluYeT7EwM4rSK5bRRnCrJ94hM69p1FVxjRX05UDDHOqiSUSIPw8AuCA3hjnnf7Pu8U3BEd068jUvWuVVuWdL7pvbiZZhpdGuszbzUtLlh0Uq87jtqIGfM/s1600/pic-dump-168-8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDeZa-USu8w6w40Fk0OGiHWwluYeT7EwM4rSK5bRRnCrJ94hM69p1FVxjRX05UDDHOqiSUSIPw8AuCA3hjnnf7Pu8U3BEd068jUvWuVVuWdL7pvbiZZhpdGuszbzUtLlh0Uq87jtqIGfM/s1600/pic-dump-168-8.jpg" height="264" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm sure 'Ninfa' and 'Peter' had some fun comments for her guest book.</span></div>
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This leads us to the other dimension of death on the Internet: how death affects the network of people online.<br />
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The point of most of these website policies is to decide who gets to manage information on their website once the person originally generating (and managing) the information on their website is dead. But in the case of an online obituary guestbook or MyDeathSpace, it's <i>other</i> people generating information <i>on someone else</i>. There is no control over who talks about the dead, or <i>how</i> they talk about the dead. Granted, this isn't a situation new to the Internet, but the connectivity of the online network enables this to happen far more broadly.<br />
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Most of the time, other people online don't even notice if a fellow user has passed. Death and website inactivity are nearly indistinguishable things from the perspective of the average online user. Plus, with how easy it is to <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/trolling-subtlety-and-lying-on-internet.html">deceive people on the Internet</a> and how often <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-death-hoaxes">online death hoaxes</a> pop up, lots of people have grown cynical over such sensational news. People will go out of their way to speculate about dead users in only very rare instances. Such is the case of <a href="http://lurkerfaqs.com/boards/400-current-events/60293234/">"9/11 guy"</a>, a <a href="http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=Syphon_Filter_Man">former forums user</a> on GameFAQs who last logged into his account <a href="http://gamefaqsarchive.com/image/911guy.JPG">on the evening of September 10th, 2001</a>.<br />
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But sometimes, news of death really blows up online.<br />
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In a <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">previous blog post</a>, I mentioned <a href="http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=Shana">Shana Christine Strode</a>, who committed suicide in 2003, and whose LiveJournal page was converted to a memorial by her family. Members of the forum LUE, a popular board on GameFAQs, discovered her LiveJournal page and <a href="http://gamefaqsarchive.com/index.php?pg=315">flooded it</a> with nasty comments and shocking imagery. Mocking the dead isn't a new practice, but these mocking comments are all organized in one place, forever associated with Shana's online memorial.<br />
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A similar defacement could be seen with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html">Mitchell Henderson</a>, a seventh grader whose 2006 suicide prompted his classmates to create a virtual memorial for him. Word of this page spread around online, and some people noticed that one of his last posts on Facebook was about a lost iPod. For the sake of personal amusement, these online strangers - who had likely never known Mitchell Henderson - decided that Mitch had killed himself over losing an iPod. They also noticed that one of Mitchell's classmates had posted a message on his wall with a funny grammatical error - "an hero". Not only did these people proceed to vandalize Mitchell Henderson's MySpace account, <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/an-hero">"an hero"</a> became a meme and synonym for suicide.<br />
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Sometimes you see the opposite situation happen. Amanda Todd, a fifteen year old Canadian, committed suicide in 2012 after ongoing experiences <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd">with bullying, harassment, and self-harm</a>. Prior to her suicide, she had posted a video on YouTube that effectively operated as her suicide note. The video quickly went viral, and the name 'Amanda Todd' quickly became synonymous with cyber-bullying. <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/bullying-victims-remembered-in-vigils-worldwide-1.1186619">Nation-wide vigils</a> were held, people <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/amanda-todd-s-alleged-tormentor-named-by-hacker-group-1.1134233">rushed to track down her tormentors</a>, and lawmakers even <a href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/in-wake-of-amanda-todd-suicide-mps-to-debate-anti-bullying-motion-1.995254">talked of new legislature</a>. The late fifteen year old has become a tragic - almost martyr-like - figure, and an icon that has driven efforts against cyber-bullying.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/vOHXGNx-E7E?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Famous last video.</span></div>
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Why did people react to Amanda Todd so differently than they did to Mitchell Henderson? Maybe more of the right people were Internet-literate in 2013 than they were in 2006. Maybe Anonymous simply wasn't as much of an online force by the time Amanda Todd became relevant. Maybe we really <i>have</i> been progressing towards better attitudes on online bullying.<br />
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What the two deceased teenagers <i>do</i> have in common is being remembered in ways that were beyond the control of any family member or website. Their legacies took on a form that went beyond any online information that they personally authored - it was by the interactions and information generation of the online population that made these individuals far bigger in death than they ever were alive.<br />
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With the Internet, our information succeeds us in ways that we've never previously seen in history. The idea of having a 'legacy', of having a life worth writing about, used to be reserved to famous artists, authors, war heroes, innovators, and privileged classes. Today, anyone who uses the Internet has a legacy, in the form of their digital footprint.<br />
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Your online identity is more fleshed out as more of your information is put online. For some people, their online identity can get very extensive. If you were to die tomorrow, your online identity would persist, though frozen in time. You probably never joined Facebook with the <i>intention</i> of leaving behind a trail of information that would come to form your online identity, but now, without asking for it at all - you will persist beyond death for as long as the Internet can hold you.<br />
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So, what if you didn't want this to happen to you?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25b_GN_aRrlL1B5MezAhqaZPLgpxq-RBabjWW9VYrwNRWrJEmVOfDSCd_VYn2kI_wVhzBJOBS64ZAq4J1pdbJWWCpWU_yXDAVJ5NVUeALdmM48rf1q_KPAbulCpjd1xjOBPf6qzmCLcU/s1600/turn_off_computer_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25b_GN_aRrlL1B5MezAhqaZPLgpxq-RBabjWW9VYrwNRWrJEmVOfDSCd_VYn2kI_wVhzBJOBS64ZAq4J1pdbJWWCpWU_yXDAVJ5NVUeALdmM48rf1q_KPAbulCpjd1xjOBPf6qzmCLcU/s1600/turn_off_computer_large.jpg" height="251" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Step 1: Find the Internet's "off" button.</span></div>
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There are an increasing number of ways to manage <i>your own</i> online information after death. Earlier in 2013, Google rolled out its <a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/plan-your-digital-afterlife-with.html">Inactive Account Manager</a>, functioning as a sort of digital will for Google users. You can specify what you want to happen to your information if your Google-linked accounts are inactive for a certain amount of time. Facebook has introduced a <a href="http://www.themarysue.com/facebook-death-app/">"death app"</a>, where you can plan out posts and messages to be sent on Facebook after you've died. A similar platform, <a href="http://socialnewsdaily.com/10430/facebook-after-death/">DeadSocial</a>, offers this same service across multiple social networking sites.<br />
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If you wanted to completely wipe away your online identity, it'll take a little more effort on your part. There are plenty of <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5958801/how-to-commit-internet-suicide-and-disappear-from-the-web-forever">step-by-step guides</a> and <a href="http://inventorspot.com/articles/death_facebook_seppukoocom_35464">gimmicky</a> <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/just-delete-me/">apps</a> in order to eliminate online information on yourself. After you've accomplished this, you could browse the Internet using <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5395267/how-to-really-browse-without-leaving-a-trace">some very careful measures</a> to make sure that you don't leak any new information about yourself. I guess you could also tell everyone you know not to post information or pictures of you on Facebook either, because <a href="http://tineye.com/">you're fooling yourself if you don't think reverse image searching exists</a>.<br />
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Chances are, if you're not an <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">overly paranoid libertarian</a>, you probably find it unnecessary to go through all that effort to erase your online identity. Most sane people are probably fine with how they currently use the Internet, and probably aren't <i>too</i> troubled by the information that they've consented to put about themselves online. It also seems like a generally bad idea to be so aligned against your online presence. One reporter for The Verge <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet">went from April 2012 to April 2013 without using the Internet</a>, and the lesson he learned from the experience was that, in this day and age, a life without the Internet was not real life at all.<br />
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But having the option to mediate some post-mortem information is certainly useful. It is essentially an act of adding <i>more</i> information on top of the information about you. This empowers you to qualify the context of how you'll be remembered. Persisting on the network after you die isn't that big of a deal. You probably won't care - you'll be dead.<br />
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But talking about online longevity in the present day is short-sighted. Content on the Internet has only been aggregating for a few decades. What happens fifty years from now, when your information is still around, and on equal footing with the information of your grandchildren?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiEGrNlu9T1KTG4Jkgj-ciXI9hpPXtmJqoTP989Bc1PRvVV3FtLfeT2FV_Rr6QbhPKFpyUob0HnQUoyGw7jJ2CNV8ev5tHGV-FBIzRyvMSAEwwrBIS0rb9wYrcz_LwwdONzZPtY5ZHl00/s1600/medd_01_img0040.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiEGrNlu9T1KTG4Jkgj-ciXI9hpPXtmJqoTP989Bc1PRvVV3FtLfeT2FV_Rr6QbhPKFpyUob0HnQUoyGw7jJ2CNV8ev5tHGV-FBIzRyvMSAEwwrBIS0rb9wYrcz_LwwdONzZPtY5ZHl00/s1600/medd_01_img0040.jpg" height="215" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Grandpa's left me a message! What does "I can has cheezburger" mean?</span></div>
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XKCD's Randall Munroe recently wrote <a href="http://what-if.xkcd.com/69/">an amazing blog post</a> attempting to answer the question, "When will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?" His answer was sometime in the late 21st or early 22nd century, assuming Facebook is even still culturally relevant by then. One can certainly imagine a future person traversing the archives of early 21st century Internet and finding marvelously vivid accounts of their deceased great-grandparents. Perhaps they could even find a message left for them.<br />
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Humans seem to be just as fascinated by their origin stories as they are by their eventual demise. <a href="https://www.23andme.com/">23andMe</a> offers its genetic expertise in outlining your ancestral genetic traits along with what traits you may offer to your children. <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/">Ancestry.com</a> positions itself as a gatekeeper to the past, holding archives of records from census data, legal forms, and other materials that can help someone piece together their lineage. Imagine a future where ancestry data actually <i>is</i> the Internet that you use right now, where your Facebook statuses, my blog posts, and everything in between are records that our descendants will one day read in order to understand who they are.<br />
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When you think about online identity in that light, few things could really be so distressing that you'd want to rip down all of your online information and deprive that information from your great grandchildren. And, with the ability to set up information to be set up post-mortem, you can even send messages to the descendants that you'll never even meet.<br />
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That, of course, assumes that your information won't get deleted for other reasons. Perhaps there will come a day where information needs to be destroyed in order to make room for new information - a sort of "online identity overpopulation", if you will. With <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9209158/Scientists_calculate_total_data_stored_to_date_295_exabytes">hundreds of exabytes stored already</a> and the rate of information generation showing no signs of slowing down, it seems difficult to foresee when such a situation would even happen.<br />
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With the Internet, perhaps death really <i>has</i> become only the beginning. Let us freely paint our legacies, so that future generations may be enriched by what we do.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com218tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-6222490855142209162013-10-28T12:15:00.003-07:002013-10-28T12:45:21.301-07:00Identity DuncesWe've talked about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">online social justice</a> before, and its profound ability to bring information and perspective to otherwise sheltered individuals. We focused on the most powerful and most socially pressing of the movements, but in reality, there are a variety of social movements that have begun emerging in various corners of the Internet.<br />
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Some are certainly legitimate, but go deep enough and you'll find bizarre and contrived claims to identities, each with their own strange internal politics.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxAYy1-TDZkghIekBOO8tVoRW-obBTxmVIifHnqAlHKpyOK1gy70a0rsCWtm4behmuI7Q4dtPYpCH8TqC4dOUvEqs0zREXlbJOwbz6t3dr6ZBZdr7rh_e3jYcJL-p29gTuBt7_PNe2oo4/s1600/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxAYy1-TDZkghIekBOO8tVoRW-obBTxmVIifHnqAlHKpyOK1gy70a0rsCWtm4behmuI7Q4dtPYpCH8TqC4dOUvEqs0zREXlbJOwbz6t3dr6ZBZdr7rh_e3jYcJL-p29gTuBt7_PNe2oo4/s1600/unnamed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">And guess where we'll be going to find them!</span></div>
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Today we'll look at the very long list of Tumblr social justice movements, starting with the more legitimate causes, and then diving deeper until we find the criminally insane. Because <a href="https://twitter.com/TumblrTXT">this Twitter account</a> was definitely inspired by something.<br />
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Tumblr's microblogging platform allows people to rapidly share information with one another. Your posts can be comprised of pictures, essays, short statements, or whatever else your heart desires. People can choose to 'follow' your Tumblr, which make your posts appear on a home feed similar to Facebook's in design. You can leave feedback on posts much like other platforms, but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reblogging#Tumblr">Tumblr's "reblog" functionality</a> - which pastes other people's posts (with accreditation) onto your own Tumblr - is what really allows information to spread on the website. People can pass along posts that they find insightful, and even append their own comments to it.<br />
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This ability to swap thoughts so easily allows the formation of circles of people who predominantly reblog one another. Unlike an online forum, Tumblr users can develop networks with one another without ever requiring a centralized online gathering spot. Yet Tumblr, at its heart, is a blogging service, letting each person have their own personal online space. As an aside, it would be very interesting to model the networks that form on Tumblr, much like <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-data-dump.html">what has been done with Twitter</a>.<br />
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The platform encourages lots of self-expression, has a low barrier of entry, and is set up so that many people can get exposed to your content. The website has <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tumblr.com">massive popularity</a>, and you can find Tumblr blogs - or "Tumblrs" - that cater to just about any interest one can imagine. But around corners of the web, Tumblr has become <i>especially</i> well-known for its social justice blogs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzC9KOgv3UMSw0qyVLiu-E3U8s15kMSqoTlFvCUK6iDlvcr2psSYUSBBbPsjvePrWVndPtEOFZ1DRTZ5_YwzbA6Tbi0hBq3RHzmLhr0s-HSbDEzfOmTcG9-n3ps_5vVpztf7BtPU03NY/s1600/16572020-abstract-word-cloud-for-social-justice-with-related-tags-and-terms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzC9KOgv3UMSw0qyVLiu-E3U8s15kMSqoTlFvCUK6iDlvcr2psSYUSBBbPsjvePrWVndPtEOFZ1DRTZ5_YwzbA6Tbi0hBq3RHzmLhr0s-HSbDEzfOmTcG9-n3ps_5vVpztf7BtPU03NY/s1600/16572020-abstract-word-cloud-for-social-justice-with-related-tags-and-terms.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Certainly an upgrade from pictures of cats.</span></div>
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Social justice Tumblrs don't constitute the majority of Tumblr. The most popular Tumblrs cover <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-tumblr-blogs-2013-5">low-content posts on Minecraft and funny pictures</a>, similar to what you'd see on Reddit. If you search by hash-tag, you get <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/10-most-popular-tags-tumblr/">a lot of One Direction</a> (as it happens, Tumblr has a <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/gender-and-internet.html">fairly large female population</a>). That content doesn't even account for the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-17/if-yahoo-buys-tumblr-what-will-it-do-with-all-that-porn">copious amount of porn</a> that gets posted on Tumblr.<br />
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But, with with the importance of communication and information dissemination in social movements, Tumblr has had <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">a visible presence in the broader online push</a> against misogyny, racism, and homophobia. Another legitimate movement that strongly incorporates Tumblr has been the push against transphobia - negative attitudes and prejudices against transsexual and transgender people (often condensed to trans people or trans*). Participants of these movements have spoken out on issues in <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/gamer-culture.html">various</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/10/webcomics.html">sectors</a> of online culture that would have otherwise gone ignored. These groups <i>have</i> done a good job promoting discussion on concepts like <a href="http://www.feminish.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/privilege101.pdf">privilege</a>, discrimination, and identity.<br />
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In fact, they've done <i>such</i> a good job promoting their ideas, they now have to deal with the misuse of those same ideas.<br />
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A strange phenomenon known as <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Oppression%20Olympics">"oppression olympics"</a> tends to emerge among some social justice enthusiasts. This refers to when people of various demographics <a href="http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Oppression_Olympics">compare themselves to one another</a> in an attempt to claim that their personal demographics make them the the "most oppressed" and therefore representing the most morally worthy cause. This idea reared its ugly head in <a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2008/05/06/re-examining-the-phrase-oppression-olympics/">the 2008 American primary election</a>, when people would compare Hilary Clinton's challenges to sexism and Barack Obama's challenges to racism in order to argue that one was more worthy of support than the other.<br />
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The concept of oppression olympics is (rightfully) regarded as counterproductive and distracting from personal discourse. It is <a href="http://critical-theory.com/gawker-literally-hosting-oppression-olympics/">widely ridiculed</a>, and is often <a href="http://i.imgur.com/E5wj48S.png">the target of parody</a>. Despite this deserved ridicule, "oppression olympics" remains a very simple concept to understand. Because Tumblr has a low barrier of entry, a lot of people visibly latch on to this idea, leading some people on Tumblr to <a href="http://i.imgur.com/SLOUthH.png">collect identities</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/5xUr0X7.png">much</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/kipntRe.jpg">like</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/KvJh6hq.png">merit</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/4iJRHQo.jpg">badges</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOtewgY9FIK65CIRULs2_OzepT-lacfnIKIgvdNh09LdXIS24AL3q1k4F0RKfn7FNYR4vYIN_h_7gKSd26MMb8k3OY-QWoCIZLXm6l0NM-z52FxmboU6Kk76UQ0kxybUajA34E-xD_y1U/s1600/podium2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOtewgY9FIK65CIRULs2_OzepT-lacfnIKIgvdNh09LdXIS24AL3q1k4F0RKfn7FNYR4vYIN_h_7gKSd26MMb8k3OY-QWoCIZLXm6l0NM-z52FxmboU6Kk76UQ0kxybUajA34E-xD_y1U/s1600/podium2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Like this, but angrier and more verbose.</span></div>
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A good portion of these identities run the gamut of sexuality <a href="http://i.imgur.com/TpiLjzR.jpg">to</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/ZOsfzkO.gif">profound</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Ndfr8.jpg">degrees</a>. <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/asexuality1.htm">Asexuality</a> has found a <a href="http://www.asexuality.org/home/">sizeable community online</a>, and with that has come a demand for further clarification as to what asexuality actually means. Tumblr tends to be where some people visibly <a href="http://i.imgur.com/aCpiRN9.png">explore their thoughts on their own sexual identity</a>. This often leads to <a href="http://i.imgur.com/WeyC4Fbl.jpg">seemingly</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/KaTSQ4T.png">contradictory</a> instances of 'asexuality'.<br />
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Trying to hammer out specific labels on one's own sexuality tends to create terminology that, while descriptive, is practically useless. This is best exemplified by the term 'demisexual', which is supposed to denote that you are only sexually attracted to people that you have an emotional connection with. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/2f9C6G4.png">But only sometimes</a>. Pardon me for the lack of citation on this next statement, but I would expect that most people fit the label 'demisexual' and have never felt the need to put a label on it.<br />
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The point of a label is to demarcate a group that is observably distinct from the rest of the population in some way. If an asexual person leads a lifestyle that is observably sexual, but labels themselves as 'asexual', then it makes sense for an observer to be confused about the claim to asexuality. Likewise, if someone identifies as 'demisexual', and if most people fit this label but have never felt the need to <i>put a label</i> on it, then it makes sense for an observer to be confused about the purpose of declaring yourself 'demisexual'.<br />
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Somehow, this doesn't stop some people from treating <a href="http://i.imgur.com/IB46nzK.png">self-identification as demisexual</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/M5dXPQp.png">very seriously</a>. It also doesn't keep self-proclaimed demisexuals from <a href="http://i.imgur.com/GEw9NXT.png">getting very upset</a> at other people's confusion, or from getting offended when other people <a href="http://i.imgur.com/lmxuRgm.png">question issues with the label</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMXxa-Y7myZZFfFj2QA75ydEw383V6cmecm7SzQFj7auTVaT1mfBc2Fj7YH9jgqFifPncWonUWMFaQpyGf0mdO9xkQpw2k9hNDSU1K_FIp6z7Gj3e-IoL22NWHuYIegP7TG0xvWhuTac/s1600/K6PyoQb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMXxa-Y7myZZFfFj2QA75ydEw383V6cmecm7SzQFj7auTVaT1mfBc2Fj7YH9jgqFifPncWonUWMFaQpyGf0mdO9xkQpw2k9hNDSU1K_FIp6z7Gj3e-IoL22NWHuYIegP7TG0xvWhuTac/s1600/K6PyoQb.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Nor has it kept people from making up newer, dumber labels.</span></div>
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That isn't to say that there isn't a discussion to be had about sexuality, and what asexuality is. It seems clear, however, that hashing out newer and more specific terms for sexuality is not the most productive way to have that discussion. This is a readily observable pattern in a lot of such movements in Tumblr: there <i>is</i> a discussion to be had about a certain subject, but people on Tumblr will instead latch onto an identity that they feel the need to defend. The strongest example of this can be found in the strange world of fat activism.<br />
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The concept of fat activism has been around <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_activism">since the 1960s</a>, and aims to address how thinner people tend to be perceived by society as "better" than larger people. This is <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0070048">a legitimate</a> <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22964792">and studied</a> <a href="http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/40/3/271.abstract">issue</a>. You can find several Tumblr blogs actively addressing this <a href="http://thisisthinprivilege.tumblr.com/">"thin privilege"</a>, often outlining the various ways that it emerges in everyday life. However, in the process of outlining thin privilege, some people make "fat" an identity that justifies what may be an unhealthy lifestyle.<br />
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These particular people don't see their lifestyle as the problem, but see <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Du6AAfY.png">nutritional convention</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/z9DkGrO.png">and</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/0Ait0TK.png">medical</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/P1844bB.png">institutions</a> as "oppressive". They rebel against the idea of obesity as a "disease", and will even go far as to say that they are being <a href="http://i.imgur.com/2gWMMEj.png">"socially sterilized"</a>. If their lifestyle is being inconvenienced <a href="http://i.imgur.com/KFnsYkS.png">in</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/lJNrALx.jpg">some</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/MpBwPag.png">way</a> - a lifestyle inaccessible to most people until fairly recently in human history, to be clear - then it is a matter of systematic disenfranchisement <a href="http://i.imgur.com/P2GnYEF.jpg">somehow comparable to gender disenfranchisement</a>.<br />
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Perhaps the most perplexing outcome of this community on Tumblr is the emergence of a new identity label - "trans-fat". This describes thin people who identify with the lifestyle of fat people, and seems to involve <a href="http://x-trung.tumblr.com/post/26680348913/trigger-warning-transfatphobia-transfat-shaming">attempts to gain lots of weight</a>. It does not seem like a particularly widespread label, but it does represent a bigger problem.<br />
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Oftentimes, concepts and thoughts from more legitimate movements get used to lend credibility to <a href="http://i.imgur.com/VB86ESx.png">fringe</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Mrmr9Ov.png">positions</a>. Such is the case with <a href="http://i.imgur.com/EdezLY6.png">"trans-ethnic" individuals</a> - people who identify with a different ethnicity than the one they were born with. One can intuit that this concept (along with trans-fatness, for that matter) was co-opted from trans* movements (trans-gender, trans-sexuality). Except trans* movements <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Bugis_society">are legitimate</a> and have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights">far more substantial issues</a> associated with them, while "trans-ethnicity" is often a post-hoc justification for why someone likes a different culture. Trans-ethnicity doesn't actually have any social stigma, and concepts like "privilege" don't really apply. Of course, trans-ethnics <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Irt4W7s.jpg">don't seem to agree</a> with that.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1R_VAXPW7xNvX9-b6UJc6t4JHCL5kA6Ikobz7F3ARWnqxhXdFp39swJ0LCkKIK74OrQLcD_YbKz-9QV5LHSNlGowEc3VAVR7Q_rz9P2xuTG68VXTTLojiZs7KAp6qkE8ju72DixSplNg/s1600/1855971-pbf071_weeaboo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1R_VAXPW7xNvX9-b6UJc6t4JHCL5kA6Ikobz7F3ARWnqxhXdFp39swJ0LCkKIK74OrQLcD_YbKz-9QV5LHSNlGowEc3VAVR7Q_rz9P2xuTG68VXTTLojiZs7KAp6qkE8ju72DixSplNg/s1600/1855971-pbf071_weeaboo.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm pretty sure we already <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=weeaboo">had</a> <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wigger">words</a> for trans-ethnic people.</span></div>
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This is around where Tumblr social justice begins to get very poisonous, even if they started out representing a very real concern.<br />
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Some who blog about ableism - the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism">very real</a> discrimination and social prejudice against those with disabilities - have tried to twist concepts like <a href="http://i.imgur.com/iTflRAx.png">tobacco warning labels</a> and <a href="http://i.imgur.com/aVFGjP4.png">organ donation</a> (though not in the way you might think) as "oppressive". Some of these people will even argue in favor of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2011/10/27/3349293.htm">"trans-ableism"</a>, where able-bodied people <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/transableism">strongly identify as disabled</a>.<br />
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Likewise, there are people who will <a href="http://i.imgur.com/7RgdOc9.jpg">diagnose themselves as being on the autism spectrum</a> after reading a few online articles, and then assume this self-diagnosis as an identity counter to the mainstream "neurotypical" identity. Words like "stupid" become <a href="http://broadenme.tumblr.com/post/6427188363/why-the-word-stupid-is-considered-ableist">ableist slurs</a>, being treated more like hate speech than general insult. These Tumblr people tend to <a href="http://i.imgur.com/n4FhiYP.png">skip over the context</a> of certain situations <a href="http://i.imgur.com/JLLw3Td.jpg">in the name of crying oppression</a>. This will mean <a href="http://i.imgur.com/aQfyASX.png">ignoring legitimate authority on medicine</a> and ignoring actual <a href="http://i.imgur.com/xBWgRg7.png">physical</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/MO7W085.png">restrictions</a>.<br />
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Remember how Tumblr is structured - it allows people to develop networks. Some networks can get tighter than others, which can form echo chambers that are <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">similar to what we've seen before with online political expression</a>. Yet, because of how the home feed works, these echo chambers remain fairly visible to the public sphere so long as someone has at least one friend caught up in Tumblr social justice.<br />
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Within these echo chambers, the complaints about what is problematic <a href="http://i.imgur.com/FEU8T7e.png">begin</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/OUxHzg8.png">to</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/8XaaAim.png">get</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/xVhTgur.png">out</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/9BWA9j4.jpg">of</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/CiqCWwn.png">touch</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/LsNmFwg.jpg">with</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/OBUWPOU.png">reality</a>. What are <a href="http://i.imgur.com/mvYfWp4.png">practically non-existent issues</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/SZYjj4v.png">in day-to-day life</a> become <a href="http://i.imgur.com/azzbkl3.png">giant</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/mXcAiY5.png">issues</a> about identity that demand <a href="http://i.imgur.com/yKGr5YK.png">immediate</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/MjmvlCy.png">outrage</a>, <a href="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m59bp1XHTk1qcpj7wo1_400.jpg">inappropriate</a> <a href="http://25.media.tumblr.com/7e4cf56439b627bd2dc7dc8eee8daff8/tumblr_msmp2gUiIh1ryeto5o1_1280.png">aggression</a>, <a href="http://i.imgur.com/HhHSBa5.jpg">and</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/qgvxybk.png">righteous</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/sCJeyUh.png">indignation</a>. The phrase <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/die-cis-scum">"die cis scum"</a> has become the poster-child meme of Tumblr social justice, representing the aggressive attitude that most people outside of Tumblr see first.<br />
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These people get so caught up in ideological purity that they even begin to alienate <a href="http://i.imgur.com/pXiijQr.jpg">fellow Tumblr users</a>. When YouTuber vlogger <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/lacigreen">Laci Green</a>, an advocate for sex-positive feminism, was confronted about a slur in one of her earlier videos, she immediately and earnestly <a href="http://i.imgur.com/q7k13DR.png">apologized for it</a>. That didn't stop other people from lobbing <a href="http://i.imgur.com/imzLR4d.png">threats of physical harm at her over it immediately afterward</a>, driving the vlogger <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/society/tumblr-social-justice-laci-green/">away from Tumblr</a>.<br />
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These kind of Tumblr users are known by other online hub denizens as <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/social-justice-blogging">"social justice warriors"</a>, or SJWs. These people have a very negative reputation by people outside of Tumblr, and rightfully so. SJWs have inspired <a href="http://wtfsocialjustice.tumblr.com/">criticizing Tumblrs</a>, <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction">spaces to mock Tumblr</a>, and <a href="http://r2.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/comments/1o3o6p/titp_parody_site_this_is_sober_privilege_now_with/">parody</a> <a href="http://transsoberidentity.tumblr.com/">SJW</a> <a href="http://tralc.tumblr.com/">tumblrs</a>.<br />
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When these people are given suggestions to go and actually volunteer for the causes that they so passionately write about, it often <a href="http://i.imgur.com/wopOHuz.jpg">flies over their heads</a>. These Tumblr users believe that sharing their opinions on a relatively public space is <a href="http://i.imgur.com/j2mSbmT.jpg">contributing to the solution</a>, and place greater value <a href="http://i.imgur.com/8tqbnuO.png">over how many followers they have</a>. While it is true that they are, to some degree, contributing by spreading information, their particular information is not necessarily presented very well. Sources tend to go un-cited, and there tends to be a greater emphasis on moral outrage than actual argument - <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/arguing-on-internet.html">a strategy that doesn't work on the Internet</a>.<br />
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Despite the lack of actual activism among most SJWs, we can see that their level of detachment from reality has started <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/sydney_students_walk_out_on_headmates_and_enemies_of_logic/">leaking into actual organizations</a>. In at least one organization, people have started calling for policies that are Tumblr-level crazy, labeling gender-based dating as sexism, and representing of headmates.<br />
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Oh, what are headmates, you ask?<br />
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Now we step into the deepest realm of Tumblr's identity politics, where people's claimed identities are so far divorced from relevance and importance that they <i>actually</i> defy reality.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A thing that exists.</span></div>
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Headmates are a spin on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_personality_disorder">multiple personality disorder</a> where instead of being a rare disorder that impacts your life in disorienting and horrifying ways, it's a way of life where multiple beings co-inhabit your body with you, and <a href="http://i.imgur.com/f8IsZ4F.png">totally get along with you</a>. Headmates can come <a href="http://i.imgur.com/TQd9yPN.jpg">in any flavor of gender, race, or personality</a>. They can even come in the form of <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Hh4q82e.jpg">completely inanimate objects</a>. The important thing is that your headmates are people too, and to deny the hardships of "Multiples" - the kind of person you are if you have headmates - <a href="http://i.imgur.com/jXR1LAn.png">is a kind of oppression</a> that so-called Singlets have because of their Singletist privilege.</div>
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It isn't necessary that these strange entities are mere companions within your body, either - sometimes they're <i>actually</i> you. People who describe themselves as "Otherkin" tend to identify with entities that aren't within the human species at all. Perhaps they were <a href="http://x-trung.tumblr.com/post/36235848406/jenn-here-ugh-my-mom-just-walked-in-on-me-during">an animal in a past life</a>, or perhaps they identify <a href="https://si0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/594013868/46jemqks6xcs81q94ira.png">as a celestial object</a>. The limitations of your identity are almost nonexistent. Otherkin <a href="http://i.imgur.com/QcMmKFL.jpg">are proud to be otherkin</a>, believe that <a href="http://i.imgur.com/H0Gwsad.png">their identity is completely natural</a>, and to suggest otherwise <a href="http://i.imgur.com/0kYzjvt.jpg">would make you ableist</a>.<br />
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There are, of course, subcategories within the blanket label "Otherkin". Demonkin are people who <a href="http://otherkin.wikia.com/wiki/Demonkin">specifically believe that they are demons</a>, I think. You also have Therians, people who <a href="http://i.imgur.com/KAAkiDC.jpg">identify as werewolves</a> and have <a href="http://i.imgur.com/qcBd9hZ.jpg">lively debates about shape-shifting</a>. If you specifically identify as a kind of fictional character, then you are <a href="http://i.imgur.com/c9iprzi.png">fictionkin</a>. If you are a Multiple and have a fictional character as a headmate, then that headmate is known as a <a href="http://i.imgur.com/dPp1uEl.png">fictive</a>. Therians and fictives also have to <a href="http://i.imgur.com/xsp5TGq.png">deal with</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/WD1ej0J.png">oppression</a>, since people apparently tend to believe that their identity is not real.<br />
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Otherkin have responses ready for your skepticism and dissent. They will point out that you are <a href="http://swanblood.tumblr.com/post/30854232676/frameacloud-image-description-just-text">cis-species</a> and therefore unaware of some privileges that you have. Also, intersectionality seems to be a relevant concept to these people, as there is at least one person who <a href="http://swanblood.tumblr.com/post/29931023868/liminalbeast-the-dog-fucking-screams-otherkin">identifies as therian and trans</a>. There are probably other fun combinations out there, too.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDhuz9JKepRGqw5YJ8WI8HEygVEEqDnjeL2Ph1vDJO7MIC21I708wJ8ToQA-nQLqS1WuLEaubt8Z2vIhiFEnmeH5eDu2AdfRQpqlwAUZaSuztzArc2DDe0tiqXqMJt9AZp-m-8qrfG8c/s1600/top.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisDhuz9JKepRGqw5YJ8WI8HEygVEEqDnjeL2Ph1vDJO7MIC21I708wJ8ToQA-nQLqS1WuLEaubt8Z2vIhiFEnmeH5eDu2AdfRQpqlwAUZaSuztzArc2DDe0tiqXqMJt9AZp-m-8qrfG8c/s1600/top.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A <a href="http://www.chickenhead.com/stuff/outrage/">useful tool</a>.</span></div>
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So, how did we get here? We started somewhere reasonable, and now we're at people who think that they're galaxies.<br />
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At some point in time, the Oppression Olympics expanded its roster to include many more categories. The male-identifying cis-female-bodied demisexual trans-fat otherkin, with all their invented terminology, suddenly has an opinion that they feel should be regarded as relevant and meaningful. And, to restate from earlier: <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/sydney_students_walk_out_on_headmates_and_enemies_of_logic/">this is not something that's remaining entirely confined in Tumblr, or even the Internet</a>.<br />
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Even before the rise of the Internet, the Left has been <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/1993/09/the-left-lost-in-the-politics-of-identity/">weighed down by identity politics</a> and people disagreeing on how they agree with one another. Somehow, despite the Internet offering this amazing opportunity <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-personal-take-on-online-social-justice.html">to connect with people with alike experiences</a>, these SJWs have dug themselves deeper into isolation by painting incredibly restrictive identities, alienating those that don't fall into those identities, and championing their own perspective as members of those identities.<br />
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Why? Do they actually <i>care</i> about social justice?<br />
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No. Not really. At least, it makes a whole lot more sense when you assume that they don't. Let's climb our way back out of this rabbit hole.<br />
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We've seen some of this behavior before, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/deviantart-and-teenage-psyche.html">when we looked at DeviantArt</a>. DeviantArt was full of people who identified with anthropomorphic animals to some degree. We could safely assume that most of those people were teenagers coming to terms with their developing identities as functional adults. These Otherkin and Multiples are uncannily similar in behavior to these DeviantArt denizens.<br />
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While Tumblr happens to be too expansive of a website to give us real insight on the demographics of SJWs, we can probably infer that a lot of these particularly stringent SJWs are going through a transitory period of their lives where they feel that it's very important to define themselves. I would not be surprised if Otherkin and Multiples were mostly just bored and confused teenagers, similar to what we saw on DeviantArt. Perhaps some Tumblr people would accuse me of being ageist or <a href="http://an-adult-once-told-me.tumblr.com/">practicing adultism</a> (yes, that is a thing too), but I think that this is a reasonable inference.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo_AFy2dSkGGcLCXH32WmdRJGeenie_wj3KxagxjZlIiMvzML9_wId5hZSTKslT56snDmJsP1-Egw0Ni-FuFYbexb0Bh3D5ouRl-zVoPf7HuMglusP1ICRO6EH3grLUL9qChzGRJyVyL4/s1600/Z2vOr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo_AFy2dSkGGcLCXH32WmdRJGeenie_wj3KxagxjZlIiMvzML9_wId5hZSTKslT56snDmJsP1-Egw0Ni-FuFYbexb0Bh3D5ouRl-zVoPf7HuMglusP1ICRO6EH3grLUL9qChzGRJyVyL4/s1600/Z2vOr.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Wait, this is sounding really familiar.</span></div>
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If someone is developing their identity, then these labels are important to them. Since everyone wants to appear credible, these Tumblr people will politicize their personal labels, incorporating concepts like "privilege" and "intersectionality" into their talks about how they were a lizard in a past life. It seems out of place, since those concepts were meant to <i>assist</i> communication between different perspectives. In this instance, however, these SJWs use these concepts to justify how special they are.<br />
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The same may apply for those who claim to be trans-ethnic or demisexual. In the search for an identity that is uniquely "you", we find labels for things that are either farcical or too unspectacular to deserve a label. It doesn't actually matter to "fat"-identifying people that they put their health at risk - it's an identity that they can hold on to. To hell with those who threaten the sense of individuality that it brings.<br />
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Now, let's be clear, there isn't anything actually wrong with someone maintaining a Tumblr where they talk about their concept of identity. Self-expression is a pillar of any blogging platform - in fact, I'm doing it right now. There might be legitimate criticism to be had about the level of self-expression that we see on these particular Tumblr blogs, since it might be a manifestation of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">extreme individualism</a> or even a <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-new-nerd.html">justification of consumer habits</a>.<br />
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But that's the thing - no matter how we criticize it, we're talking about self-expression. <i>Not</i> <i>activism</i>.<br />
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We should not be fooled by an SJW claiming to be an "activist", but reblogs the with the same circle of like-minded SJWs over and over again. These people maintain their Tumblr accounts because they feel personally empowered by what they post. It is not for the sake of anyone else but themselves. They pretend to fight for other people's rights to identity because it is a convenient excuse for fixating on their own identity (sorry if I'm denying you your identity as an activist - that's probably really ableist of me, or something).<br />
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And again, there's nothing actually wrong about mostly just reblogging with a small circle of like-minded Tumblr friends. It's just better to be honest about what you're doing.<br />
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This should double our resolve to back the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">actual social justice movements</a> out there. There are legitimate battles to fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and yes, discrimination against body type, and we shouldn't let them be sullied by the insincere ramblings of a toxic Tumblr SJW. Tumblr can be a useful tool for those battles, but Tumblr is not the battleground.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-29210033135464778072013-10-21T09:10:00.002-07:002013-10-21T14:50:43.324-07:00Film and the InternetWe've touched on various videos and video platforms over the course of these blog posts, so it seems almost criminal to ignore how motion picture has been changed by the Internet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4py6cb-29VITYXVJ7OrDgVGQSjmcrGnqF62fyeOWkOZvDBmTjSxTgRwKosSyQEoaHSIc3gETBSmKQd25zSmagHVF-u7h4K__zYHMJKqJJ2LcnBMsJbXd8sVqOrGzPfkEKOoX8sBNmhhc/s1600/stock-footage-vintage-retro-feature-presentation-title-and-background.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4py6cb-29VITYXVJ7OrDgVGQSjmcrGnqF62fyeOWkOZvDBmTjSxTgRwKosSyQEoaHSIc3gETBSmKQd25zSmagHVF-u7h4K__zYHMJKqJJ2LcnBMsJbXd8sVqOrGzPfkEKOoX8sBNmhhc/s1600/stock-footage-vintage-retro-feature-presentation-title-and-background.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Please turn off your cell phone for the duration of this blog post.</span></div>
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Just like other media with previously established presence, film and television have had to find a way to adapt to the Internet. Its transition into the digital age has given us a healthy variety of film services and community discourse, and may have spelled out the beginning of a long and slow change from below.<br />
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The story of film distribution will ring familiar if you remember the story of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-new-face-of-music.html">music distribution</a>: Emergent technologies, along with the advent of digital transfer, have allowed for film and television to be distributed for free. While you could download film and television like you could download music, you could also find your shows hosted on sketchy websites where you can watch them in your browser. Google "free" and whatever favorite film or television keyword you'd like, and you could probably find such a site.</div>
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The MPAA, much like its music counterpart in the RIAA, has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPAA#Anti-piracy_efforts">taken mostly unsuccessful steps</a> to combat online piracy. Their campaigns to discourage piracy have been met with <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/piracy-its-a-crime">mockery and criticism</a>, giving them a comical image that is fairly distinct from the RIAA's curmudgeonly, almost malicious public face. Movies make up <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/online-piracy/">a greater proportion of pirated material</a> than music. The statistics <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/putting-a-price-tag-on-film-piracy-1228/">remain vague</a> on how much money in the film industry has been lost to piracy, and the numbers that the MPAA likes to throw out <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/piracy-costs-megaupload-kim-dotcom-318374">tend to be inaccurate</a>. </div>
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As this old institution kept bashing its head against the wall, new (and legal) ventures were popping up that capitalized on the Internet's capacity for film distribution. Such companies could negotiate with studios and movie owners for distribution rights, acting as a middleman for cash flow. YouTube's video platform offered the ideal framework for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/movies">YouTube Movies</a>, allowing users to pay for movies on demand. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Video/b?ie=UTF8&node=2858778011">Amazon Instant Video</a> offers a similar service. <a href="http://www.hulu.com/">Hulu</a> offers streaming videos of TV shows and movies, with an expanded platform to include clips, trailers, and behind-the-scenes footage. Direct payment for service, premium options, and ad revenue all contribute to the profitability of these business models.<br />
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Preceding - and reigning high above - all of these on-demand services, however, is <a href="https://signup.netflix.com/">Netflix</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK5CAm8t4leTWsGYdbtn6tqPY1n2rsnvfGgT6aZZOjbPbcsiD9LxfkRFI3tdnvgAJzcgWMhw3cUxYap6TRwhfmwwB5IXhSqmAtfV_DqRczlSgt-2ImClqapZd4eTk4030vFhwk7sB6WE4/s1600/enhanced-buzz-23889-1380728118-41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK5CAm8t4leTWsGYdbtn6tqPY1n2rsnvfGgT6aZZOjbPbcsiD9LxfkRFI3tdnvgAJzcgWMhw3cUxYap6TRwhfmwwB5IXhSqmAtfV_DqRczlSgt-2ImClqapZd4eTk4030vFhwk7sB6WE4/s1600/enhanced-buzz-23889-1380728118-41.jpg" height="198" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">And they're just such practical people, too!</span></div>
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Netflix started dealing in video-on-demand before "on-demand" was an industry norm, with its early business model revolving around <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/4149765">actually mailing DVDs to customers</a>. The business model was ready for digital distribution before digital distribution became popular, and the company <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/business/25netflix.html">gracefully transitioned to the Internet</a>. The service now has <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/numbers-netflix-subscribers-205626746.html">over 37 million subscribers</a>. When the fourth season of Arrested Development was ready to air, it was not released on television, <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/03/netflix/">but on Netflix</a>.</div>
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Netflix continues to expand, seeking better deals for new movies and spurring the creation of Netflix-only original content. That isn't to say, however, that their current cache of movies is getting overlooked. Their movie library has <a href="http://gigaom.com/2011/01/20/netflix-streaming-gettting-worse/">over 20,000 titles</a> and can be navigated with a simple search function. The interface also has various behind-the-scenes algorithms that recommend different movies based on what the customer has previously viewed. Through this functionality, Netflix becomes a platform where contemporary blockbusters are just as accessible as obscure 1940s noir films. </div>
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This is a great equalizer in film consumption - no longer did you need access to film archives in order to have a breadth of older movies at your disposal. No longer were you forced to find outdated hardware in order to watch old VHS copies - or, shudder, beta copies - of old films. With the advent of digital distribution services like Netflix, anybody could become a film connoisseur. You could stream all of the Hitchcock movies one weekend, and stream the Marvel cinematic universe the next.</div>
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An increase in film consumption has led to a greater demand for <i>talking about</i> film consumption. And to this end, the Internet has allowed the cultivation of a new breed of "film buff".</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCoqx6_RXoj0jnkaF-xGlevg8r8doSnh7fsNUQOoxFxvfmJYUrkHcz0b-ygkTTS825BwsDBdM-sX7kex4AFarHq7PNx7zZIevL4rL2ky10M_dajzCJ3l_3DG5Vj4pER716o55XruPU7LY/s1600/Film_Reel_and_Case_by_TonyHarris1-1024x576-250x140.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCoqx6_RXoj0jnkaF-xGlevg8r8doSnh7fsNUQOoxFxvfmJYUrkHcz0b-ygkTTS825BwsDBdM-sX7kex4AFarHq7PNx7zZIevL4rL2ky10M_dajzCJ3l_3DG5Vj4pER716o55XruPU7LY/s1600/Film_Reel_and_Case_by_TonyHarris1-1024x576-250x140.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A breed that's probably never handled one of these.</span></div>
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The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/">Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB)</a> ranks among <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/imdb.com">Alexa's top 100 most visited websites</a>, and houses information on actors, trivia, and anything else regarding general motion picture. Plenty of such <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Online_film_databases">online film databases</a> have emerged over the years, reflecting the demand of discourse on film. Niche interests in movies can even be found in things like the <a href="http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page">Internet Movie Firearms Database</a>, which chronicles specific firearm models used in film. <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage">TvTropes</a>, despite <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/digital-jargon.html">all of its problems</a>, does a great job in categorizing common themes in media, including film.</div>
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Movie review outlets have found lots of success online as well. The late Roger Ebert made a fairly seamless transition to posting his reviews <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/contributors/roger-ebert">on a blog-like format</a>, with <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/">his website</a> having multiple talented contributors that keep the site relevant. <a href="http://www.reelviews.net/movies.php">Reelviews</a> is the brainchild of James Berardinelli, who began reviewing movies online as a hobby and has been described by the late Ebert as <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saving-silverman-2001">"the best of the Web-based critics"</a>. Other personalities like <a href="http://redlettermedia.com/category/plinkett-reviews/">Plinkett</a> and the <a href="http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic">Nostalgia Critic</a> have also gained notoriety among online fans, while <a href="http://cinemassacre.com/category/compilationmoviereviews/">Cinemassacre</a> and <a href="http://redlettermedia.com/">Red Letter Media</a> offer teams of web personalities giving their input on movies. These are just a drop in the bucket, of course - if you could post text on the Internet, then you could be a movie reviewer.</div>
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As more people began to join the online conversation about movies, it became valuable to develop ways to streamline these opinions in a more digestible format. <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/">Metacritic</a> and <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/">Rotten Tomatoes</a> aggregate reviews from film critics all over the web, giving viewers a convenient way to gauge popular opinion on a movie. These websites also have audience ratings, where the viewers themselves can chime in with their opinion. Review aggregation has become a successful online infrastructure that has <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/the-studios-wake-up-to-the-power-of-rotten-tomatoes/article626914/">considerable sway on media</a>, even <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB119024844874433247">beyond film</a>.</div>
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The activity <i>within</i> that infrastructure, on the other hand, is subject to some questionable results. The vetting process for who counts as a reviewer, for example, tends to be fairly lax, giving the input of Roger Ebert the same weight as the opinion of JoeNobodyWithABlog.com. There is also a developed illusion of objectivity when a popular opinion gains momentum in these aggregate reviews. It becomes harder to add a dissenting opinion without facing serious backlash. One film critic was <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/17/critic-faces-death-threats-over-bad-dark-knight-rises-review/">met with death threats</a> when he published a negative review of <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> that broke the film's 100% streak on Rotten Tomatoes.</div>
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The fundamental problem here is that nobody is really more qualified to consume film than anyone else. Much as we see within <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-new-nerd.html">nerd culture in general</a>, the modern online "film buff" is the equivalent of an eagle scout, collecting certain popular opinions on film like merit badges. They consume media, then they consume how others have consumed media, and then they separate themselves from each other by discriminating against how others are consuming media. But, in the end, nobody's creating anything or being particularly productive - they're just gorging on the creativity of others.</div>
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This brings us to another problem: The increase in film consumption through the Internet has <i>not</i> come with an equal increase in film <i>production</i>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_nPe0sBEtKrVFrTOBjZa59qYdhekUzYmfsE9ybCcECW54CXniVELq2dKjt67fLSTi2jOyV4MA5Rd-SL43_x8Ws3Ja98r4D7KtC6i1Du11q6d9leKGMQLZrHIU9Dq8K_38Xb7DNTxxHas/s1600/YTandVimeo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_nPe0sBEtKrVFrTOBjZa59qYdhekUzYmfsE9ybCcECW54CXniVELq2dKjt67fLSTi2jOyV4MA5Rd-SL43_x8Ws3Ja98r4D7KtC6i1Du11q6d9leKGMQLZrHIU9Dq8K_38Xb7DNTxxHas/s1600/YTandVimeo.jpg" height="117" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">What do you <i>mean</i>, I can't just point a camera at things and call it film?</span></div>
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We've spoken on <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-business-of-youtube.html">YouTube's</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-new-culture-of.html">great</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-future-of-youtube.html">successes</a> in cultivating a rich environment for content creators. The quality of YouTube videos can range dramatically (and we definitely aren't counting vlogs or Let's Plays as "film"), but the high end can include web series that cost <a href="http://www.rocketjump.com/channels/cost-of-a-web-series-part-2">over a million dollars to make</a>. <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a> markets itself towards the more "serious" film crowd, <a href="http://vimeo.com/groups/indie">celebrating indie filmmakers</a> and being <a href="http://mashable.com/2007/10/16/vimeo-high-def/">early adopters</a> <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5725941/attention-filmmakers-you-can-now-upload-full-length-films-to-vimeoin-hd">of HD</a>.<br />
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These platforms certainly thrive, but it is infinitely easier to consume film than it is to produce it. Here belies the major difference between the development of online film and the development of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-new-face-of-music.html">online music</a>.</div>
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Music and film have both seen technological improvements for consumer-grade gear as well as greater rates of consumption online. Successful music production relies on having technical skill with an instrument while possessing adequately high-end recording gear. Film production, on the other hand, needs teams of actors, appropriate scene space, direction of multiple audio-visual elements, and <i>far more</i> equipment than the typical recording gig.<br />
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Film's barrier of entry is much higher than music's barrier of entry, so people make fewer new films than they do new music. This means that a greater proportion of the music community can actually be involved with music production, inviting a level of discussion that will be more technical, creative-focused, and well-tempered than your average "I consumed this music this way and it me feel X because Y" discussion. I'm sure that discussions among film-makers are comparable to discussions among music makers, but it's rare to witness such conversations when there are so few visible film-makers among us online.<br />
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Music production is so varied - and music so diverse - that it is impossible to keep track of every album getting released. This leads to a fairly decentralized music community, where enthusiasts of certain genres or bands rarely have to deal with people who like completely different genres or bands. Film, on the other hand, is not as diverse as music, and do not get released as frequently as albums do. Hollywood blockbusters remain the centerpiece of most film discussion, and also happen to be the lowest hanging fruit for having opinions on movies. The film community ends up talking about the same films far more often than music fans talk about the same albums. This causes the film community to be more centralized, meaning individuals are going to butt heads more often.<br />
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On the other side of things, you can also compare this centralization phenomenon to <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/gamer-culture.html">gamer culture</a>. Video games are monumental tasks to create, and come out even <i>less</i> frequently than movies do. Gamer culture, as a result, is even <i>more</i> centralized than film culture. Gamers tend to congregate around the same subject material, which make individuals within the community butt heads even more often, which makes them appear louder and more obnoxious. Film straddles an uncomfortable middle ground between the relatively docile online music scene and the relatively shameful gamer scene.<br />
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So, what does this all mean for the future of film?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Not to spoil anything, but it probably isn't this.</span></div>
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Let's keep looking at music to help infer what might happen. The Internet was a source of extreme market disruption for the music industry, essentially toppling the status quo. This disruption was spearheaded by individual music enthusiasts along with amateur musicians. Platforms like Pandora and Soundcloud emerged to meet demand, and a new music landscape was born. For film, the platforms for film consumers have already been supplied, at least.<br />
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Some new films even get released with new technology in mind. The Veronica Mars movie project has <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project">successfully turned to Kickstarter to find funding</a>. Some movies have started getting <a href="http://perezhilton.com/2012-06-20-struck-by-lightning-theater-ondemand-release-date/">simultaneous releases to theaters and video-on-demand</a>. This first started happening with films that were not expected to have box office presence, but now there are talks of Disney and Sony Pictures <a href="http://www.marketintelligencecenter.com/articles/286532">testing out the waters</a>.<br />
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Meanwhile, Hollywood films grow stagnant. <a href="http://vimeo.com/19447662">74 out of the 100</a> "top ten movies of the year" from 2001 to 2011 have either been sequels to films, remakes of older films, or adaptations of other media into film. Couple this with the economic recession, and you see that it is the relatively unadventurous - but reliably profitable - film projects that get the millions of dollars in funding. In fact, modern movies <i>are</i> getting more similar - blockbuster films are so formulaic because <i><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.html">there actually is a formula for them</a></i>. Big-name directors like Spielberg and Lucas <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/is-hollywood-model-doomed-steven-spielberg-and-george-lucas-think-so-20130815">warn of Hollywood's inevitable implosion</a>.<br />
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I had touched on this towards the end of my <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-new-face-of-music.html">blog post on music</a>, but it bears repeating: further stagnation of the film industry may get to a point where independent video productions become a more significant competitive force for public attention. We see this happen with indie games among gamers, so why not film?<br />
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It's possible, but it might not happen for a while. Movie production cycles are often years in length, and we might have to wait as long as 15 years from now before we can discuss a marked change in the landscape of film. Plus, the established film industry is probably more than capable of adapting to a different movie formula in a few years - after all, they <i>are</i> already cognizant of the power of aggregate reviews.<br />
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For the film industry to be disrupted, we require a stronger showing of independent film and content producers on the Internet. As YouTube develops, the independent projects may get bigger and better, which will attract more funding. Will it ever get to the point where it can effectively counter the hypothetical Iron Man 8?<br />
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Only time will tell. After all, tomorrow is another day.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-82922371680666208492013-10-14T09:22:00.002-07:002013-10-14T09:26:44.128-07:00Digital ConspiraciesThe Internet can offer <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/as-real-as-it-gets.html">candid perspectives on reality</a>. The Internet can also <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/trolling-subtlety-and-lying-on-internet.html">lie to you</a>. Sometimes, the line gets blurred between the two.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Tin foil hats exist on the Internet, too.</span></div>
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The Internet is home to both intelligent people and not-so-intelligent people, to honest people and chronically dishonest people. Somewhere, these axes blur together, and you can find the loony fringe. Conspiracy theorists have been around for ages, but like with other things, the Internet has given community into an otherwise isolated and crazy hobby.<br />
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Today, we talk about the Internet's corners of conspiracies and the paranormal (and yes, they're fairly similar things).</div>
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Perhaps the Internet's first famous conspiracy theorist was Gene Ray, the great mind behind <a href="http://www.timecube.com/">Time Cube</a>. With jarring font sizes, Time Cube explains that earth is cubic and that there are four simultaneous Time points along with four 24-hour days that function harmoniously. The ONEists - those who only believe in one Earth, one day, one self, and so on - have all been dangerously misled by academia, and are not appreciating reality and time for all its cubic glory. I think.</div>
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Time Cube is so obviously crazy that it ends up being the most harmless kind of crazy. Gene Ray has had his time to shine in the limelight, getting <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1420072,00.asp">plenty of</a> <a href="http://mainecampus.com/2004/09/24/timecubecom-where-reality-as-we-know-it-is-a-lie/">media attention</a>, a <a href="http://www.bretthanover.com/video.html">documentary made about him</a>, and even an invitation to <a href="http://web.mit.edu/iap/www/iap02/searchiap/iap-4330.html">speak at MIT</a>. People have an ironic affection for who he is - a caricature who stands alone in his vision of the world, and an unwitting entertainer. I'd be willing to claim that nobody actually believes Time Cube except for Gene Ray.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">In his infinite wisdom.</span></div>
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Some people's crazy beliefs are significantly less harmless. We've spoken on <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/09/online-cults.html">online cults</a> before, and how they have led people to make horrible life decisions. The insanity that drives an online cult is a lot more subtle than Gene Ray's ramblings. One moment, you're learning about individual liberties and Bayesian probability, which are both legitimate and thought-provoking topics. The next moment, you're being told to leave your family and that you should donate money towards developing the singularity and "friendly AI".</div>
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This is a fairly common model among these fancier depictions of reality. An ounce of truth usually is present, but the extrapolations from that truth can be wholly insane. This was very strongly exemplified in 2004, during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake">Indian Ocean tsunami</a>. Members of the website DemocraticUnderground saw the the news and, being morally aligned against the Bush administration, opined that there were <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2005/01/04/disaster-cause/">"earthquake-causing weapons"</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/international/worldspecial4/03bloggers.html?ex=1178251200&en=5a792bb5cd1369e3&ei=5070&_r=0">responsible for the earthquake</a>.</div>
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Political conspiracies find lots of life in the age of the Internet. There is already <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">a major disconnect in how Americans get their political information</a>, which can help foster very bizarre ideas. It should be both telling and humbling that these problems appear on both sides of the political spectrum - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truther">9/11 truthers</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birther">Obama birthers</a> are both awful in their own ways.</div>
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There are plenty of online outlets for discussing conspiracy theories and paranormal stories, but the epicenter of crazy can probably be found on <a href="http://www.infowars.com/">Infowars</a>.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">What, the Onion isn't enough for you?</span></div>
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Infowars is an alternative news site run by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones">Alex Jones</a>, a radio host and documentary filmmaker. His list of supported conspiracies include <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/trutherism/2011/09/where_did_911_conspiracies_come_from.html">9/11 trutherism</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JnNemsc_BI">the 'faked' moon landing</a>, NASA killing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unjiAzdXK1E">'thousands of astronauts'</a>, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/talk-radios-alex-jones-the-most-paranoid-man-in-america-20110302">actually being a eugenics operation</a>, and many many others. Diehard infowars fans still believe that <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/internet-vigilantism.html">the failed internet vigilantism following the Boston bombing</a> revealed the truth behind the events, and that blaming the Tsarnaev brothers is a cover-up.</div>
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Infowars ranks <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/infowars.com">near the top 1000 most visited websites worldwide</a> on Alexa. Clearly, a lot of people are tuning in to share crackpot theories with one another. Before the Internet, these people's thoughts were likely kept to themselves. Infowars is one example of the uniting power of the online network, albeit a negative example.</div>
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Conspiracy theories can get very creative. So creative, that fabricating one can become an art form in and of itself. <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/creepypasta">"Creepypasta"</a> is a form of short story with strong paranormal or conspiratorial themes, designed to disturb the reader. They are the modern analog to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scary_Stories_to_Tell_in_the_Dark">"Scary Stories to tell in the Dark"</a>, and come in many varieties. Some focus on depicting <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/russian-sleep-experiment">secret government projects</a>, others try to <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pokemon-creepy-black">pervert fond memories from one's childhood</a>, and still others <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ted-the-caver">go right for the paranormal</a>.</div>
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Horror stories and conspiracy theories are similar beasts. They both feed on the doubt of the reader, starting from a basic level of knowledge and making the wildest inferences on that information. But while conspiracy theories often have the intent to suggest truth-value in their inferences, horror stories are often strictly out to provoke a response in the reader. Sometimes, in the case of screamers, they do so in the most basic way possible, but good online horror stories often aim for greater subtlety.<br />
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Though, they may in fact be more similar in function than we think.</div>
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The diversity of the online platform has allowed for many different kinds of horror stories. Creepypasta tends to be written in the form of short stories, but you can also find images photoshopped for the sake of being more disturbing, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Tf8vwgBSA">paranormal podcasts</a>, and Blair Witch-esque videos. Memes <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/candlejack">lampooning</a> <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/then-who-was-phone">the concept</a> have found modest popularity. This variety of media can empower storytellers to fabricate amazing myths. </div>
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Perhaps the most wildly successful of such myths is <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man">Slenderman</a>.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Do you see it, in the back?</span></div>
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Slenderman started as a few photoshopped pictures on a 2009 SomethingAwful thread, <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post361861415">for a paranormal pictures photoshop contest</a>. He was designed as a mysterious creature, tall and lanky, <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=4#post361904965">known to cause distortions in photographs</a>, thought to abduct children. Being in his presence can cause dizziness, sickness, and memory loss.</div>
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Word of Slenderman trickled down from SomethingAwful to <a href="http://www.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=Slender+Man">various</a> <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos?from=Main.TheSlenderManMythos">other</a> <a href="http://wikibin.org/articles/slender-man.html">websites</a>, and an online myth began to stretch its tall, frightening legs. The YouTube series <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmhfn3mgWUI">Marble Hornets</a> began shortly after the creation of the Slenderman pictures, further fleshing out the Slenderman mythos in an alternate universe where he is known as "the Operator". People began making <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/vxme0/slender_a_new_terrifying_horror_game_based_on_the/">Slenderman-inspired video games</a>, pitting the player against an invincible, constantly-advancing Slenderman.</div>
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Note that the origins of the Slenderman myth are completely documented. Nobody is <i>actually</i> fooled by the Slenderman myth. Yet, here are projects that have caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of people, getting them to actively participate in spreading the story.</div>
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At some point, stories like the Slenderman mythos are not about facts anymore. They are about conjuring imagery from the blurred areas of human experience and reason. They are emotional kindling, playing with our imaginations and causing us to feel a <a href="http://youtu.be/PEikGKDVsCc">fundamental deep creeping sensation</a>. The original creator of the Slenderman pictures had this to say on Slenderman:</div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Before you had angels and succubi, and then ghosts and spirits, today we have shadow people and inter-dimensional beings. The Slender Man, and other newly created entities, are just the newest addition in the progression of a long, and very real, human tradition. </span></i><i style="line-height: 1.46em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You’ve seen him, now you can’t unsee him." - <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man#interview">Victor Surge, KYM interview</a></span></i></div>
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The same can easily be argued for conspiracy theories. At some point, conspiracy theories are no longer about the veracity of the information. They instead become a way of telling a story that inspires raw emotion among its captive audience.<br />
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It never actually mattered if 9/11 really <i>was</i> an inside job (<a href="http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=911_morons">it wasn't</a>). The mere idea of it, though possible in the loosest sense of the word, invokes vivid imagery of a grand narrative behind the scenes. It inspires feelings of shock, fear, anger, and despair among its believers. A certain kind of person latches on to those emotions, and suddenly the narrative guides their values and policies.<br />
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You can begin your theory from somewhere honest, and you can come up with a story by exploring the possible outcomes from that starting point. Suspend your disbelief for too long, however, and you can end up deceiving yourself - and others - about the likelihood of your own theory. It takes a sufficiently intelligent person to draw a conspiracy together, but it takes a certain lack of self-awareness to let that conspiracy be what you consider truth.</div>
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And the Internet, a place for open expression and a haven for the self-absorbed, has given a way for the most devoted of conspiracy theorists to dive as deeply into the rabbit hole as they'd like. People like Alex Jones somehow <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2013/jan/08/alex-jones-pro-gun-tirade-piers-morgan-video">make it into mainstream news on occasion</a>, though luckily they are depicted as fringe.<br />
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Let us hope that they remain fringe. Horror stories can tease out our primal emotions because their content can be very graphic and intense. We should not play with narratives of reality so haphazardly.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-24713845983384377782013-10-07T08:47:00.000-07:002013-10-07T08:47:15.236-07:00WebcomicsRemember when you'd wake up on Sunday morning, pick up the newspaper from your driveway or porch, and then read thoroughly mediocre cartoons in the Sunday comics section?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The days before the Internet were desperate.</span></div>
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Thew newspaper is dead, but the spirit of the newspaper comic is alive and well. Webcomics and their ilk have found great popularity online, for a new generation to get their fix of mediocrity.</div>
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Let's pick on <a href="http://www.garfield.com/">Garfield</a>, for a little while.<br />
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Upon the birth of the online platform, traditional cartoonists quickly jumped on making websites for their brands. A comic like Garfield could now have a comprehensive website, complete with archives of every official Garfield strip in existence. Thanks to the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-great-ad-problem.html">power of ad revenue</a>, this brought another source of profit to the cartoonists.<br />
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Opening your work up to free online access, however, also empowers people to show more immediate criticism of your work. Although Garfield is the <a href="http://www.garfield.com/corporate_info/about_garfield.html">most syndicated newspaper comic in the world</a>, it isn't actually funny at all (and apparently, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/03/26/is_garfield_supposed_to_be_funny.html">isn't even supposed to be</a>).<br />
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Many people have jumped on the opportunity to <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/28653/7-hilarious-garfield-variants">lampoon Garfield</a> for its flat humor. <a href="http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/">Garfield minus Garfield</a> is an independent work where Garfield is edited out of the comic strips, suddenly making the strip about Jon's declined mental state and adding a dimension to the comic that even Jim Davis (Garfield's creator) called <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/03/AR2008040303083.html">"an inspired thing to do"</a>. The <a href="http://www.bgreco.net/garfield/">Random Garfield Generator</a> takes three random panels from the comic strip's archives and slaps them together, with the nonsense comic often being about as funny as a regular comic. A YouTube channel named <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/lasagnacat">lasagnacat</a> featured a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySGtniX4QrU">far</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwNVwiHAUUM">more</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yELOiYgR2aI">surrealist</a> interpretation of the comic strip, with each installment highlighting how unfunny each strip's joke is before veering right into left field. Even if the spins on the comic aren't necessarily coherent on their own, the fact that it's a Garfield spoof adds its own level of irony.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The <a href="http://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=3">surreal ones</a> are my favorite</span>.</div>
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But even outside of Garfield, a lot of newspaper comics weren't that funny at all. This is anecdotal, but a lot of people I know who even bothered to read newspaper comics would only swear by <a href="http://www.thefarside.com/">The Far Side</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes">Calvin and Hobbes</a> - everything else was basically noise. There had been an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_comics">alternative comic scene</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_comix">since the mid-20th century</a>, made by people who wanted something other than the mainstream content. However, the ability to circulate your work to a wide audience simply wasn't there if you weren't syndicated by a newspaper or major publisher.<br />
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Enter the webcomic.<br />
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The Internet's open platform enabled anyone to post content without having to worry about getting a publisher's support. Young artists looking to explore their creative faculties could do so online, and the fruits of their work could occasionally be surprisingly good. <a href="http://www.pbfcomics.com/">Perry Bible Fellowship</a> started out as <a href="http://www.dailyorange.com/2007/01/q-a-with-nicholas-gurewitch/">a newspaper comic</a> and eventually found its major success on the Internet. Its surreal aesthetic, often colorful in style but dark in humor, has won it <a href="http://www.ccawards.com/2008finalists.html">several</a> <a href="http://www.spxpo.com/2006-ignatz-award-recipients">online</a> <a href="http://www.harveyawards.org/previous-awards-nominees/2007-harvey-awards/">accolades</a>.<br />
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There are other webcomic flavors where that came from. <a href="http://www.harkavagrant.com/">Hark! A Vagrant!</a> goes for a Victorian aesthetic, making accessible humor on various pieces of literature. <a href="http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/">Pictures for Sad Children</a> exploits the expression of deadpan humor through use of soft gray imagery, non-capitalized dialogue, and dark or depressing narrative content. <a href="http://www.explosm.net/comics/3325/">Cyanide and Happiness</a> goes for a simple cartoon aesthetic with completely vile and over-the-top humor to go along with it. Comics like <a href="http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php">Piled Higher and Deeper</a> and <a href="http://www.questionablecontent.net/">Questionable Content</a> operate entirely by following the wholly mundane lives of their characters, presenting "slice-of-life" narratives that resonated with their audiences.<br />
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Because online content is so accessible, a lot of genres would emerge around the success of one or two webcomics. <a href="http://xkcd.com/">XKCD</a> caters towards "nerdy" humor, focusing on more academic subject matter. Other webcomics like <a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/">Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal</a>, <a href="http://abstrusegoose.com/">Abtruse Goose</a>, and others go after a similar niche, forming a whole subgenre of webcomics for science-loving nerdy types. <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic">Penny Arcade</a> became a tour de force within online <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/gamer-culture.html">gamer culture</a>, and webcomics like <a href="http://awkwardzombie.com/">Awkward Zombie</a>, <a href="http://www.vgcats.com/">VGCats</a>, and others cater directly to the interests of gamers. A sub-genre <i>within</i> gaming comics - the sprite comic - emerged as well, with <a href="http://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/03/02/episode-001-were-going-where/">8-Bit Theater</a> leading the charge and <a href="http://www.bgreco.net/kidradd.htm">many</a> <a href="http://www.bobandgeorge.com/">others</a> following in its footsteps.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/5t4xS2PqFFA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">So many gaming webcomics. And a not-so-subtle jab at <a href="http://www.cad-comic.com/">one of the worst ones</a>.</span></div>
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Much like how website administrators could create sites around their own interests and find <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">a like-minded audience</a>, webcomic authors could make cartoons that catered around their own interests and find a loyal fan base. Fans could even watch the artist grow their skills over time, fostering even greater loyalty to the artist. <a href="http://www.questionablecontent.net/">Questionable Content</a>'s cartoonist started as someone putting doodles on the Internet in-between doing a job that he hated. His drawing skills changed steadily over time while his audience also grew. Eventually he stopped working his other job and started working on the comic full time, making his income off selling merchandise and ad revenue.<br />
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Much like how YouTube saw the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-business-of-youtube.html">rise of the professional YouTuber</a>, we have seen the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_webcomic_artists">rise of the professional webcomic artist</a>. Much like YouTubers, the successful webcomic artists extensively network with one another, often making guest strips for each other's comics. Some webcomic artists even break out of merely publishing webcomics altogether. Brian Clevinger started out making <a href="http://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/03/02/episode-001-were-going-where/">8-bit Theater</a>, grew his name through his <a href="http://www.nuklearpower.com/">website</a> and comic, and now he publishes traditional-format comics like <a href="http://www.atomic-robo.com/">Atomic Robo</a>. The creators of Penny Arcade have developed a whole empire behind their work, hosting a <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv">breadth of gaming media</a>, hosting <a href="http://prime.paxsite.com/">gaming conventions</a>, and founding a <a href="http://www.childsplaycharity.org/">gaming-themed charity</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Somehow started by doodles about video games.</span></div>
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For all the praises that one can sing about webcomics, we should probably ask ourselves: in the larger picture, have webcomics really done any better than Garfield?<br />
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They certainly don't compete in terms of popular respect. Webcomics primarily get popular by word of mouth, and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/may/21/weird-world-webcomics-exterminatus-now">hardly ever get a mention in mainstream media</a>. This <a href="http://cloudculturecontent.blogspot.com/2009/02/on-webcomics-making-money-and-art.html">blog post</a> delineates some of the attitudes that traditional cartoonists have towards webcomic artists, accusing webcomic artists of making their living off advertisements instead of their actual work, and therefore being lesser artists for it.<br />
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Nor do they compete financially. Ad revenue and peddling merchandise can push the most successful webcomic artists to live fairly comfortable lifestyles, but the vast majority of webcomics <a href="http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/3766/so-you-want-to-draw-a-webcomic">do not bring in a profit for their authors</a>. Meanwhile, Jim Davis sits on millions of dollars from all of the Garfield merchandise that exists. Granted, he's been in the business for far longer, but it reveals an implicit advantage that traditional comics had: certain income, and mainstream popularity that could permit wider marketability.<br />
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Webcomics also tend to have narrower and more devoted audiences, which can sometimes be problematic for the authors. Andrew Hussie is the creator of <a href="http://www.mspaintadventures.com/">Homestuck</a>, a webcomic with a <a href="http://betabeat.com/2012/09/a-noobs-guide-to-homestuck-the-favorite-webcomic-of-internetty-teens-everywhere/">cult following</a>. His most devoted fans are infamous for being <a href="http://www.viddler.com/v/50b43270">obsessive</a> and <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/homestuck">perverse</a>, having <a href="https://www.change.org/petitions/in-response-to-the-recent-threats-and-hate-andrew-hussie-has-been-receiving-we-are-making-an-appreciation-letter-sort-of-item-i-wanted-to-ask-if-anyone-else-would-like-to-join-in-on-a-larger-scale-sign-this-petition-to-be-included-in-the-idea-that-we">sent death threats</a> to Hussie over plot twists and delayed updates. Whether Hussie's career success <a href="http://www.geekosystem.com/homestuck-namco/">isn't exactly suffering for it yet</a>, his brand is forever tied to a loony fringe on the Internet. The worst that we know Jim Davis had to deal with was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/11/12/garfield.ill.timed.comic/?hpt=T2">an ill-timed Veterans Day joke</a> that bothered all ten people who cared.<br />
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But that's all the stuff <i>around</i> the comic. Are webcomics better than something like Garfield in terms of <i>quality</i>? Do these comics, on the whole, make us laugh more often than traditional comics?<br />
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Oh dear god, probably not at all.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">are we really about to jump into the abyss of terrible webcomics right now</span></div>
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The webcomics that I've name-dropped happen to be some of the most successful out there. But most webcomics on the Internet are absolutely terrible, and even some of the successful ones can be pretty bad.<br />
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<a href="http://badwebcomicsarchive.blogspot.com/">Many, many webcomics</a> suffer from half-assed art, poorly contrived jokes, and awful storytelling. Some people even choose webcomics as their medium to express <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_17607_the-5-circles-baffling-web-comic-hell.html">their weird political views and sexual fetishes</a>. Some of these webcomics can get so bad that, in the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/trolling-subtlety-and-lying-on-internet.html">modern online context of trolling and subtlety</a>, it's hard to even say if their creators are just being ironic. Earnestly <a href="http://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/tails-trolled-fanart/">awful webcomics</a> can even end up having a following of people who read the comic entirely out of irony.<br />
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Then you have popular webcomics run by <a href="http://badwebcomics.wikidot.com/forum/t-401426">very problematic people</a>. For all the success that Penny Arcade has brought its creators, they've been <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/09/penny-arcade-expo-dickwolves/">shockingly unapologetic about their comic's rape jokes</a>. The webcomic Dominic Deegan, aside from featuring incredibly ugly art, also <a href="http://i.imgur.com/WHjWy.png">sexualizes dying women</a>, <a href="http://i.imgur.com/Cvsxq.jpg">has the only black character in the narrative be a criminal</a>, and features a plot point where <a href="http://i.imgur.com/1wEcJ.gif">a 14 year old girl is raped in order to save her</a>. This is certainly not an issue that you'll run into with comics that have to go through editorial scrutiny.<br />
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But then you have an issue that's also fundamental to how the Internet works - the content of even the most popular webcomics can get too insular to be funny.<br />
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Is <a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/color_codes.png">this XKCD comic</a> funny? I mean, if you don't get what the author is trying to do, it's just that resistors in circuits correspond to certain numbers. But is the act of accidentally saying resistor colors in place of numbers really all that funny of a concept?<br />
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The thing is, XKCD's demographics already cater to nerdy references, and since it's <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-new-nerd.html">sooooo cool to be a nerd now</a>, XKCD can get away with merely dropping a nerdy reference and not having to worry about humor. Couple this with the fact that making webcomics on a regular schedule can be very difficult, and you can anticipate that there will be lower quality comics here and there (much like in traditional newspaper comics, in fact). But if a comic's demographic is already niche to some degree, the comic can get away with poor humor so long as it hits the right buttons with its core audience.<br />
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The result is a lower quality comic, but if an outsider were to point this out, the core audience can hide behind a perception of being "nerdier" than you and say you simply don't "get" the joke. Sure, <i>within</i> the core audience, you have some weird effect where people are going to find the comic funny no matter what it is. If you're not in that niche, however, the comic is simply mediocre.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">No, no, I'm an engineer. I'm licensed to say this isn't very funny.</span></div>
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Newspaper comics are also of fairly low quality, but it may be because they have to go in the opposite direction - they have to appeal to a low common denominator, and their concept is whitewashed to the point of mediocrity.<br />
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All in all, the Internet has allowed good webcomics to be more diverse than what you'd expect to find in a newspaper. But with the way online audiences splinter, webcomics might have more in common with the old "alternative comics" scene than they do with traditional newspaper comics. And even the "best" webcomics can't avoid having some misses now and then. So yes, while your good webcomics probably tend to be better than Garfield on average, the quality remains very variant and there's a sore lack of self-regulation among webcomics.<br />
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That said, it's still reasonable to have enthusiasm about the webcomic scene. Perhaps things will go <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-future-of-youtube.html">the way of YouTube</a>, where webcomic artists develop a more centralized network with one another and become the gatekeepers to success for new webcomic artists. This way, you have an emergent vetting process for webcomic artists, and some degree of quality control. Such measures could allow for an increase in the quality of the average webcomic.<br />
<br />
...Or, things could just go <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/deviantart-and-teenage-psyche.html">the way of DeviantArt</a>, where the high quality stuff gets overshadowed by the strange fetish porn and Microsoft Paint anime.<br />
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I mean, I hope the first one happens, but if the second one were to happen then I guess that'd be kind of funny.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-34052799268811574532013-09-30T06:37:00.000-07:002013-09-30T06:37:06.455-07:00Energy Footprint of the InternetThe Internet, as remarkably resourceful as it is, must take in some resources to sustain itself. The cost may not be as visible as landfills or garbage islands in the middle of the ocean, but the cost still exists, and should be acknowledged.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Wastefulness, or just how I feel when I go on Reddit?</span></div>
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What is the energy cost of using the Internet? As it turns out, the prospects are pretty green.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>One source speculates that, at the time of the article's writing, the Internet uses <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/how-much-energy-does-internet-use2.htm">170 to 307 gigawatts of electricity per year</a>, or about two percent of worldwide energy consumption. Another source suggests that while the data is currently lacking, the direct electricity use of the Internet is at around <a href="http://www.techthefuture.com/technology/how-much-electricity-does-the-internet-use/">10% of total energy consumption</a>.<br />
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Some things on the Internet have more intensive energy use than others. Google alone accounts for <a href="http://techland.time.com/2011/09/09/6-things-youd-never-guess-about-googles-energy-use/">0.013 percent of the world's energy use</a>, which makes sense when one considers just how huge the company is. Facebook's energy use, by comparison, <a href="http://gigaom.com/2012/08/01/facebook-unveils-energy-use-carbon-emissions-data/">is cleaner</a>. Meanwhile, bitcoin mining is particularly energy intensive, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/12/what-bitcoin-teaches-us-about-the-internets-energy-use/">using about 150 thousand dollars of electricity per day</a> and further affirming <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">my general disdain for Internet libertarians</a>.<br />
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The <i>way</i> that we access the Internet matters as well - <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/cell-networks-are-energy-hogs/274961/">wireless cellular networks use more energy than traditional data centers</a>. Of course, data center efficiency can vary from company to company, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html">can be very wasteful</a>. The combined energy use of small network equipment (routers, modems, and other devices used by individual consumers) <a href="http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/u.s.-home-internet-equipment-sucks-enough-energy-to-power-silicon-valley">use about 8.3 billion kW-hrs per year</a>.<br />
<br />
But all in all, the Internet scales fairly well as far as energy costs are concerned. There have been some <a href="http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think/#ixzz2cS0YPCoA">rising</a> <a href="http://grist.org/news/your-iphone-uses-more-electricity-than-your-fridge/">voices</a> about the energy costs of the Internet over the years, but the more alarmist concerns tend to get <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/23/power-pollution-and-the-internet-if-its-really-bad-lets-tell-it-like-it-is/">thorough counters</a>. Some of these alarmists also <a href="http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/20/internet-is-energy-efficient-despite-what-the-coal-media-industries-might-tell-you/">seem to have a stake in the coal industry</a>, possibly looking for an excuse to stir up more business. For a giant international network, even 10% of total energy consumption is not so unreasonable. The Internet certainly shouldn't be the first place you worry about when you're thinking about cutting energy costs (that honor <a href="http://aceee.org/portal/transportation">might go to the transportation sector</a>).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">We're not quite hurting for a digital catalytic converter.</span></div>
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It's one thing to throw numbers around about the cost of using the Internet, but it doesn't mean much if we don't consider how much better or worse the alternatives are. What energy cost has the Internet saved us?<br />
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It's been reported that for every unit of electricity used up by the Internet, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2008/0213/p04s01-usgn.html">about ten times that is saved</a>. The ability to "go paperless", replacing business trips with video conferences, <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/culture/online-shopping-vs-driving-to-the-mall-the-greener-way-to-buy.html">deciding to shop online instead of driving to the store in person</a>, and other such things have drastically reduced our energy use in many other parts of our lives. Our increased online activity has also scaled very well: although Internet use increased millions-fold from 2000 to 2006, the Internet's energy use <a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/01/23/internet-power-growing-but-becoming-more-energy-efficient/">merely doubled</a>.<br />
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The Internet came around at a time when people had already been wrestling with environmentalism, the hole in the ozone layer, and other such concerns. Even as online entities have grown over the years, there has always been a mindfulness towards waste. Google is <a href="http://www.google.com/green/">aggressively green</a>, offsetting their carbon footprint through committing over a billion dollars to green energy initiatives and pushing for less wasteful databases. Their <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/googlegreen">"Green Talks"</a> are posted on YouTube for all to peruse.<br />
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Microsoft, IBM, and other technology companies has ranked among <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/galleries/2012/10/22/newsweek-green-rankings-2012-america-s-greenest-companies-photos.html">Newsweek's greenest companies</a>. Facebook updates on its environmental efforts on a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/green">dedicated page</a>. A sprawling number of environmentalism-focused websites <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1730759_1731034,00.html">have popped up over the years</a>. The Internet has skewed towards progressiveness, and its attitude towards its own doings reflect those values. As work is done towards more efficient devices and <a href="http://gigaom.com/2012/07/11/the-controversial-world-of-clean-power-and-data-centers/">using clean energy to fuel data centers</a>, the Internet's own footprint is likely to only improve.<br />
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We live in a time where we are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24292615">essentially certain of human-made global warming</a>. Even now, it's okay to feel good about using the Internet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-58065604207437540132013-09-23T12:27:00.002-07:002013-09-23T12:27:09.801-07:00Digital ResearchI've previously talked about the role of the Internet as <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-data-dump.html">a data generator</a> as well as <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-age-of-collaboration.html">a medium for collaboration</a>. I thought that I'd drive the point home some more by talking about a very specific example of these roles in action.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinPw6Bo8UHdg58RR51L5t02haCb3UW_1AouZHshfzX0nVlWa5agFjCd2bl3IzzVPLHM5FzNX8c1fptxOMJj67nCxo0zGgjGtU_bvLeSx3rpGdo1encwdzijRNERj8A0oj34ZDjIJ-Vg2E/s1600/Mycobacterium_tuberculosis_Ziehl-Neelsen_stain_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinPw6Bo8UHdg58RR51L5t02haCb3UW_1AouZHshfzX0nVlWa5agFjCd2bl3IzzVPLHM5FzNX8c1fptxOMJj67nCxo0zGgjGtU_bvLeSx3rpGdo1encwdzijRNERj8A0oj34ZDjIJ-Vg2E/s320/Mycobacterium_tuberculosis_Ziehl-Neelsen_stain_640.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Internet: <i>Another</i> piece of lab equipment!</span></div>
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Today, I'm going to talk about a weekend project of mine. It was an open-ended group assignment meant to prime us for the research process of grad school. The fact that we could even get anywhere with the project is a testament to the sheer power of the Internet as a resource.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
Two of my peers and I set out to pose a biology-related question. It could have been anything, provided that our work used data from a certain kind of biological method. We weren't given any equipment or materials to actually <i>do</i> this biological method, however. In fact, that wasn't the point. We were instead directed to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/">a genomics data repository</a> that had mountains of data obtained from this method.<br />
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The noteworthy thing about this repository is the size of any given set of data. Genomic data pertains to genetic information, which consists of billions of bits for any given sampling of a given organism. That doesn't even factor in information derived from genomic information, such as transcriptomic information, proteomic information, and other such -omic buzzwords.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Picture taken from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/opinion/sunday/science-and-buzzwords.html">here</a>. Science just looooves buzzwords.</span></div>
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The data is massive, but they are ultimately scrutinized by human beings. There is an implicit assumption that, even when a research team has data that they've independently collected, and even when they've found some trends within that data that are exciting and original, they're bound to miss a few trends among the millions of numbers on their spreadsheet. And of course, the newer the data and the less time people have had to examine the data, the more likely this is to be the case.<br />
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In other words, it was completely possible for our group to pose an original question using data that we did not originally collect. And while this is arguably possible for <i>any</i> kind of data, it's far more likely to happen when the data set is too huge for human beings to easily digest. So when we happened to find some data sets that had been uploaded to the database a mere two days ago, we were ecstatic.<br />
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The data that we found happened to be on bacteria (which we'll refer to as MT) that causes a certain kind of disease in humans. The data described two strains of MT, along with some information that we didn't really understand at first. That was okay, because when Googled some of the terms in the information, we were led to <a href="http://www.genome.jp/kegg/kegg1.html">another database</a>.<br />
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This second database dealt less with data sets and more with entire descriptions of fundamental biological systems. If you were to poke around it long enough, you could find <a href="http://www.genome.jp/kegg-bin/show_pathway?map01100">giant maps</a> of metabolic networks, along with descriptions of each individual chemical, each individual reaction, the individual protein actuating that reaction, and the genetic data that helps form the protein. Using this database, we were able to figure out that our data was describing proteins - specifically, how the proteins were different between the two strains of MT.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhu9Rpuok6BtWvsyU4iQa-iN-oPYvS25p7AgUCIM3X97hRysztGZqGqE3HMMGMEdvT9G57X385a5MDsF4v2bLTUm3UJjaTD8PsIv3VtNxs5m4lwrvPjO5j0GrOdxK4iMwdQEPpRbDaqHg/s1600/Myoglobin.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhu9Rpuok6BtWvsyU4iQa-iN-oPYvS25p7AgUCIM3X97hRysztGZqGqE3HMMGMEdvT9G57X385a5MDsF4v2bLTUm3UJjaTD8PsIv3VtNxs5m4lwrvPjO5j0GrOdxK4iMwdQEPpRbDaqHg/s320/Myoglobin.png" height="320" width="316" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Subtle changes in the amount of confetti.</span></div>
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At this point, we could begin asking questions about what we wanted to do with this data. We became particularly curious about which protein concentrations (a consequence of RNA expression) changed the most between strains. When we found some protein names that corresponded with interesting trends in the data, we set out to figure out what those proteins actually did.<br />
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The <i>way</i> that we figured out these protein functions is what is notable here. We would find protein listings from the previous database, and then copy their amino acid sequence onto <a href="http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi">NCBI Blast</a>, an online resource that can read these sequences and tell you what functions the protein most likely does. We would then search online publications for more details on these functional descriptions, in order to get an idea as to what is physically changing between the MT strains.<br />
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Let's just recap this whole process for you, so that you can appreciate what I'm getting at here. We started our project by searching on an online database for information. We then started searching on another online database to get information <i>in order to comprehend</i> the original information. And then, when we finally figured out what we wanted to do with this information, we did some more online searching.<br />
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At no point did we have to put on lab coats and trudge into a laboratory. We went from the beginning to the end of a research problem using the same strategy that one uses to make those stupid Google autocomplete jokes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8f6Zv37GM188-sZHKWXzfpaHgw-d6oRONSzDjXAEs0fMaQFEe6cP2Q6ickBI4LvOcBuzIH_7hmMBju2_PCJe1cNYl1CjKcSjI2JZ_1gR2PAJwlSnUqpU07LrmHjOWoRpa-xuUBN-gQVY/s1600/googleJokes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8f6Zv37GM188-sZHKWXzfpaHgw-d6oRONSzDjXAEs0fMaQFEe6cP2Q6ickBI4LvOcBuzIH_7hmMBju2_PCJe1cNYl1CjKcSjI2JZ_1gR2PAJwlSnUqpU07LrmHjOWoRpa-xuUBN-gQVY/s320/googleJokes.jpg" height="169" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Science!</span></div>
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I'm sure that if my peers ever actually read this blog post, they'll be quick to point out "Well, sure, you did all this, but your presentation material didn't exactly end up being publish-worthy." They're totally right - this was just a weekend project, and it wasn't approached with the intent to come up with something <i>truly</i> novel or rigorous.<br />
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Plus, the importance of experimental design and data collection doesn't go away just because it wasn't important that <i>we</i> collected the data. There were a few holes in our analysis that come from <i>missing</i> data. Models, after all, <a href="http://jsterman.scripts.mit.edu/docs/Sterman-2002-AllModelsAreWrong.pdf">can only take you so far</a>. The way to fill those holes would be to conduct experiments to get the data, which could be a monumental task in and of itself.<br />
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That said, the searching strategy that we used marks an important new strategy in how we ask scientific questions. Just because <i>we</i> probably didn't do anything interesting with this data doesn't mean that someone else couldn't. And while one could point out that our searching wasn't all that fundamentally different from a traditional literature search, the fact that it's now easy to analyze as much information as we did <i>in a weekend</i> is remarkable.<br />
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This is a level of collaboration that is hard to wrap one's mind around, but is easier to imagine than ever thanks to the Internet. We can collect information and share it online, so that any inquiring mind will be free to use it. We can make digital tools that we use to interpret that information for us in certain ways, so that we can use it further. There are now whole areas of scientific inquiry that can be pursued without ever entering the laboratory.<br />
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The Internet has become a fundamentally important tool in any intellectual investigation, and it will take us to strange and interesting places.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-56107700397376144022013-09-16T09:28:00.000-07:002013-09-16T09:28:14.462-07:00To Catch a RedditorA while back, I posted about a conflict between two website audiences - <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyberbullying-and-old-internet-war.html">YTMND and Ebaumsworld</a>. There was some controversy over content ownership, which resulted in an organized movement against Ebaumsworld by YTMND's community. Participants (probably having an average age of 14) jokingly referred to the event as "World Wide Web War 1".<br />
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Of course, that was back in 2006. The Internet's changed a lot since then - communities have grown larger and more heterogeneous. You wouldn't ever expect to see a spat break out between two website communities in this day and age, right?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Click to enlarge, and learn just how wrong you are.</span></div>
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In 2012, members of SomethingAwful's community launched an organized effort to shut down Reddit's vilest sub-forums - and won. Here is a story of equal parts social justice, online vigilantism, and inter-community drama.<br />
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Most of this story (and article title, too) is shamelessly taken from a SomethingAwful thread that <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025">you could probably read yourself</a>, but it would require forums registration that is not free. It's a shame, because I think watching the narrative unfold is very entertaining. Hopefully, after reading this post, you're left with a sense of amusement and moral satisfaction.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>As of this writing, Reddit sits at <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com">106 in Alexa's global website rankings</a>, and is the 33rd most visited website in the United States. The website has been hugely successful as a content aggregation website - the site format is designed around users efficiently sharing Internet links with one another. This has allowed massive amounts of online information to spread around through Reddit, with Reddit even calling itself <a href="http://www.reddit.com/">"the front page of the Internet"</a>.<br />
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Other website mechanisms on Reddit allow for deeper organization of these links. The upvote/downvote system allows users to vote on whether they like the content of a link. This allows for a user-regulated platform, where crowd-favored content can get pushed to the front page without any input from administrators. The subreddit system allows people to create new discussion spaces for any topic they wish. The subreddit creator would then be in charge of overseeing this new discussion space, much like how a new forums administrator would be in charge of overseeing their new forum. The subreddit system has allowed for a very diverse array of content on Reddit, and in many ways causing Reddit to <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lost-worlds.html">succeed the traditional internet forum</a>.<br />
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This system, of course, has its limits. It <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">permits the creation of echo chambers and noise content</a>. While Reddit has played a role in some <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">interesting</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">online</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/internet-vigilantism.html">phenomena</a>, it's also played a role in <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-generation-of-men.html">reprehensible</a> <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">ones</a>. This isn't to say that there aren't useful, informative, positive things to be found on Reddit - there certainly are. In fact, I'd wager to say that the majority of people on Reddit only ever interact with the good things that Reddit has to offer. However, make no mistake that there is a seedy underbelly.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hey, if <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/society/william-shatner-reddit-moderation-racism-sexism/">William Shatner says it</a>, it must be true!</span></div>
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The ranks of this seedy underbelly included pedophiles and distributors of child pornography. In the fall of 2011, Anderson Cooper had a segment on his CNN show <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuMdQRRLoYg">reporting on r/jailbait</a>, a subreddit where community members could exchange pictures of young girls for nefarious purposes. Cooper reported that the official response from Reddit's owners was the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"We're a free speech site and the cost of that is that there's stuff that's offensive on there...once we start taking down some things we find offensive, then we're no longer a free speech site and no longer a platform for everyone. We're exerting editorial control. And that's not what we are..."-Erik Martin, General Manager, reddit.com</i></blockquote>
A lot of Redditors were <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/anderson-cooper-vs-reddit/">both annoyed and amused by the report</a>, as some felt that it focused disproportionate attention to a minority of scumbags on an otherwise useful website. While that is a good point, the size of Reddit's illicit online circles was a little bigger than most wanted to believe.<br />
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Redditors had voted r/jailbait <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/7okgl/reddit_awards_best_reddit_of_2008_comment_here_w/">the best subreddit of 2008</a>. The subreddit had been getting <a href="http://i.imgur.com/jvNpg.png">tens of thousands of unique visitors a day</a> <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/kzlga/traffic_statistics_for_rjailbait/">even prior to the CNN report</a>. Reddit's co-founder Alexis Ohanian <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE">spoke against Anderson Cooper's report</a>, dismissing the accusations of peddling child pornography by saying that Reddit doesn't host the content anyway, and that kids should be taught not to post things online instead. While the administrators were fully aware that their online property was being used as a means to distribute borderline to blatantly illegal content exploiting children, they refused to do anything about it in the name of "free speech".<br />
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Anderson Cooper was <a href="http://gawker.com/5845488/anderson-cooper-discovers-reddits-jailbait-section">a bit late to the party</a> with his coverage of r/jailbait, but shortly after his report, <a href="http://www.webpronews.com/reddit-shuts-down-controversial-rjailbait-subreddit-2011-10">r/jailbait got shut down</a>. In r/jailbait's place, other subreddits popped up distributing the same content. It was a many-headed hydra, where chopping off the first head resulted in nine more to sprout, each catering to creepier and more specific jailbait fetishes. Reddit's administrators remained inactive about the issue, and it seemed unlikely that CNN would run another segment on the subject.<br />
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So, on February 2012, members of the SomethingAwful forum community took matters into their own hands.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">All in all, unlikely heroes.</span></div>
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A lot of SomethingAwful's content is dedicated to making fun of the Internet. SomethingAwful also houses some of the oldest forums online, and its members call themselves "goons". Goons had already bore some resentment towards Reddit for generally diverting web traffic away from other forums, but the clear racism and misogyny present in many subreddits made Reddit <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3419416">an ideal object of mockery</a>. The subreddit <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/">"Shit Reddit Says"</a> (shortened to SRS), a place for people on Reddit <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/o0pdv/meta_srs_faq/">to make fun of terrible Redditors</a>, is <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/y2wag/meta_in_celebration_of_the_1year_anniversary_of/">managed by goons</a> and has grown to be <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/society/reddit-pedogeddon-shitredditsays/">a community force unto itself</a>.<br />
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Around the time that r/jailbait got shut down, goons and SRS had taken it on themselves to reveal and make fun of the most flagrantly creepy offenders in that community. They called this reveal <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/kxkip/meta_the_best_of_pedogeddon/">"pedogeddon"</a>, and may have even had a role in <a href="http://blog.ohinternet.com/9290/reddit-awful/">getting Anderson Cooper to roll the story</a>. They had more ambitious plans the second time around.<br />
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Goons and SRS members decided to start a grassroots campaign against Reddit's pedophilia-themed subreddits. They made pre-designed messages to send out to churches, local politicians, and the press, in order to inform them of Reddit's illegal activities. They systematically took screenshots of statements by the managers of these subreddits so as to collect evidence of their awful behavior. They compiled lists of links to where you could submit stories to media outlets. Their aim was to reveal Reddit as a website that harbored blatant child pornography, to rouse outcry, and to get the subreddits shut down (if not all of Reddit shut down).<br />
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Of course, Reddit did not capitulate to this pressure right away. The process was complicated by how Reddit's administrators and the pedophilia subreddit moderators were in friendly contact with one another. Reddit's administrators <a href="http://i.imgur.com/yH6t5.png">would</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/QySNE.png">remove</a> comments that had the audacity to suggest banning the illicit material from the site.<br />
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Violentacrez, the former leader of the jailbait subreddit and then-continuing leader of other niche creepy subreddits, would interact closely with Reddit's higher-ups. Violentacrez in particular was a very <a href="http://i.imgur.com/TyDXj.png">messed</a> <a href="http://i.imgur.com/aSmre.png">up</a> individual who, paradoxically, had <a href="http://www.karmawhores.net/user/violentacrez">one of the highest karma values on all of Reddit for submitted links</a>. To make it clear, karma on Reddit is accumulated by providing links that get lots of upvotes from other Redditors. For Violentacrez to have such high karma would mean that a <i>lot</i> of people - all too high a number - liked his Reddit contributions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKVZjl_RlBD62xWMxmGBkrF1eyJkJ9tGP8SJJurbKd46mEIvhikv7UJotG7J2aPo-1SbkQ5ir5mNKXWO4b2ujPHoE7dzY_eTH_9ZcrPntC6nlHm2X5c4beniormSMnFrPIXjJmQt7kce8/s1600/nJ11V.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKVZjl_RlBD62xWMxmGBkrF1eyJkJ9tGP8SJJurbKd46mEIvhikv7UJotG7J2aPo-1SbkQ5ir5mNKXWO4b2ujPHoE7dzY_eTH_9ZcrPntC6nlHm2X5c4beniormSMnFrPIXjJmQt7kce8/s400/nJ11V.png" height="350" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The downside to featuring damning screenshots from Reddit is that Reddit is really ugly.</span></div>
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Some Redditors jumped to the defense of their beloved website, arguing that shutting down the subreddits wouldn't actually do anything to deter the spread of child pornography. The problem with this argument is that Reddit's administrators were <i>deliberately turning a blind eye</i> to child pornography being linked on their website. If Reddit's administrative policy is to permit links to child pornography on their website, then that would make Reddit eligible to be treated like any other website that links to child pornography, <i>even if</i> Reddit simultaneously houses legal, useful, interesting content.<br />
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Others offered the token arguments of internet libertarianism, saying that these subreddits were an expression of free speech. The problem here is that Reddit is a private entity, and its owners are still accountable for its web content. Private entities aren't responsible for upholding free speech, but they <i>are</i> responsible for obeying the law, and their subreddit content was not even meeting <a href="http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/ferber.html">that</a> <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2256#2_A">minimum</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copine_scale">requirement</a>.<br />
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Still others argued about a "slippery slope", saying that banning one thing would only lead to banning other things. This argument is self-evidently stupid.<br />
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In <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=28">less than seven hours</a> after SomethingAwful's <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3466025">rallying cry</a> was posted, Reddit made an official announcement saying that <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/pmj7f/a_necessary_change_in_policy/">they were going to ban suggestive and sexual content featuring minors</a>. One can only presume that the fear of total site shutdown was enough to get the administrators to rethink their policies. It took six years, and <a href="http://gawker.com/5884619/reddit-reluctantly-bans-child-porn">"careful deliberation"</a> on part of the administrators, but it happened.<br />
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Even SomethingAwful will make it clear that <a href="http://www.somethingawful.com/news/reddit-bins-kiddies/">not all Redditors are pedophiles</a>, and that Reddit's awful subreddits are not representative of Reddit as a whole. But the conflict represents a very interesting intersection of online phenomena.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4itiyqtfuiHjcwDEWS4RqYjYapG6ymcZ5OINgKryhjQprIgzX_Wz4yLmVKtCMdFK5YIqUhRGUx0PNLNYb-lv99fEGUpw8JFZJRWGqULU4Qte-3lD4E0MC0IrfHK6hs-IVdKgIiLhAg1g/s1600/tumblr_m9llq30hho1qbazc2o1_500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4itiyqtfuiHjcwDEWS4RqYjYapG6ymcZ5OINgKryhjQprIgzX_Wz4yLmVKtCMdFK5YIqUhRGUx0PNLNYb-lv99fEGUpw8JFZJRWGqULU4Qte-3lD4E0MC0IrfHK6hs-IVdKgIiLhAg1g/s320/tumblr_m9llq30hho1qbazc2o1_500.png" height="131" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Not even SomethingAwful's admin can resist.</span></div>
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On one level, you see the SomethingAwful community asserting their power in numbers in a very strategic way: by appealing to authority greater than them through grassroots campaigning aimed at public figures. This is a very unique kind of online vigilantism - it is directed mob behavior, with very well-defined goals. This was internet vigilantism at its finest, and is in sharp contrast to the garbled mess that was the Boston bombing's online vigilantism of 4chan and Reddit. It was also internet vigilantism with a stated intent that was completely noble. Thwarting the distribution of child pornography is an indisputably good thing.<br />
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On another level, you see a real spite for the Reddit platform emerge among the SomethingAwful community. While SomethingAwful doesn't really discriminate against what parts of the Internet to make fun of, Reddit has become <a href="https://twitter.com/Reddit_txt">a particular fixation for goons</a>. The platform is basically used as a slur among goons, and making fun of Reddit is low-hanging fruit that even the least clever among Internet users can do. It's hard to say if goons were exclusively motivated by concern for children in their actions against Reddit. A lot of them seemed to revel in the prospect of getting all of Reddit shut down, even when most of Reddit is certainly <i>not</i> illegal.<br />
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Meanwhile, Redditors who know about SomethingAwful's role in Reddit's policy change have gone on to make conspiratorial claims about goons, accusing SomethingAwful members of <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/l9wuw/remember_that_jailbait_thread_with_users_begging/">planting illegal material on Reddit</a> in order to condemn the website. This claim went completely unsubstantiated, and is more representative of Redditors' anger than it is of any actual event. This event didn't necessarily bring people on Reddit together as "Redditors" or SomethingAwful members together as "goons", but it <i>did</i> make people on Reddit harbor spite for an entire forum community, and it <i>did</i> empower goons to make general statements about another entire forum community.<br />
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Of course, it's worth noting that Reddit is a far larger website than SomethingAwful. Most Redditors probably don't even know about Pedogeddon, or even of the existence of SomethingAwful. There's a population imbalance at work here. It's a testament to a way the size of the Internet has evolved, as compared to the YTMND/Ebaumsworld conflict. Also note that the tactics used have evolved in sophistication since then.<br />
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As far as individuals involved are concerned, ViolentAcrez was eventually <a href="http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web">unmasked by a reporter on Gawker</a>, was publicly shamed, and eventually lost his job. As we come to expect from Reddit's nutty libertarian wing, a lot of people came to his defense, saying that this was unnecessary. Personally, I'm pretty okay with the unmasking.<br />
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Even now, we can see inter-community conflicts emerge online, and they can be very large in scale. What the next "internet war" we see online will be, I do not know, but it's clear that they can still happen.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-77734333031638637552013-09-09T06:05:00.000-07:002013-09-09T06:05:00.977-07:00Internet in the Middle KingdomIf you were to look at the <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites">top-ranked Alexa websites</a> right now, you'd probably recognize most of what you'd see. However, you probably wouldn't recognize two of the top ten most visited websites on the Internet - <a href="http://www.baidu.com/">Baidu</a> and <a href="http://www.qq.com/">QQ</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOA5OEMraLk1iwBeEm9nQPdJhxZiPyz5-k9dVUORKhvjBt049R4MtbcoQ-O07ALBzij4AaZKN7JJ-1LB_Gk7_p_iUXwdusMDiTE28flSqWKLhQDH2kOoOXcaWQbFoJ0dAdEJbAdB3wwXI/s1600/china-market-share-feb-2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOA5OEMraLk1iwBeEm9nQPdJhxZiPyz5-k9dVUORKhvjBt049R4MtbcoQ-O07ALBzij4AaZKN7JJ-1LB_Gk7_p_iUXwdusMDiTE28flSqWKLhQDH2kOoOXcaWQbFoJ0dAdEJbAdB3wwXI/s1600/china-market-share-feb-2013.jpg" height="202" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Google only 4% of the market share? Did someone turn my world upside down?</span></div>
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Baidu is a search engine, comparable to Google. QQ is a website that features news and other useful tidbits, comparable to Yahoo or MSN. Of course, they are both situated in China, and designed around servicing the Chinese online population.</div>
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As English-speaking Westerners, we tend to only see parts of the Internet that are also in English. That means we'll tend to run into people from the United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. Every now and then, you might run into someone from Northern Europe, Mexico, or South America. There are still several billion people in the world unaccounted for in our daily online experiences. How bizarre is it that we have this giant network technology, and yet our vantage points are still very limited by language?</div>
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Let's take a look at the Chinese Internet. I should note that I am writing this as a complete outsider to the culture, and can't speak Chinese at all. I cannot possibly do the subject adequate justice, but let's give this a try.</div>
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China's online users make up the <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/588576/china-top-of-the-world-pops-for-net-use">world's largest Internet population</a>, with <a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm#cn">over 500 million people</a> connected to the Internet. Having about 500 million Chinese citizens use the Internet is only about 40% of the Chinese population, as compared to the <a href="http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/us.htm">nearly 80% of Americans</a> connected online. This could be an indication of a greater disparity in lifestyle among the Chinese population, or that the Internet is taking longer to penetrate through Chinese society. Either way, it means that Chinese online habits are not as representative of Chinese life as American online habits would be to American life.<br />
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China's Internet is <a href="http://www.thomascrampton.com/media/chinas-internet-rarely-links-to-foreign-websites/">fairly self-contained</a>, with one scholar going so far as to say that China <a href="http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/index.php/jvwr/article/view/6206/6040">"is not [really] on the Internet"</a>, but rather in a giant local area network. It's certainly not as bad as North Korean Internet (an <i>actual</i> <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/8640881">giant local area network</a>), but accessing foreign websites through Chinese Internet is slow and difficult. Individuals and private entities must rent bandwidth from the Chinese government, who owns and controls all Internet access routes.<br />
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You might already be familiar with the Chinese government's love for censorship. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=xzFVxDDhfnkC&pg=PA360&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false">Before 2003</a>, there would be governmental staff supervising Internet cafes and blocking web content on the ground level. The Golden Shield project, also known as the "Great Firewall of China", was a top-down approach of the same idea, using automated technologies to filter the Internet. Foreign private enterprises have had to work through the Chinese government to promote their web content, often heavily censoring their websites in the process. Some, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/08/09/wikipedia-co-founder-refuses-to-comply-with-chinas-censorhip/">like Wikipedia</a>, have refused such conditions.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPAB4zP7IkvBEC84lWTbXuMRNuCWbr40JDyw0WDqICXGFx2sqk8CKQSbscC-Fd3GRqr8_-IF-3KHtEG6qOnnyGfZ-rVTCGO7owpjQY0pRno35Q8wRBGzrNmwCaONomfCrJiNUj2e5HhuI/s1600/greatfirewallofchina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPAB4zP7IkvBEC84lWTbXuMRNuCWbr40JDyw0WDqICXGFx2sqk8CKQSbscC-Fd3GRqr8_-IF-3KHtEG6qOnnyGfZ-rVTCGO7owpjQY0pRno35Q8wRBGzrNmwCaONomfCrJiNUj2e5HhuI/s1600/greatfirewallofchina.jpg" height="210" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">You'd think the Internet would have cooler pictures for "Great Firewall of China".</span></div>
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This more restrictive online environment has not kept Chinese Internet from developing its own quirks. Last winter, a meme spread around that was <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2241513/Forget-Gangnam-Aircraft-Carrier-Style-Hilarious-new-internet-meme-mimicks-Chinese-navy-personnel.html">based on the funny poses of</a> <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/china/21567978-taking-online">some Chinese aircraft carrier personnel</a>. The Back Door Boys, a Chinese student duo who got famous for lip-syncing some Backstreet Boys songs, got formal recognition in China's <a href="http://www.china.org.cn/english/entertainment/196567.htm">"Internet Media Awards"</a>. A few years ago, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H20dhY01Xjk">a video of an older man scolding a younger man on a Hong Kong bus</a> went viral, and became known as <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/07/hk.uncle/">The Bus Uncle</a>. Chinese online circles also have <a href="http://vimeo.com/40487807">their own catchphrases and memes</a>, like <a href="http://edu.people.com.cn/GB/6740971.html">"very erotic, very violent"</a> (you'll need to translate that page), a mis-spoken phrase from a television interview that went viral.<br />
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Some of these catchphrases and memes develop <i>because of</i> the restrictive online environment. <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/chinas-not-backing-down-but-green-dam-girl-fights-back/4988">Green Dam Girl</a> was a spoof of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/08/web-blocking-software-china">a web-blocking software that the government had made mandatory</a>. Terms like "River Crab" and "Grass-Mud Horse" come about as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html">euphemisms to governmental censorship</a>, because their Chinese characters are very similar to official governmental phrases like "Harmonious society". While their government can target the mis-using of their official terms, they cannot so easily target the use of terms like "river crab", because there is too much conflict between the hidden meaning and the use of the term to refer to <i>actual</i> crabs.<br />
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China's online crowd, much like <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">the Western online crowd</a>, has a <a href="http://www1.cnnic.cn/IDR/ReportDownloads/201302/P020130221391269963814.pdf">disproportionately younger user base</a>. These rumblings about the state of governmental censorship <a href="http://www.theworld.org/2012/01/why-chinese-political-humor-is-spreading-online/">have flourished online</a>, possibly serving as a good indicator of dissatisfaction among the youth. They've even developed their own version of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/internet-vigilantism.html">online vigilantism</a>, with the emergence of what is known as the <a href="http://humanfleshsearchengine.blogspot.com/">"Human Flesh Search Engine"</a>. Using the same <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090304053728/http://technology.timesonline.co.uk//tol//news//tech_and_web//article4213681.ece">spamming, info-gathering, and shaming tactics</a> that we see here, they've targeted both run-of-the-mill unsavory people as well as <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2008/12/29/human-flesh-search-engines-set-their-sights-on-official-misbehavior/">abusive officials</a>. Political blogs have <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/24/china-internet-generation-censorship">increased in number</a>, with a lot of people resorting to <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/network-of-networks.html">private networks</a> in order to read material too controversial for mainstream Chinese Internet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWg3Lz6Xk0pYWmhLIZJKPmUs__HW2j18Zh3CiD-gh6L8YDBEp24Se_N4ckU_UkbgS9C_dB7uOUpQ7QmUxnAYX4ct43U5w-YhVCMgfMqiuDNYABDvo3R7NFjTsGt-ucXtjinbq0yXPiwE/s1600/220px-White_caonima_toy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIWg3Lz6Xk0pYWmhLIZJKPmUs__HW2j18Zh3CiD-gh6L8YDBEp24Se_N4ckU_UkbgS9C_dB7uOUpQ7QmUxnAYX4ct43U5w-YhVCMgfMqiuDNYABDvo3R7NFjTsGt-ucXtjinbq0yXPiwE/s1600/220px-White_caonima_toy.JPG" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A symbol for subverting oppression.</span></div>
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Now, I have to restate a disclaimer. All of this information comes from Western accounts of Chinese Internet activity. Most of my links are Western-based, and the few that <i>aren't</i> Western-based <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China">were found on Western websites</a>. If we're being honest with ourselves, then we can never really know what kind of interesting quirks of digital expression have arisen within Chinese Internet unless we're immersed in it.<br />
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There's no way that a couple of links can account for the online activity of hundreds of millions of people. We also have to bear in mind that the links that we see will be biased by what is considered reportable. We hear a lot of press about <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21271849">hacking incidents</a> that originate from China, and we also hear a lot of discussion about the political implications of Internet in China, but Chinese "online culture" can't properly be examined from our vantage point. A lot of Western "online culture" doesn't make it to Western media, so how can we expect Chinese "online culture" to get reported at all?<br />
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In the face of this absence of reporting data, let's try to use Alexa (<a href="http://d0x.com/alexa-vs-compete-vs-quantcast-vs-comscore-vs-hitwise-vs-nielsen.html">flawed as it may be</a>) to get some more quantitative analysis. It's evident from site rankings that some Chinese websites are just as actively used as our own. As mentioned before, Baidu and QQ rank among Google, Yahoo, MSN, and YouTube in website use. Scrolling down <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites">the Alexa list</a>, you'll find online shopping website <a href="http://www.taobao.com/">Taobao</a>, news and microblogging site <a href="http://www.sina.com.cn/">Sina</a>, and others. A lot of these websites have <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/china.com.cn">gender ratios</a> <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sohu.com">that</a> <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/soso.com">consistently</a> <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sina.com.cn">over-represent</a> <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sogou.com">women</a> as compared to the rest of the world's Internet use.<br />
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Looking around <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;0/CN">China's top 500 websites</a>, you can start seeing some Western websites emerge on the list <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;5/CN">past the 100 mark</a>. It sheds some light on the proportions of Chinese web traffic. According to Alexa at this time of writing, LinkedIn is ranked as the <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;9/CN">230th most visited website in China</a>, yet China comprises <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/linkedin.com">only 0.6%</a> of LinkedIn's total web traffic. Pinterest <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;16/CN">ranks at 403</a>, but only gets <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pinterest.com">0.7% of its traffic</a> from China. Flickr appears <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;18/CN">at 401</a>, with an impressive <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/flickr.com">1.3% of its traffic</a> from China. Even Facebook and Tumblr manage to peek through, with comparably low percentages of Chinese traffic.<br />
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It's no surprise that Western websites are primarily populated with Westerners. If you assume that Tumblr has <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/tumblr-pageview-machine-bigger-than-wikipedia/">about 10 billion page views a month</a> (a low estimate at this point, surely), then 0.7% Chinese traffic only accounts for 70 million of those views. But if Facebook is pulling in <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-is-first-with-1-trillion-page-views-according-to-google/3009">trillions of monthly views</a>, and if Baidu, QQ, and others are pulling in comparable numbers with an almost exclusively Chinese population, then those 70 million Tumblr views are incredibly tiny. Yet, Tumblr manages to be on China's top 500 most visited websites.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6tdxsPkJU1G6kdvd7MgNG0mGitzusKuvw1vcUOv3MRkd5SMu3vaq-Lyq75ZIITIQ6nM2m2u__dojNDswhRr3P7KZOIsHY2ikUUSmDJczVUYvW2zqaPs8ZU-R0-wiIAtRFJY6naR0xGyc/s1600/pintereststuff.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6tdxsPkJU1G6kdvd7MgNG0mGitzusKuvw1vcUOv3MRkd5SMu3vaq-Lyq75ZIITIQ6nM2m2u__dojNDswhRr3P7KZOIsHY2ikUUSmDJczVUYvW2zqaPs8ZU-R0-wiIAtRFJY6naR0xGyc/s1600/pintereststuff.jpg" height="320" width="241" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A lot of their websites are <a href="http://socialtimes.com/renren-launches-pinterest-clone-in-china_b88008">just copies</a> <a href="http://www.techinasia.com/are-pinterest-clones-the-new-groupon-clones-in-china/">of ours</a>, and our websites <i>still</i> show up on their top websites.</span></div>
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It doesn't appear to take too many page views for such websites to appear on China's "top websites" list. This could indicate that a lot of Chinese web traffic is concentrated on its top 100 websites or so, which would allow for oddities like Tumblr and Pinterest to show up as sub-100, but still top-ranked, Chinese websites. It's possible that China's online communities are a lot more centralized than ours are.<br />
<br />
Of course, verifying this would require surfing through the depths of Sina's microblogging scene and other such websites. For most of us, we'd be at the mercy of Google Translate, which would give us spotty results at best. If we assume some degree of universality in human behavior, then most of those posts would most likely be <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">uninteresting, perhaps inane noise</a>. Since most online content is user-generated, and since most Westerners do not get involved in Chinese online affairs, it's rare to ever see content that references or links to Chinese websites - unless, of course, it's news.<br />
<br />
It is a little ironic that Western websites still show up among China's most visited websites, yet most people in the United States would never set foot in Chinese websites. It seems that governmental censorship is not as strong a force as individual ignorance or apathy. Of course, I appreciate the individual liberties of the West, and I would not advocate learning Chinese for the sake of looking at more of the Internet, but we should admit to ourselves (and I'm just as guilty here) that our world is a lot smaller than we'd like to think.<br />
<br />
It makes me wonder what kind of doors would open if more sophisticated translation technology were available. There is a whole pool of interesting people that are on our network, and we almost never interact with them. It's mind-boggling to think of the experiences that we're not hearing about, from people whose culture is very different from our own. I think we would all - myself included - benefit from greater exposure to these corners of the Internet, though there are clear hurdles to overcome before we can do so.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-89591798488177640862013-09-02T04:35:00.002-07:002013-09-02T05:28:44.853-07:00Online CultsA "cult" is hard to define. The term is used <a href="http://www.cultfaq.org/cultfaq-perspectives.html">very subjectively</a>, and <a href="http://altreligion.about.com/od/controversymisconception/a/cult.htm">usually pejoratively</a>. Typically the most fervent anti-cult movements are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_countercult_movement">run by religious people</a>, and that's a slippery place from which to argue against differing beliefs. The concept is inevitably tied to fringe - and harmful - religious beliefs, practice, and institution, but the details are very fuzzy.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyqdEFFCiCiutQx_4xqtOhmU2IC0i-kfU0LZNZspRQoWNaRZeBzQfHFu517l2ecRDYN7rfbbQuTYWmlJSC3gGioADatLRMHN47ofL1HINr9wNCwl5HoB08cMBoXXv1d6Yqyy1q_AZ3Zo/s1600/snuggie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyqdEFFCiCiutQx_4xqtOhmU2IC0i-kfU0LZNZspRQoWNaRZeBzQfHFu517l2ecRDYN7rfbbQuTYWmlJSC3gGioADatLRMHN47ofL1HINr9wNCwl5HoB08cMBoXXv1d6Yqyy1q_AZ3Zo/s1600/snuggie.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Nonetheless, this is how I imagine cultists on the Internet.</span></div>
<br />
We've talked before about how the Internet has given atheism <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">a loud platform</a>, but what about new religious movements? While the numbers did indicate that non-religious numbers were <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx">on the rise</a>, we can't necessarily assume that the "no religion in particular" category excludes people that participate in cults, since they might not even think of it as a religion. We also know that the Internet can be <a href="http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-cyberbalkanization.htm">very insular</a>, allowing for strange community quirks to develop.<br />
<br />
Since we're talking about <i>online</i> religious movements, we won't include the movements that started <i>before</i> the Internet. Even though Heaven's Gate had a (hilarious) <a href="http://www.heavensgate.com/">website in the mid-90s</a>, we wouldn't count it because they got their start <a href="http://www.has.vcu.edu/wrs/profiles/Heaven'sGate.htm">in the 1970s</a>.<br />
<br />
Let's explore what the Internet has come to offer by way of new religious movements.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In 2005, a YouTuber-to-be called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/Onision">Onision</a> attempted to start an online cult named Sicesca. The website was shut down in 2006, but <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060402220709/http://sicesca.com/">is archived here</a>. The website's content is written very obtusely, but there seem to have been promises of enlightenment and an emphasis on environmentalism and animal rights. His attempt at a cult went forgotten for a while, but he has since referenced it in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N86sY-zOw_Y">one of his YouTube videos</a>. Now that Onision has a sizable YouTube following, he has a very prominent platform on which to promote his ideas.<br />
<br />
However, as far as I can tell, Sicesca - or whatever may have succeeded it - doesn't have any current activity, so let's move on.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.freedomainradio.com/">FreeDomain Radio</a> is the online outlet for libertarian blogger and <a href="http://www.freedomainradio.com/About.aspx">"self-described philosopher"</a> Stefan Molyneux, who explores concepts of "freedom philosophy" in his podcasts and articles. The website ranks among <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freedomainradio.com#trafficstats">the top 100,000 websites visited in the United States</a>, and presents itself as "alternative news".<br />
<br />
Molyneux ramps up the usual libertarian "freedom from force" garbage by describing the family structure as a coercive entity. After all, since you are forced into your family ties, then true freedom must come by deliberately rejecting your family, right? The FreeDomain Radio community calls this "DeFOO" - Departing the Family of Origin. The von Mises Institute, a <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mises.org">more mainstream</a> libertarian outlet, thrashes Molyneux's libertarian arguments as <a href="https://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=383">"preposterously bad"</a>.<br />
<br />
The Alexa data reveals that most of the website visitors don't have a college education, suggesting that a large portion of Molyneux's audience is younger than college-aged and therefore already in a period of rebelliousness against their family. There is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/15/family-relationships-fdr-defoo-cult">at least one verified account</a> of a teenager and regular visitor to FreeDomain Radio running away from home and cutting all ties with their family. Other such stories can be found on various blogs, devoted to <a href="http://www.molyneuxrevealed.com/">countering Molyneux's message</a> and <a href="http://www.fdrliberated.com/">discussing the general destructiveness of FreeDomain Radio</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhuYDv_DcKkBRD5p7ErowS698bt6xZGgqMymT3L_ALtWpZbxBEQXdAeuN4C29CWAXJqIPn6mCnbzes9oGK4Z0fKi-6oQQQ2n2lCLrxS7bfio0m1s2rX9v0lZdwoqZ7QuFVCmvEzbtgkzI/s1600/leave-quote-run-away-run-from-home-water-Favim.com-418417_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhuYDv_DcKkBRD5p7ErowS698bt6xZGgqMymT3L_ALtWpZbxBEQXdAeuN4C29CWAXJqIPn6mCnbzes9oGK4Z0fKi-6oQQQ2n2lCLrxS7bfio0m1s2rX9v0lZdwoqZ7QuFVCmvEzbtgkzI/s1600/leave-quote-run-away-run-from-home-water-Favim.com-418417_large.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">And let's do it because a cult told us to!</span></div>
<br />
As far as uniquely "online" cults go, some new religious movements exist that could not possibly have existed before the Internet. <a href="http://kopimistsamfundet.se/english/">Kopimism</a> is a completely online-born religious movement, whose members - called Kopimists - believe that copying and sharing information <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/the-information-will-get-out-a-new-religion-for-file-sharers/237058/">is a virtue</a> that should be celebrated and revered.<br />
<br />
Kopimism has even been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16424659">recognized as a legitimate religion</a> in Sweden, and at least one <a href="http://kopimistsamfundet.se/blog/2012/04/29/first-kopimist-wedding/">Kopimist wedding</a> has been performed. Their logo is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopimi#Kopimi">Kopimi symbol</a>, a copyright alternative designed to specifically encourage the "kopimied" work to be copied as much as possible.<br />
<br />
According to <a href="http://www.kopimistsamfundet.org/main/kopimist-constitution">their constitution</a>, Kopimists declare the internet "holy" and have private ceremonies online that are forbidden from being recorded. Reading through the mix of organizational jargon and internet slang, it's hard to tell if these people actually take themselves seriously, or if they're a bunch of people exchanging files in secured meeting spaces.<br />
<br />
The group seems to be very focused on free proliferation of information, which seems to be more like a political stance than a religious identity. It is possible that Kopimism is similar to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastafarianism">pastafarianism</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism">discordianism</a> in that it exists to make a tongue-in-cheek point. On their <a href="http://www.kopimistsamfundet.org/main/what-is-kopimism">"What is Kopimism?"</a> page, they explicitly say that they "do not make claims regarding gods or supernatural forces", and that they registered as a religion because they "deserve the same recognition and respect" as other faiths.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz88HxLMwgmqni69WEHZle2Pfk0f4kqE4EUZity3FkcJ7DUGEFgFmD3bA22yvJf-uY83UwhB6Dfqp6IRuV-yRExImn7wdqBd7gKUHNp7bsHPOZPVbAuqHdOE9PjrkY7cG6sut-C6ZQ3Yg/s1600/Kopimizm.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz88HxLMwgmqni69WEHZle2Pfk0f4kqE4EUZity3FkcJ7DUGEFgFmD3bA22yvJf-uY83UwhB6Dfqp6IRuV-yRExImn7wdqBd7gKUHNp7bsHPOZPVbAuqHdOE9PjrkY7cG6sut-C6ZQ3Yg/s1600/Kopimizm.svg.png" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Thou mayest ctrl-c and ctrl-v, but of ctrl-x thou shalt not press of it."</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
How far do we want to stretch the label of "cult", anyway? Kopimism, on paper, is a new religious movement, but it doesn't seem like a <i>cult</i>. There's some negative connotation to the term "cult" that separates it from merely being a "new religious movement". After checking around some online sources <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cult">for definitions</a> and <a href="http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm">common traits</a> <a href="http://people.howstuffworks.com/cult1.htm">found among cults</a>, let's define our criteria for cults to be:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Having an authoritarian leader</li>
<li>Having fringe beliefs, which <i>may</i> be dangerous, and <i>may</i> be false</li>
<li>Imposing (or suggesting, since it'd be rather hard to impose <i>anything</i> on someone through the Internet) lifestyle changes for its adherents</li>
<li>A strong emphasis on getting money and/or recruiting members</li>
<li>"Thought-reform", "mind-altering practices", or deliberately affecting how its adherents think in some way</li>
<li>A strong distinction between those outside the group and those within the group, often incorporating insider language</li>
</ul>
</div>
An author of one of the anti-FreeDomain Radio blogs goes into a very good <a href="http://www.fdrliberated.com/stefan-molyneux-psychology/c-word-how-recognize-destructive-cult/">explanation of cults</a>, and contends that when people <i>usually</i> talk about cults, they mean a specific kind of new religious movement that is destructive to its followers. While there may be a lot in common between cults and more mainstream organizations, we can make an essential distinction by talking about "<i>destructive</i> cults".<br />
<br />
This makes sense, because we know that a "cult following" doesn't carry the same connotations as "following a cult". <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-new-nerd.html">Nerdy fandoms</a> can be notoriously devoted to their hobby of choice, obsessively following the work of famous authors, artists, and other content producers. These content producers rarely (if ever) try to command an authoritarian role among their fans. These people are not cult leaders. Their work is not designed to preach a message or to be doctrine.<br />
<br />
Despite authorial intent, a very fringe number of fans will still venerate their favored artist, and actually <i>do</i> treat their hobby like a religion. Even very isolated individuals can connect with like-minded people on the Internet, form organized communities, and then organize conventions and other meetups to celebrate their hobby. These are people who take their consumption habits <a href="http://imgur.com/NKHtc">to the</a> <a href="http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/020/4/d/my_room_anime_books__dvd_and_others_by_luffynotomo-d4n39ig.jpg">extreme</a>, where it becomes destructive to them. Luckily, they do not have to dictate how the functional, (relatively) well-adjusted majority enjoys the creative output of others.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdlfYYampXmrMDMTuUSh9iSL3XatbCLMwjw00KLXmdgLFocLsNwgJErG9-_z8Z2TrRWiu2qwhEMyIrEKQkKAY1mCF88gstiU8aHHT0tvmRjU1uNaJd3WEgxOL4RpHQwpyRy8WeTrWwqx4/s1600/tumblr_lpiwqw3WyJ1r18quno1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdlfYYampXmrMDMTuUSh9iSL3XatbCLMwjw00KLXmdgLFocLsNwgJErG9-_z8Z2TrRWiu2qwhEMyIrEKQkKAY1mCF88gstiU8aHHT0tvmRjU1uNaJd3WEgxOL4RpHQwpyRy8WeTrWwqx4/s1600/tumblr_lpiwqw3WyJ1r18quno1_500.jpg" height="320" width="237" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Of course, some fringe audiences are <a href="http://betabeat.com/2012/09/a-noobs-guide-to-homestuck-the-favorite-webcomic-of-internetty-teens-everywhere/">more</a> <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/homestuck">visibly</a> <a href="http://www.viddler.com/v/50b43270">crazy</a> than others.</span></div>
<br />
We also know that "cult of personality" does not have the same connotations as "cult", either. We've previously discussed the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">cults of personality that some administrators have</a> with their website community. Unlike artists, administrators <i>do</i> have some authority over their website community because they have control over the website interface. Since administrators likely direct their website to their own tastes, the people who end up being regular visitors to the website probably have similar tastes to the administrator. We also know that a lot of online communities tend to be very cliquey, <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">often with their own catchphrases, social dynamics, and prerequisite community lore</a>.<br />
<br />
However, there is never any obligation for site members to love, like, or agree with the site administrator. Most administrators are very impartial to community activity on their websites, and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">impose the bare minimum of regulations</a> on their user base to avoid legal issues or readability issues. There <i>are</i> communities with tighter rules, but those rules never exist to venerate the administrator. If anything, those administrators receive far more anger than they do adulation.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZODtmaHIQng?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The SomethingAwful administrator narrates a NSFW email that he received from one of his biggest fans.</span></div>
<br />
Still, just because a lot of these online hubs and communities aren't really cults (let alone destructive cults) doesn't mean we <i>couldn't</i> have a cult-like online hub.<br />
<br />
Let's explore this idea by looking at Less Wrong, an online community <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/digital-jargon.html">that I've previously written about</a>. I mentioned in the previous post that they've <i>already</i> had accusations of being a cult levied against them, so that gives us reason to check them out a little more thoroughly.<br />
<br />
We already talked about their peculiar insider language that they use with one another in the older post. They also <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong_meetup_groups">organize meet-ups together</a> for members to meet each other in real life. This isn't unusual - people who go on <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/meetup">Reddit</a>, <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/meetups">Tumblr</a>, and other websites have organized meetups in the past as well (meetups on online communities may be <a href="http://www.somethingawful.com/news/gooncon-2k4-where/">laughable</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywjhADvzXW8">cringeworthy</a>, <a href="http://youtu.be/_IqDF7YSCDE">shameful</a> events - but they're not <i>unusual</i>).<br />
<br />
Less Wrong meetings can incorporate a little more than the usual nerdy online awkwardness. They are actively concerned with making Less Wrong <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/43s/starting_a_lw_meetup_is_easy/">"a stronger community"</a>, have <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/crs/how_to_run_a_successful_less_wrong_meetup/">written an extensive guide</a> to running proper meetups, and even <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/4ul/less_wrong_nyc_case_study_of_a_successful/">closely examine successful instances of meetups as case studies</a>. Here is an excerpt from one of their Christmas-time meetup summaries, aptly called a "ritual report":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;"><i>"The night begins with many sources of light - from candles and oil lamps to gas lanterns to florescent bulbs to lasers and lava lamps. We begin with fun songs like “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Fish Men.” As the night progresses, we turn the lights off, one by one, and the songs grow darker. We occasionally read relevant snippets of Lovecraft, then abridged versions of Eliezer’s Sequences. We read the Litany of Tarski, over and over, each time facing a darker possibility that we must prepare ourselves for." ~<a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/8x5/ritual_report_nyc_less_wrong_solstice_celebration/">A "Ritual Report"</a></i></span></blockquote>
You'll notice that part of their ceremony was reading from the "Sequences", which are blog posts that Less Wrong's administrator, Eliezer Yudkowsky, penned a few years ago. Yudkowsky's <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences">Sequences</a> detail many of his pet ideas within transhumanism, "Bayesian epistemology", artificial intelligence, and other topics pertaining to "Rationality".<br />
<br />
As far as I can tell, Yudkowky has not had a direct hand in organizing these meetups, nor has he asked anyone to incorporate the Sequences in such meetups. These people are just so enthusiastic about "rationality" that they consider his writings to be essential, and have even written <a href="http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/66u/rewriting_the_sequences/4cc0">alternative</a> <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/User:Academian#Abridged_entry_to_the_LessWrong_community">versions</a> of them so that more people read them. These devoted members call themselves "Rationalists".<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/">The way that Less Wrong people define rationality</a> is far more involved than <a href="http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=rationality">the conventional definition</a> of rationality. It is more specific, and involves a lot more of their strange terminology than most might be able to stomach. This is important - the way that Yudkowsky and Less Wrong people define "rationality" <i>is different from</i> the way that most people define rationality. Bear that in mind as you read this, so as not to confuse their "rational" talk with what you think is rational.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/5c0/epistle_to_the_new_york_less_wrongians/">According to Yudkowsky</a>, rationality "<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use</span></span>". On his personal website, he writes about the <a href="http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues">virtues of rationality</a>, writing in a style that borders on religious:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1.15em;">
<i>"How can you improve your conception of rationality? Not by saying to yourself, “It is my duty to be rational.” By this you only enshrine your mistaken conception. Perhaps your conception of rationality is that it is rational to believe the words of the Great Teacher, and the Great Teacher says, “The sky is green,” and you look up at the sky and see blue. If you think: “It may look like the sky is blue, but rationality is to believe the words of the Great Teacher,” you lose a chance to discover your mistake.</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1.15em;">
<i>Do not ask whether it is “the Way” to do this or that. Ask whether the sky is blue or green. If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it.</i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 1.15em;">
<i>You may try to name the highest principle with names such as “the map that reflects the territory” or “experience of success and failure” or “Bayesian decision theory”. But perhaps you describe incorrectly the nameless virtue. How will you discover your mistake? Not by comparing your description to itself, but by comparing it to that which you did not name." -<a href="http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues">Eliezer Yudkowsky</a></i></div>
</blockquote>
Yudkowsky's pet ideas have been accused of being <a href="http://plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html">misplaced</a> and <a href="http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/08/21/the-singhilarity-institute-my-falling-out-with-the-transhumanists/">delusional</a>. Yudkowsky is <a href="http://yudkowsky.net/">not an academic</a>, and allegedly <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky#Genius_or_crank.3F">hasn't even finished high school</a>.<br />
<br />
That didn't stop him from founding what is now known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Intelligence_Research_Institute">Machine Intelligence Research Institute</a> (MIRI) in 2002, an organization devoted to "Friendly AI" research. Despite being called a research institute, their "publications" <a href="http://intelligence.org/all-publications/">only began appearing in peer reviewed journals in 2012</a>. Those particular papers in 2012 were in two <a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=19900192593&tip=sid&clean=0">low-impact</a> <a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=15435&tip=sid&clean=0">journals</a> that are outranked even when examining <a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=23675&tip=sid&clean=0">journals in the same field</a>. Other papers have been published in Singularity Hypotheses, whose website appears to <a href="http://singularityhypothesis.blogspot.com/">run out of a blogger site</a> and <a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=Singularity+Hypotheses&tip=jou">doesn't even appear in the SJR database</a>. They do have several conference proceedings under their belt, but presenting in a scientific conference <a href="http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/hep/help/published.shtml">can demand lower rigor</a> than publishing in a scientific journal.<br />
<br />
Of course, sometimes Yudkowky can get his works published by <a href="http://lesswrong.com/user/Eliezer_Yudkowsky/">getting them into chapters of other people's books</a>, but that is a far less selective arena than peer-reviewed publication. This all goes without mentioning his <a href="http://www.hpmor.com/">Harry Potter fanfiction</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv0ryZRvr7dsswcqa2EdqqhiNf1ecq2WXxY6N6diU7ewvczGKk0iUmVHnnAAqhbEsjZ_V2VIu_1BexQ6JBa0-t2U6gnZGjDbE3tU9IscNJZAaIfiC6Z5a4WMXOE_CiW2f_6nTeCDDE6Ts/s1600/be-rational-get-real_design.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv0ryZRvr7dsswcqa2EdqqhiNf1ecq2WXxY6N6diU7ewvczGKk0iUmVHnnAAqhbEsjZ_V2VIu_1BexQ6JBa0-t2U6gnZGjDbE3tU9IscNJZAaIfiC6Z5a4WMXOE_CiW2f_6nTeCDDE6Ts/s1600/be-rational-get-real_design.png" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Rationality and reality are apparently not compatible.</span></div>
<br />
There are <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/h58/how_do_you_interpret_your_positive/">other people who feature prominently on Less Wrong</a>, some of which are other bloggers on the Internet, others of which are researchers affiliated with MIRI. Despite these other contributors, Yudkowsky has historically possessed most of the spotlight among his peers. The community contributes their own thoughts on rationality, and often build on Yudkowsky's pet ideas from the Sequences. They even jokingly <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/4g/eliezer_yudkowsky_facts/1qhd?c=1">glorify</a> <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/d6/the_end_of_sequences/aad?c=1">Yudkowsky</a>, inserting him in <a href="http://www.sl4.org/archive/0707/16399.html">strange fanfiction</a> and <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/4g/eliezer_yudkowsky_facts/">Chuck Norris-esque jests</a>. While Yudkowsky may not be the one organizing all of the meetups, he certainly embraces a role as community leader.<br />
<br />
Yudkowsky, along with some other administrators, maintains control over the content on his website. <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk">Roko's Basilisk</a> was an on-site incident where a contributing user wrote about a version of Pascal's wager involving a theoretical future artificial intelligence. The writings were consistent with ideas already proposed in Less Wrong, but Yudkowsky's response to the content was to <a href="http://kruel.co/lw/r03.png">sputter, rant</a>, and <a href="http://kruel.co/lw/r04.png">ban all discussion of it on his website</a>. His provided reasoning was that Roko's Basilisk had caused extreme psychological distress to members of his community. This, coming from someone who supports a community that <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/21b/ugh_fields/">favors overcoming initial reactions of disgust to "rational ideas"</a> and sincerely argues <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/uf7">in favor of torturing a man for 50 years over dust flying in the eyes of a sufficiently large number of people</a>.<br />
<br />
Less Wrong and MIRI also have a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20121019105054/http://singularity.org/blog/2012/08/06/july-2012-newsletter/">sister organization</a>, the Center for Applied Rationality, which offers workshops on how to improve your ability to think with rationality. For the <a href="http://rationality.org/faq-workshops/#0.1_cost">low price of $3900 USD</a>, you can spend a week with them <a href="http://rationality.org/faq/#applied">learning about how your brain works</a> and how you can improve your thinking skills. They'll even keep in touch with you <a href="http://rationality.org/faq-workshops/#0.1_follow-up">for six weeks afterwards</a> to make sure that you "adapt to the rationality material". Of course, Yudkowsky is on the team <a href="http://rationality.org/about/">as a curriculum consultant</a>.<br />
<br />
So, we have a leader with fringe ideas on artificial intelligence. He exercises authority over which ideas are allowed to propagate in a community that <i>loves</i> his ideas. A whole wing of his supporters - along with this leader himself - are open and dedicated to taking your money while striving to reform the way you think. He founded and helps run an organization that has questionable authority in the field that they claim to research. And of course, let's not forget their nonsense language. There you have it, folks - the Less Wrong online community <i>certainly</i> fits the bill of cult.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkpITmqEYpnfWUwvt3NYkUYfEQgIuE1ijW4NEKGkOa2ZH48_gspG8aCMN0EcxLZpJIqQQJNfXFhxmaBFFqkl9lTYEqSpIMtcDLTR2SBpEPY3_8tZjaVbmlJQVApN6ItZdsQJOiGFYR5N0/s1600/robot-artificial-intelligence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkpITmqEYpnfWUwvt3NYkUYfEQgIuE1ijW4NEKGkOa2ZH48_gspG8aCMN0EcxLZpJIqQQJNfXFhxmaBFFqkl9lTYEqSpIMtcDLTR2SBpEPY3_8tZjaVbmlJQVApN6ItZdsQJOiGFYR5N0/s1600/robot-artificial-intelligence.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Quick! Someone give this thing a Snuggie!</span></div>
<br />
But, is Less Wrong a <i>destructive</i> cult? Potentially.<br />
<br />
There's also MetaMed, an organization stemming from MIRI that focuses on <a href="http://www.metamed.com/">"personalized medical research"</a>. Don't confuse this with <a href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/glossary=personalizedmedicine">"personalized medicine"</a> - MetaMed instead uses <a href="http://www.metamed.com/static/bayesnets.pdf">Bayesian networks</a> to give you "actionable options". Of course, hiring someone to scour literature data in order to find obscure treatments <i>could</i> be valuable, but the service more strongly resembles <i>medical consultation</i> and should not be confused with personalized medicine or medicinal research. It's also medical consultation that costs about $5000, and is <a href="http://www.metamed.com/faqs">highly unlikely to be covered by insurance</a>.<br />
<br />
One blogger, closely affiliated with Less Wrong's community, <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/rah-second-opinions.html">has discussed MetaMed on his own blog</a>, explaining that some rationalists advise trusting MetaMed's opinions over traditional doctors' opinions because MetaMed comes from within the rationalist community. Indeed, <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/gvi/metamed_evidencebased_healthcare/">the pitch for MetaMed on LessWrong</a> is awfully disparaging to traditional doctors, and promotes MetaMed as an organization with "names [that LessWrong people] will find familiar", with researchers that "have also read LessWrong".<br />
<br />
Yudkowsky has already gone on record to say that <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/qa/the_dilemma_science_or_bayes/">Bayesianism is superior to the scientific method</a>, and now MetaMed as being promoted as a superior alternative to the conventional health care system. While there are certainly valid criticisms of the health care and hospital system, doing so in favor of a start-up that lacks a transparent record of success (they have <a href="http://www.metamed.com/all-testimonials">testimonials</a>, but the praises stop short of any mention of being successfully treated or cured) seems disingenuous. At its potential worst, it is self-promotion for the sake of profit, and may not actually significantly benefit its customers.<br />
<br />
It is yet to be seen whether Rationality will have any sort of greater influence or authority in the future. One could argue that it is too early to make judgment (and indeed, most of the PhDs working at MIRI seem to be younger and merely beginning their careers) but a lot of Less Wrong's core members seem to have already made the judgment that Rationality is the superior way. This could hurt people.<br />
<br />
Rationality is happening at a very interesting time in history. It's possible that they are the first among many new-age religious movements to deal with their particular subject matter.<br />
<br />
In fact, we've seen something similar happen in the 20th century with extraterrestrial life.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpiny0tgvK6_kVLCiPY2forqc7q1jLCsl7vKMAsRo8nB0D_TCqktWNNOv39JxtKaAqc8BXxNo5HIWqKIMbnjVs21MZN0BfZJbmQSpjxjABfJDpsMVQ86s_CEfvfbmyEpFqVaqu95cCusc/s1600/ufos-over-michigan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpiny0tgvK6_kVLCiPY2forqc7q1jLCsl7vKMAsRo8nB0D_TCqktWNNOv39JxtKaAqc8BXxNo5HIWqKIMbnjVs21MZN0BfZJbmQSpjxjABfJDpsMVQ86s_CEfvfbmyEpFqVaqu95cCusc/s1600/ufos-over-michigan.jpg" height="229" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Yesteryear's singularity.</span></div>
<br />
UFO religions <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_religion">caught on like wildfire</a> during the 20th century, in a time when flight technology and space exploration were finally gaining widespread support and legitimacy. Sure, human flight was talked about prior to the 20th century, but that was a time of gliders and hot air balloons - actual flight, let alone into space, was a pipe dream. As the Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, and Carl Sagan dominated public imagination, some individuals' imaginations ran more wildly than others.<br />
<br />
Some people conceived of benevolent extraterrestrial life along with the necessity of seeking, welcoming, and embracing superior life forms. Some people fabricated entire mythologies around human origination, the afterlife, and good and evil in terms of great sci-fi epics. They were fringe organizations, but still earning a reasonably large following - Scientology, for example, has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/business/10scientology.html">tens of thousands of American members</a>. Raelism is allegedly the world's largest UFO religion, and also has a membership <a href="http://wwrn.org/articles/19567/?&section=raelians">in the tens of thousands</a>.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, here we are in the 21st century, and information technology is booming. The Internet has connected people like never previously seen. We produce so much information on this network that <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-data-dump.html">it brings deeper information into human visibility, and we need new programs and automata to see it all</a>. New professions are emerging in machine learning and informatics, with implications seen everywhere from biology to sociology to economics. The way that technology has advanced in the past few decades is truly inspirational.<br />
<br />
So is it so surprising that we suddenly have a group of people who conceive of benevolent artificial intelligence along with the necessity of seeking, welcoming, and embracing superior ways to process information through "Rationality"?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjStQe8tXFYpRQo-4wysWTbJd2WKi8kTcIs1n8xo2XL8n4pxwODlUPBhdYW8FWtM1beBkwJKplvmsbTw7cqF4_rOPimf2ayFCGcamNqb92J_ktOksg_tbRVGi8pO_HRx8V_AweJDZR49Xg/s1600/stock-photo-1212595-information-super-highway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjStQe8tXFYpRQo-4wysWTbJd2WKi8kTcIs1n8xo2XL8n4pxwODlUPBhdYW8FWtM1beBkwJKplvmsbTw7cqF4_rOPimf2ayFCGcamNqb92J_ktOksg_tbRVGi8pO_HRx8V_AweJDZR49Xg/s1600/stock-photo-1212595-information-super-highway.jpg" height="160" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Thanks, information superhighway!</span></div>
<br />
It's obvious to say that Kopimism could not exist without the Internet. But Less Wrong and Rationality likely could not either. Sure, supercomputers and artificial intelligence have been a pillar of science fiction since the emergence of computers in the 20th century, and transhumanists have been calling themselves 'transhumanists' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism#History">since the 1980s</a>, but back then, these fields were farther removed from reality than they are today. The Internet has given us far more intuitive notions of collective behavior, mass information, automation, and other concepts essential to imagining the topics of science fiction. And of course, these technological leaps have mostly been spurred by people who don't have any visible affiliation with transhumanism at all.<br />
<br />
Followers of Rationality - again to emphasize, different from conventional rationality - are imaginative human beings trying to make sense of exciting current trends in technology. And as the technology progresses, we'll probably see more people like the Rationalists in the future. They are a product of our times, and our times happen to be focusing on information technology right now.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
If Rationality is actually similar to their UFO religion forefathers (and let's be honest, I could be wrong), then we can expect Rationality and its ilk to always be fringe. Once in a while, they'll do something that reminds the world that they exist, but they will ultimately be inconsequential, and dismissed by people in industry, academia, government programs, etc who do work in computer science and information technology.<br />
<br />
All that said, though it may be important to point out and criticize the cults, we must take care not to disparage the cultists too heavily. We're all guilty of believing strange things once in a while, so we ought to have some humility if we're just going to disparage someone for believing different strange things than we do. If their beliefs are not harming them or others, then the cult members can likely maintain functional lives while also happening to believe strange things.<br />
<br />
The best thing that a person can do to help cult members is recognize the agency of cult members, keep resources on the cult available, and offer support if circumstances within the cult get dangerous. I'm certainly one to do my part in that.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-26431834990169135302013-08-26T06:00:00.001-07:002013-08-26T06:18:07.076-07:00Trolling, Subtlety, and Lying on the InternetPeople lie on the Internet? Why, that's simply <i>insane</i>!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH6kQ4SrARm4SL6EoHblsbmuRxwNPxPMLCv6N6sgC-iVEGzVGLMzEB818uYi0hVwkFAX8Zt_Md5dA1PWddmUAIESXHwc7ZKncvMGWvlggPCwMySkWfpVvm9S_eOSqZfYQEOSiagPI_w1k/s1600/b89.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH6kQ4SrARm4SL6EoHblsbmuRxwNPxPMLCv6N6sgC-iVEGzVGLMzEB818uYi0hVwkFAX8Zt_Md5dA1PWddmUAIESXHwc7ZKncvMGWvlggPCwMySkWfpVvm9S_eOSqZfYQEOSiagPI_w1k/s1600/b89.jpg" height="201" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0">Radical concept</a>.</span></div>
<br />
Lying is an ancient concept, but every new interface of human communication brings new ways to deceive. From outright hoaxes to games around message intent, the Internet has brought us entirely new ways to be subtle and disingenuous. And, in a bizarre way, it's probably making us smarter.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>The Internet has been a platform for a large number of <a href="http://blog.testfreaks.com/information/internet-email-hoaxes-scams/">hoaxes and scams</a> to propagate. Online deception is a problem that <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-great-ad-problem.html">plagues online advertising</a> even to this day. Concerns about <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-symptoms.aspx">phishing</a> and other scams have forced services and companies to increase network security and warn customers about suspicious links and emails.<br />
<br />
Lying online has even changed how people celebrate certain holidays. April Fool's Day was traditionally a day set aside for pulling pranks on people, and the Internet latched onto that idea by <a href="http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/">conjuring elaborate lies</a> <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/04/01/techs-best-2013-april-fools-jokes/">whenever April Fool's day comes around</a>. April Fool's Day may have a unique position as the holiday that the Internet has made <i>more</i> observed. You can't really say that <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">about Christmas</a>.<br />
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<object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/Y_UmWdcTrrc/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/Y_UmWdcTrrc&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/Y_UmWdcTrrc&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Well, it's about time!</span></div>
<br />
When you first go online and start using services like social networks, you voluntarily start putting information about yourself on the Internet. You choose what information you add about yourself online, and are therefore indirectly in control of what information about yourself goes public. If you're lying about personal information, then you don't have to worry about things like tone and body language giving you away. You can rehearse your video content, pose for your pictures (or just take other people's pictures from the internet), and edit what you write as much as you'd like before going public, making lying easier than it's ever been before.<br />
<br />
In 2007, a person on YouTube going by the name of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/Daxflame">DaxFlame</a> started posting video blogs about his daily life. He was <a href="http://youtu.be/ALPOqESM3F8">socially awkward</a>, would recount <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bybmhr8REkM">cringe-worthy moments</a> of his life, and would coin <a href="http://youtu.be/bVGRc5b3iD4?t=2m30s">incredibly strange catch-phrases</a>. Viewers would tune in to watch him make a fool of himself on camera. Most of them assumed that DaxFlame was some kid with a lot of social problems and very little self-awareness.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, DaxFlame was a fictional character. The person that appeared in the videos was an actor who wanted to practice his skills to be a better performer while attracting attention to himself. He has since gone on to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3967702/">star in movies like <i>21 Jump Street</i> and <i>Project X</i></a>. DaxFlame wasn't even the first person to fool YouTube viewers in this way; he was preceded by a YouTuber known as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/lonelygirl15">lonelygirl15</a>, whose video blogs escalated in outlandishness until the user finally admitted that it was all fiction.<br />
<br />
Sometimes these elaborate pranks take a more mysterious form. In the mid-2000s, a website called <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060203190342/http://eon8.com/">Eon8</a> launched, with a ticking counter set to end on July 1st, 2006. The website featured a world map, with red dots placed on heavily populated areas. No other information was available about the website or what the counter was for, so the Internet went <a href="http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/eon8">wild</a> <a href="http://eon8whatthehellisit.blogspot.com/">with</a> <a href="http://eon8theinvestigation.ytmnd.com/">speculation</a>.<br />
<br />
People started getting panicky, wondering if Eon8 was going to be an international attack, or release of a virus. So many people visited the Eon8 website on July 1st that the website <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/eon8">actually crashed</a> from all the web traffic. It turned out that Eon8 was a social experiment by some college student, who wanted to see <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070714181842/http://gods4suckers.net/archives/2006/07/01/eon8/">how the Internet would react to a lack of information</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPl11BOihoHJtNX9Foj8PPrheFdnGD4syRV5Zd3UrYi2lW2a-L6LTpONlt9wBnEHHvzxLNbzvsN-Q4huyrGOiCGuiWHWU8kT5v7FYhwkiUr9rKOL5HlLsTD_n3OP-lrtTeNdbi7-KfCYI/s1600/179101560_660fabadee_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPl11BOihoHJtNX9Foj8PPrheFdnGD4syRV5Zd3UrYi2lW2a-L6LTpONlt9wBnEHHvzxLNbzvsN-Q4huyrGOiCGuiWHWU8kT5v7FYhwkiUr9rKOL5HlLsTD_n3OP-lrtTeNdbi7-KfCYI/s1600/179101560_660fabadee_o.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Truth is, maps can freak people out.</span></div>
<br />
Sometimes, these deceptions can get malicious. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier">suicide of Megan Meier</a> is a famous example of this. Megan, aged 13, befriended a 16 year old boy on MySpace named "Josh Evans". "Josh Evans" was a hoax account made by the mother of one of Megan s classmates. The mother, Lori Drew, was frustrated with Megan spreading gossip about her daughter at school. so she made an account with intent to get information about Megan and humiliate her.<br />
<br />
"Josh" strung along Megan for some time, exchanging messages on MySpace and presumably conveying romantic interest. Megan had a history of self-esteem issues, and likely welcomed the attention of a boy that she thought was attractive. When "Josh" suddenly started sending abusive messages to Megan, she decided to hang herself with a belt in her bedroom closet.<br />
<br />
It's a tragic and infuriating story, especially when you consider that this was all caused by an adult (and neighbor, in fact) looking to harass a 13 year old girl. Her story has helped push discussion of cyber-bullying into <a href="http://www.meganmeierfoundation.org/">public spotlight</a>, and also offers a sobering lesson in what is possible with online deception.<br />
<br />
The fortunate thing is that hearsay about online deception spreads quickly, and it influences our behavior online. We know that when we see a YouTube comment with the username of a famous person, <a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121230214649AAAoEAG">it probably isn't actually them</a>. When someone's gotten you to click on a shock site before using a misleading link, you begin getting wary of where hyperlinks may lead you. Being able to discern these things online requires us to be skeptical, which comes from understanding how things on the Internet work and from occasionally falling victim to a trick or two. In a way, being online trains us to become <i>more</i> skeptical.<br />
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We can consult legitimate sources to verify information that we distrust. Websites like <a href="http://www.snopes.com/">Snopes</a> function as the myth busters of the Internet, reporting on urban legends and hoaxes while - and this is crucial - <i>citing</i> their sources. Wikipedia gets some flak for being a collaborative project, but a discerning individual knows to look at the references of a given Wikipedia page instead of making a blanket statement about a page's claims. Checking references goes deeper than seeing if there's a bibliography section, as well - anyone can just <a href="http://www.verifiedfacts.org/">put up a bibliography next to some nonsense text</a>. We can independently investigate the sources that these pages give us.<br />
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On the Internet, authoritative and reliable sources are incredibly valuable. We have in fact talked about this before regarding <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/arguing-on-internet.html">arguing on the Internet</a>. In that post, I talked about the ways that arguing online can be helpful and even better than traditional argument in some regards.<br />
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In fact, let's talk about arguing online again for a moment. What kind of deception can happen in online discourse?<br />
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I skipped over one particular scenario in that previous post about arguing online: Where the message of the argument is disingenuous. When the primary intent of the arguer is to disrupt conversation and provoke its readers into emotional responses, it is known as trolling.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_6_8IDDD1oBLTW8R7ZRBb4-qiBfvspGaJ3hKE-pXAv5OVvS3RejQA2YTKE4Tg-7eOYPgmtzpu26qihakcAd7lSDUoIM4_zs-dk-1mun5IaiyMHE6XzuFALjZ5rJFjaGOj2w7RXCo9m4/s1600/trolls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY_6_8IDDD1oBLTW8R7ZRBb4-qiBfvspGaJ3hKE-pXAv5OVvS3RejQA2YTKE4Tg-7eOYPgmtzpu26qihakcAd7lSDUoIM4_zs-dk-1mun5IaiyMHE6XzuFALjZ5rJFjaGOj2w7RXCo9m4/s1600/trolls.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">And the people who troll are usually chubby and naked with unkempt hair.</span></div>
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Trolling involves a very subtle kind of lying. It's a deception of intent - a troll argues in order to get a (usually negative) reaction out of people. Successfully trolling someone requires them to believe that your statements are sincere. After all, if they don't think that you actually believe what you're saying, then why would they continue to react to you?<br />
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The act of 'trolling' can generalize past argumentation, but the goal of trolling remains the same - to get a reaction out of people. Scamming someone is not the same as trolling them, since the intent in scamming is to get their money or resources for yourself. Having a controversial opinion that happens to elicit strong reactions from other people is not the same as trolling, since the intent is to sincerely convey your point.<br />
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The term 'trolling' gets thrown around a lot, and the chosen examples tend to range from <a href="http://artoftrolling.tumblr.com/">goofy behavior</a> to <a href="http://gawker.com/5589721/the-art-of-trolling-inside-a-4chan-smear-campaign">organized harassment</a>. Because the term only describes intent, the term 'trolling' ends up being very vague, and often misused. It is a term that has been heavily romanticized by online subculture as well, with terms like <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=master+troll">master troll</a> coming into use and the <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trollface-coolface-problem">'trollface'</a> becoming popular. As 4chan and /b/ rode out its wave of popularity, discussion of trolling entered into <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html">more mainstream circles</a>.<br />
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Certainly, there is such a thing as being good at trolling and bad at trolling. People who indiscriminately spam profanity in order to disrupt a community aren't doing a very good job at concealing their intentions, and will probably get ignored or moderated. Eon8 is an example of a good troll act: the mystery behind the website did a good job in masking the user's intentions, and allowed people's own minds to (incorrectly) fill in the gaps of information.<br />
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The rise in popularity of trolling has led to interesting situations where trolls will often end up unwittingly trying to troll each other. When both people are trolling, the conversation develops several layers of irony. Each troll is attempting to deceive the other while simultaneously being deceived. Onlookers may not be able to discern if the conversation between trolls is sincere. Making sense of such encounters - let alone participating in one - can quickly become an endurance test.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/MLyHNMOnLTs?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Video not work safe (some profanity is spoken).</span></div>
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Depending on the level of self-awareness of our given online community, this emergent irony can be directly addressed and even built on. Since trolling is a matter of intent, and since intent is ambiguous if you aren't the speaker, conversational 'games' can emerge where you vary the intent of your message. SomethingAwful's <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/dictionary.php?act=3&topicid=24">"pink forums"</a> operate like a <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/forums/meme-research/topics/2928-fyad-in-joke-powerhouse">giant inside joke</a>, where people post messages, <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Post-in-FYAD">post meta-messages, and post meta-meta-messages as well</a>. The forum aims to <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fyad">mock people on the Internet by posting like them</a>, which entails posting like trolls, posting like people reacting to trolls, etc, completely out of parody.<br />
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It's interesting that despite online communication's lack of tone, we can still learn about subtle cues in communication online. Much like how we learn to be skeptical of information online, we also learn to be skeptical of people's intentions online. We've talked about how people will <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/digital-language.html">develop special characters and images</a> to convey concepts that are difficult to express with text alone, but that doesn't mean that we don't still play around with the ambiguity of <i>actual</i> words.<br />
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In order to properly interpret words online, we need to look at context, word choice, and patterns in typing conventions. Even syntax plays a role in interpretation. If typing only in capitalized letters and with obscene amounts of exclamation points can convey yelling and anger, then typing exclusively in lowercase letters with minimal punctuation can communicate something else entirely - calm, nonchalance. What happens when you say something outrageous or serious in all lowercase? What happens if you contrast the lack of punctuation with use of a period or exclamation point in an isolated sentence?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGX8E-qiPbTnilaDNCPr2nudjGxTS7mz6YiExzvAIISXJGae7xgBIisxHrK29MxcjRWg2nDczJ7Z617f1PX91mTByRzSj9rcw59RWwcFfezklDVras3o6Kk8IOgvdwtJt2VSzASnNC_N0/s1600/16.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGX8E-qiPbTnilaDNCPr2nudjGxTS7mz6YiExzvAIISXJGae7xgBIisxHrK29MxcjRWg2nDczJ7Z617f1PX91mTByRzSj9rcw59RWwcFfezklDVras3o6Kk8IOgvdwtJt2VSzASnNC_N0/s1600/16.png" height="246" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://picturesforsadchildren.com/">Deadpan about dead people</a>!</span></div>
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These subtleties in the way you type online are a lot like the subtleties in the way you speak in real life, except they are not as widely intuitive or socialized. These cues have to be learned from observation, and are often in sharp contrast to what we learn about grammar and language in school. It's possible that the curriculum might have to change one day to reflect how people have developed online communication.<br />
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The kind of lies and subtleties that happen online can end up causing inconvenience - and sometimes real harm - to people. But for a lot of people <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/as-real-as-it-gets.html">passively reading content online without necessarily participating in it</a>, this kind of online behavior is helpful and enriching. It encourages reading between the lines and asking questions about the information in front of you.<br />
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Since the Internet is a platform that allows us to deceive so easily, it also ends up being a platform that trains us in detecting deception. In 2013, where the Internet is intimately tied in with most of our daily routines, most people know that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I">not everything online is to be trusted</a>. Perhaps as online usage grows, we'll collectively have a sharper eye for lies and subtlety. Trust me. I'm a doctor.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-33286544777243486562013-08-19T06:00:00.000-07:002013-08-19T11:06:47.628-07:00As Real as it GetsIn 1992, <i>The Real World</i> hit television screens nationwide, and sparked America's love affair with reality TV.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivp4AZk4IHSIN1LaMtI0qWcToUYFOszJwXzuf0hTnY5GAy4eY_PyA3c0A7L-wV4jACvqh05VVQyx4U7dPPlEICQKvJTjmI2CRlaP2qiYaSJ8MHXaRhXH12CuxQhB46QwXNEgUB-jcu6Mk/s1600/RWNewYorkCast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivp4AZk4IHSIN1LaMtI0qWcToUYFOszJwXzuf0hTnY5GAy4eY_PyA3c0A7L-wV4jACvqh05VVQyx4U7dPPlEICQKvJTjmI2CRlaP2qiYaSJ8MHXaRhXH12CuxQhB46QwXNEgUB-jcu6Mk/s1600/RWNewYorkCast.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Though, it did not rekindle America's love for beatnik sweaters.</span></div>
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The appeal of the show - and other shows in the reality television genre - came from the unscripted, 'raw' element of the footage. People naturally find other people fascinating, so what kind of zany scenarios could we see if we throw a bunch of complete strangers in a house and film it?</div>
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The Internet has emerged as one of the fastest and easiest ways to transfer information, through text, images, and videos. It has become the ultimate reality show, giving us a new window into other people's lives and exposure to situations previously unimaginable.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Social networking has infiltrated most of our lives. With so many people on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, it's become very easy to piece together what people are doing with themselves. If you wanted to take it a step further and <i>really</i> be a creep, you could Google people's names and trace their digital footprint. Search engines like <a href="https://pipl.com/">Pipl</a> are designed around looking for information on people, browsing content found on both the accessible Internet and the deep web.<br />
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Even though we have all of this information available to us, a lot of people's lives are fairly mundane. For every <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/why-did-controversial-feminist-hugo-schwyzer-have-a-twitter">interesting</a> <a href="http://vr-zone.com/articles/indie-dev-phil-fish-has-public-meltdown-on-twitter/47775.html">public</a> <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/alec-baldwins-twitter-meltdown-results-in-a-deactivated-account_b16479">meltdown</a>, there are hundreds of stupid Facebook statuses. Sometimes those mundane moments <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/stupid-facebook-statuses">have their jewels</a>, but your typical Facebook feed will just have people talking about their day and their boring opinions. Sometimes you get the people who upload pictures of what they're eating <i>right at that moment</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEnEackTs19uGPTMFoLFcR8jJLpk8F0ruRgRGiNjJUIPVUAOD0B8DPO2Rl7lwEajdrcbpEnjjjMwg5A4BMw9N9NnqTJkl6Gg4lI_V4amoZhern4svFQtBKhIUVntax_TQCbk_oMDlSe1s/s1600/251956_10151305589531588_53161199_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEnEackTs19uGPTMFoLFcR8jJLpk8F0ruRgRGiNjJUIPVUAOD0B8DPO2Rl7lwEajdrcbpEnjjjMwg5A4BMw9N9NnqTJkl6Gg4lI_V4amoZhern4svFQtBKhIUVntax_TQCbk_oMDlSe1s/s1600/251956_10151305589531588_53161199_n.jpg" height="219" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;">Thank you for sharing. I...made this joke <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/online-dating.html">six months ago</a>.</span></div>
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Some websites exist to highlight the best of those mundane moments. <a href="http://www.fmylife.com/">Fuck My Life</a> is a website devoted to bad moments in your life that others would find funny. Websites like <a href="http://mylifeisg.com/">My Life is Good</a> and <a href="http://mylifeisaverage.com/">My Life is Average</a> were spinoffs featuring the other kinds of moments in your life. <a href="http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/">Texts from Last Night</a> post humorous text message transcripts, presumably sent by drunk people. There are websites devoted to moments with <a href="http://leasthelpful.com/">funny Amazon reviews</a>, <a href="http://literallyunbelievable.org/">funny reactions to news parodies</a>, <a href="http://notalwaysright.com/">funny stories from retail jobs</a>, <a href="http://www.deargirlsaboveme.com/">funny neighbors</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/shitmydadsays">funny parents</a>, and whatever else you think an online audience could relate to.<br />
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But sometimes people like to up the ante, much like we observe in reality television. While the small, quirky moments can be memorable, sometimes we actively seek the extreme experiences. Sometimes we're looking for narratives that carry extreme shock value. Sometimes we're looking to be put out of our comfort zone, or even to take other people out of their comfort zone.<br />
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The Internet offers plenty of <i>brutally</i> real content. The website rotten.com <a href="http://www.salon.com/2001/03/05/rotten_2/">earned its reputation</a> as a collection of disturbing images and videos. The website has archived footage of corpses, deformities, violent acts, perverse sex acts, autopsy photographs and other gut-wrenching imagery. Rotten.com and the now-defunct <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogrish">Orgrish</a> also reported on news stories that were considered too bizarre or disturbing for mainstream reporting, usually featuring extensive graphic content.<br />
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The owners of these so-called "shock sites" often loudly declare themselves as demonstrators against internet censorship, but that doesn't always save them from trouble. In 2012, the website bestgore.com (name says it all, don't it?) got into some legal trouble when it posted the raw footage of a criminal <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120606090728/http://www.nationalpost.com/Leaving+murder+video+online+crime+lawyer/6729821/story.html">killing and dismembering</a> a Chinese international student. The site owner <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/723495/police-charge-edmonton-gore-site-owner-in-magnotta-video-investigation/">was arrested and charged with "corrupting morals"</a> on July 2013.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5zC2l9cAZOMyGp9gxEVggRTkEL0-kYDhbHr3v_aC4JEPON9VA4WM2sV46cD7iBMeDVqzmuHMNNlDKa5ncjk7KAeQpOP1ye8d80XO6tuJpdIOysFJgfeuxwlWYoNGxy7JCyjUgxbBrCc/s1600/man-screaming-at-computer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5zC2l9cAZOMyGp9gxEVggRTkEL0-kYDhbHr3v_aC4JEPON9VA4WM2sV46cD7iBMeDVqzmuHMNNlDKa5ncjk7KAeQpOP1ye8d80XO6tuJpdIOysFJgfeuxwlWYoNGxy7JCyjUgxbBrCc/s1600/man-screaming-at-computer.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">This is terrible! Why can't I look away?</span></div>
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Some shocking images make their way out of shock sites and find more public exposure. In 1999, the domain name goatse.cx was registered. Upon visiting the site, you would be greeted with a man's stretched and gaping anus. The "goatse" image gained <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/sci-tech/lazy-guide-to-net-culture-nsfw-1-464656">tons of notoriety</a>, and it became common practice to trick your friends into seeing the image. Some online places deemed goatse and other shocking photos the <a href="http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=Unholy_Trinity">"Unholy Trinity"</a>, and virtually made it a rite of passage to view these three pictures in succession.</div>
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Other such images that gained wider popularity include Meatspin, whose name should explain it all but <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meatspin">here's a safe-for-work explanation</a> just in case. Sometimes the name of the website would be completely misleading - Lemonparty, for example, had nothing to do with lemons, but completely to do with old men pleasuring one another. One particularly famous shock video that reached relatively mainstream fame was 2Girls1Cup, a trailer to scat pornography set to unfitting piano music. Not only did the video itself <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/2-girls-1-cup">become an online trend</a>, but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtRzf_ZcM0U">reaction</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYGhift6QCw">videos</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HUd6n0Uxx0">to</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhevNN1BDnQ">2Girls1Cup</a> also began proliferating around the Internet.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxp3zqIqO68?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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There are far more shock sites than those mentioned here, and there are even designated regions of popular websites where you can come to expect such sights to pop up. You usually see them get posted in the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/08/anonymous-and-chaotic-wellsprings.html">"random" or no-holds-barred forums</a> on these websites, where people can get away with posting such content. Reddit's r/spacedicks forum, by virtue of being on Reddit, is <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/lol/reddit-spacedicks-wtf-grossout-communities/">likely the most contemporary example</a>.</div>
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The fact that shock imagery remains strangely tantalizing to people has been described as <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/goatse/">"gross-out culture"</a>, where spreading the disgust somehow creates more comradery and inclusiveness. I remember when my 15 year old cousin was telling me that his friends made him watch the BME Pain Olympics, another such shock video. It was interesting because I remember being 15 and being shown Lemonparty. There's almost a natural compulsion to show these horrible things to one another and experience them together as a group.<br />
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Shock sites are like the most outrageous parts of reality shows. These things are all very <i>real</i> - they involve other humans doing grotesque things, which we can empathize with by virtue of being human ourselves. Our senses are pushed to places that are neither routine nor comfortable, and there's a certain appeal to that. It helps that when we observe these things, we are not putting <i>ourselves</i> in any danger.</div>
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Ultimately, the empathy that allows us to react to shock sites is the same empathy that allows us to enjoy people's funny stories about their retail job. That's the most interesting part - all of these things are ingredients to describing the human condition. The most bizarre and depraved aspects of humanity are just as accessible as the mundane aspects.<br />
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Never before has human experience been so conveniently cataloged for our perusal. In a way, we're better off for it. We get to read about people's everyday lives, and we learn that we can probably relate to more people than we think. We can read something terrifying and disturbing, and really <i>feel</i> shaken by it, because you know that it involves people that probably had just as many mundane experiences in their life as you do. The online depiction of reality is the great pathos of the Internet.<br />
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But, then again, if people really <i>were</i> getting more enriched by reading about other people's experiences online, you'd think that you'd see fewer pictures of people's dinners. Maybe the next time you see someone post food on Facebook, you should link them to goatse.<br />
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...No, don't really do that.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-38887596109231193172013-08-12T07:47:00.002-07:002013-11-02T15:34:42.277-07:00Anonymous and the Chaotic WellspringsLots of people - even those who aren't too steeped in Internet nonsense - have probably heard of the group called Anonymous.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_yixK8yO9MU4hvfgYfZOjyI_agJu8UFGmKzlpyESuRSSIYEueuSVCvKFG7_NfirKjE5l1BG3v4MRMvhlRaSL7jja81BYisBNVpYLcaZKYEwy45KWgLPu6HUsa-f7uvS5sczdj8CzPTVQ/s1600/Anonymous_Fox_11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_yixK8yO9MU4hvfgYfZOjyI_agJu8UFGmKzlpyESuRSSIYEueuSVCvKFG7_NfirKjE5l1BG3v4MRMvhlRaSL7jja81BYisBNVpYLcaZKYEwy45KWgLPu6HUsa-f7uvS5sczdj8CzPTVQ/s1600/Anonymous_Fox_11.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ah yes, who could I <i>possibly</i> trust more to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNO6G4ApJQY">talk about the Internet</a> than FOX News reporters?</span></div>
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The much-sensationalized group originated on the website 4chan, where the default setting for its members' names is "Anonymous". Since the vast majority of people don't bother to change the default name and let their online handles remain "Anonymous", the joke is that Anonymous is one entity, formed by the contributions of many. On 4chan's "random" subforum - often shortened to /b/ - the posters would get into all sorts of strange activity, giving Anonymous its wild reputation.<br />
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But Anonymous is not unique. The /b/ subforum was one of a long line of similar forums on the Internet, where the rules are relaxed and the users form an unwieldy community. Today, we'll explore the corners of the Internet where this has happened before, ant talk about why Anonymous has been elevated above the rest.<br />
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We've talked about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">emergent subcultures in online communities</a>, and we've talked about how <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/digital-jargon.html">extreme insularity manifests in community behavior</a>, but groups like Anonymous goes beyond simply being an insular subculture. We see that the users can get very creative - and <a href="http://gawker.com/5023925/the-olds-guide-to-4chan-the-worlds-most-obscene-trendspotting-site">sometimes</a> <a href="http://www.chacha.com/question/why-is-4chan.org-so-obscene">obscene</a> - within their own forum space. But at the same time, the users can get unmanageable, infringing on other people's spaces online.<br />
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The earliest example that I could find of this was on the <a href="http://hardforum.com/">[H]ard|OCP forums</a>, a computer hardware website that flourished in the late '90s and early '00s. The website once boasted a sub-forum called "General Mayhem", an area where the computer-related topicality rules were not as enforced, and people could talk about whatever was on their mind.<br />
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The General Mayhem forum - shortened to <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=genmay&defid=411347">GenMay</a> - swelled to such popularity that it became the <a href="http://www.genmay.com/showthread.php?t=118675">most popular sub-forum on the website</a>, having more activity than all the other sub-forums combined. During its heyday, it produced a lot of <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/general-mayhem">online catchphrases</a> that became popular through other corners of the internet.<br />
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The GenMay users, however, soon became unmanageable, and would cause trouble around the other sub-forums. By 2002, the unruliness of the GenMay community - along with its extreme bandwidth sink - caused [H]ard|OCP administrator Kyle Bennet to shut down the subforum and purge the database of its content. The community's response - after initial outrage - was to form a <a href="http://www.genmay.com/forum.php">spinoff website</a> specifically for the GenMay community.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk7qwfEyNGQysF-4L6KKJksEBjGtu8Kcw0uVi4b88FPu4NVuSZKAWjP9r5XyoRVEzZYq30souhkuKBPDCnlsKapZNx_FpZE9LGPQtoMxj6hbEmniAr4cu5ofi86nT_tEIvwHC1DN5C2wM/s1600/walken2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk7qwfEyNGQysF-4L6KKJksEBjGtu8Kcw0uVi4b88FPu4NVuSZKAWjP9r5XyoRVEzZYq30souhkuKBPDCnlsKapZNx_FpZE9LGPQtoMxj6hbEmniAr4cu5ofi86nT_tEIvwHC1DN5C2wM/s1600/walken2008.jpg" height="320" width="223" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hey, <a href="http://www.today.com/id/8669416">remember</a> <a href="http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/walken.asp">this</a>? Me neither. But <a href="http://www.genmay.com/showthread.php?t=562197">GenMay did it</a>.</span></div>
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Of course, <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hardforum.com">neither</a> <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/genmay.com">website</a> gathers the same numbers that they likely used to. GenMay was relevant at a time when the Internet was still very young and not as heavily integrated into our daily lives.<br />
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Back in the early days of the website GameFAQs, there was a message board called "Life, the Universe, and Everything". Often <a href="http://wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=LUE">shortened to LUE</a>, the board had a similar purpose to GenMay: no-holds barred discussion, free from the restrictions of topicality on other GameFAQs message boards. Like GenMay, LUE also became the most active forum on its respective website, and developed lots of online catchphrases that were parroted by other people. The members of LUE - often calling themselves LUEsers - would soon gain a <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/games5/lue/his.htm">reputation for causing trouble</a>, both within its own forum, and in other forums.<br />
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The tipping point was in 2003, when members of LUE were guided to a LiveJournal page that belonged to someone <a href="http://justshana.livejournal.com/">who had recently committed suicide</a>. LUEsers began posting things on the Livejournal page to harrass the person's family. Jeff Veasey, the GameFAQS administrator, referred to the board as "a cancer", and began <a href="http://www.wikifaqs.net/index.php?title=SteriLUEzation">gradually shutting down LUE</a> after the LiveJournal incident. <br />
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But there was a portion of the users on the board that held so tightly to what LUE offered that they created <a href="https://endoftheinter.net/">their own spinoff website</a>. These LUEsers designed their website to deliberately be secretive so that only members who were around for LUE's "glory days" on GameFAQs could participate.<br />
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LUE and GenMay were communities <i>within</i> the GameFAQs and [H]ard|OCP communities. They had the most relaxed of rules, generated the most activity, and saw the most unhinged of contributions. We already know that a lot of forums on the Internet have <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">low barriers of entry</a>, but these are areas <i>within those same forums</i> that have an even <i>lower</i> barrier of entry than the main forums themselves. These communities grew so big and unruly that <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">even the site administrators</a> couldn't stomp out what had been formed. When their home forum was shut down, their most devoted members simply made new forums elsewhere, and business carried on.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBjWXUXHH4UzJgc_QIuFQjtf1UhxWvbcsdg8D95TUxwZUzzm8UQahGsQeGOcnpqINicq_bklfhk3Nyqx7XJWekOOstJAugtwqUopPJu0Qh8-CXnSytKVBw2Rs6dtbWogo5lHSOeac4qic/s1600/23012042_122373436605.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBjWXUXHH4UzJgc_QIuFQjtf1UhxWvbcsdg8D95TUxwZUzzm8UQahGsQeGOcnpqINicq_bklfhk3Nyqx7XJWekOOstJAugtwqUopPJu0Qh8-CXnSytKVBw2Rs6dtbWogo5lHSOeac4qic/s1600/23012042_122373436605.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">But since nobody's really <i>heard</i> of LUE, you can guess that business didn't carry on very well.</span></div>
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Which brings us to Anonymous.<br />
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4chan is comprised of many forums with a strong emphasis on posting images. The theme of most of these forums is based around Japanese culture, niche hobbies, and other interests. The /b/ forum was 4chan's board with the lowest barrier of entry - it was their "random" board, having no topicality associated with it. The members of /b/ - often called /b/tards, but sometimes generally called anons - were responsible for the creation of many <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/4chan">popular online expressions</a> that exploded in popularity.<br />
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<i>(Note: The links in the next paragraph are not work safe.)</i><br />
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In 2006, the members of /b/ <a href="https://encyclopediadramatica.se/The_Great_Habbo_Raid_of_July_2006">raided an online game called Habbo Hotel</a> to demonstrate against alleged racism by the game's moderators. This raid was done again in 2007 and 2008. That year also saw the launch of <a href="https://encyclopediadramatica.se/PROJECT_CHANOLOGY">Project CHANology</a>, a full-scale campaign against the Church of Scientology. In 2009, /b/ <a href="https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Operation_YouTube">raided YouTube</a> with the intent of overloading the video platform with pornography. Eventually, a spinoff 4chan site containing the board /i/ - <a href="https://encyclopediadramatica.se/I/">short for invasions</a> - was born, and the concept of Anonymous as an entity started spreading beyond 4chan proper. Today Anonymous is no longer simply associated with 4chan, but now a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29">larger movement</a>, taking <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/internet-vigilantism.html">online vigilantism</a> to a new level.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYcZ8lFv9dKa3R_PdUFTK1RTksXm2lh2WZxLj7rwgT1YkWz0tpdlUZKl9BosNaq4Z8bSBdCrkTSQtLUOQe7gUZpftNCPhYem8QMuxuYlTXpBP42DIEMb7jpupH9xS4XtFTUoWPawzgL8E/s1600/Anothernewfag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYcZ8lFv9dKa3R_PdUFTK1RTksXm2lh2WZxLj7rwgT1YkWz0tpdlUZKl9BosNaq4Z8bSBdCrkTSQtLUOQe7gUZpftNCPhYem8QMuxuYlTXpBP42DIEMb7jpupH9xS4XtFTUoWPawzgL8E/s1600/Anothernewfag.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">But usually not before making a complete tool out of themselves.</span></div>
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So why was /b/ the place to spawn such a movement, and not GenMay or LUE? They were all very chaotic, and they all spawned lots of tidbits of Internet culture, so why do we talk about Anons and not LUEsers or...whatever it is that people on GenMay call themselves?<br />
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Perhaps the "Anonymous" handle is far more accessible. While Anonymous may have started out as (and may still be) an insular community with core members, its name certainly doesn't <i>sell</i> itself that way. People have been doing things under pseudonyms or with anonymity for centuries. A handle like "LUEser", however, won't seem very accessible unless you know what "LUE" is.<br />
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4chan's administrator also responded differently to his website's no-holds-barred forum than did GameFAQs or [H]ard|OCP. The /b/ forum is still accessible today, and its layout is mostly unchanged from what it was in the mid-2000s. It's hard to predict what would have happened if LUE or GenMay had never had their community disrupted - after all, neither group seems to have seen the same kind of popularity after being cut off their home website. It could be that LUEsers simply didn't <i>want</i> that kind of popularity. Anons certainly <a href="http://gawker.com/i-wrote-just-about-the-same-thing-in-your-comment-yeste-478388700">seem to resent</a> the wider popularity of "Anonymous".<br />
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But, perhaps another major factor is timing. Anonymous became relevant at a time when online culture was getting greater public exposure.
The public eye wasn't paying attention to "internet culture" in the
early 2000s, but then social networks started taking off, people started spending more time online, and they happened to start noticing Anonymous. As Anonymous got larger, they started going out of their way to <a href="http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1894028,00.html">grab the public's attention</a>.<br />
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Discussions started happening about online mob behavior, and the freedoms of anonymity. People tried to sell Anonymous as something larger than any of us, and since they were doing so anonymously, it was hard to separate the imagery from the actual group. They donned Guy Fawkes masks, symbolizing anarchy, smugness and anonymity. The suit, though stemming from an older meme, could be said to symbolize power, class, and wealth.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmRYqUKTKaISo7ynoa8RI-3XP3b7gVyIIpcEiH4T-6sfwATDZCsW-KFU4qqdIXrsy0nST6Qf5y2XQDQAVm_Ic30g9tnSv-dr_Gw1T93QDP4qdNrZ6G2wpP5_bc5T_6E4gtiW_jjbX5D94/s1600/V_for_vendetta_copypasta_anonymous.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmRYqUKTKaISo7ynoa8RI-3XP3b7gVyIIpcEiH4T-6sfwATDZCsW-KFU4qqdIXrsy0nST6Qf5y2XQDQAVm_Ic30g9tnSv-dr_Gw1T93QDP4qdNrZ6G2wpP5_bc5T_6E4gtiW_jjbX5D94/s1600/V_for_vendetta_copypasta_anonymous.png" height="256" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Oh, a suit. Surely that didn't generalize <a href="http://imgur.com/8cqTPLZ">into</a> <a href="http://derpicdn.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTMvMDUvMjQvMTVfNDdfNTZfNjE5XzMzMjcwM19fVU5PUFRfX3NhZmVfdGV4dF9icm9ueV9tZXJjaGFuZGlzZV9mZWRvcmEuanBlZyJdXQ/332703__safe_photo_human_text_irl%2Bhuman_brony_merchandise_fedora_okcupid_fedoras%2Bof%2Bokc_nice%2Bguys%2Bof%2Bokc.jpeg">any</a> <a href="https://images.encyclopediadramatica.se/thumb/1/1e/Fedora.jpg/800px-Fedora.jpg">bad</a> <a href="http://foreveralonefedoras.tumblr.com/">trends</a>.</span></div>
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Mainstream media likes referring <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601565.html">to</a> <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1821656,00.html">moot</a> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564928060441097.html">and</a> <a href="http://arstechnica.com/staff/2010/02/4chans-moot-takes-pro-anonymity-to-ted-2010/">4chan</a> with awe, for being a creative platform previously unheard of. When Reddit started getting popular, people started calling it "<a href="http://itjustbugsme.com/forums/discussion/9783/reddit/p1">4chan</a> <a href="http://lurkerfaqs.com/boards/400-current-events/63271302/">lite</a>", as though the phenomenon of Reddit was <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/the-rise-of-reddit-4chan-and-digg-get-the-credit-while-reddit-booms">derivative of 4chan's product</a>. Remember my blog post where I said that nobody talks about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyberbullying-and-old-internet-war.html">YTMND's "war" on Ebaumsworld</a>
anymore? That's probably because it happened in 2006, before 4chan hit its peak
in popularity and defined the public perception of
internet culture for itself.<br />
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The rise of 4chan, /b/, and Anonymous is basically the event that separates the old Internet culture of SomethingAwful, YTMND - and yes, GenMay and LUE - and the new Internet culture of Reddit, Tumblr, modern YouTube, and Twitter. Everything before Anonymous is a cultural blur. Everything after Anonymous is happening in the wake of what the "Anonymous" phenomenon has taught us about online culture.<br />
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It's been said that 4chan's cultural force <a href="http://gawker.com/5925535/4chans-moment-is-over-even-though-its-more-popular-than-ever">is on the wane</a>. It certainly isn't featured in online events as much anymore, and Anonymous as an activist group has been mostly succeeded by other website groups. Everyone is a little more Internet-savvy now than they were eight years ago. We now have discourse on cyberbullying, online security, social network structure, online regulation, and privacy that were spurred by Anonymous' existence.<br />
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As for LUE and GenMay, they are long past being on the wane. Since the early Internet was a <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/gamer-culture.html">haven for gamers</a>, a lot of these groups' recent activities involve communal participation in <a href="http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/LUE">online</a> <a href="http://cybernations.wikia.com/wiki/Genmay">games</a>. At this point, they're dying clubs, forced into exclusion a long time ago, and never really moving past their respective eras.<br />
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Anonymous may have been culturally important, but it was not the first of its kind. It was merely the first of its kind to get noticed.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-60987105329751529832013-08-05T08:45:00.000-07:002013-08-05T08:45:37.785-07:00The Data DumpOne of the buzzwords floating around these days is "<a href="http://www.languagemonitor.com/high-tech-buzzwords/big-data-again-crowned-most-confusing-tech-buzzword-of-the-decade-the-cloud-drops-to-no-3/">big data</a>" - data that exists in such large quantities that traditional data processing begins to break down. There are a lot of very cool underlying patterns that can be found when you're looking at a large enough data set, and there is no shortage of large, complex sets of data.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3KwF1syEXpkXKjeU6Z_UwpL7g-HhyuuuidoXZEzxWMDPlfOEWzIkKEhuXeeudRlxq897gYm3LvnauBj_H3s9ji8dtoUEhgnC3yelqYrVyqbtPUcp0870hRJnVEcSdmAey0U74J4Rm0bw/s1600/bigdata2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3KwF1syEXpkXKjeU6Z_UwpL7g-HhyuuuidoXZEzxWMDPlfOEWzIkKEhuXeeudRlxq897gYm3LvnauBj_H3s9ji8dtoUEhgnC3yelqYrVyqbtPUcp0870hRJnVEcSdmAey0U74J4Rm0bw/s1600/bigdata2.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Big data" can also mean you're <i>really</i> into Star Trek: The Next Generation.</span></div>
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Luckily for scientists, we live in an age where we have a constantly growing pile of data, teeming with transactions and activity records. Analyzing the Internet itself has become a worthy scientific endeavor. From <a href="http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/">economic studies of video game worlds</a> to <a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/">assessing trends on dating sites</a>, interesting information can be found in the most unsuspecting of places online.<br />
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So today, we'll be looking at some interesting studies that have used information extracted online.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>1. Twitter's Map of Ideas</i></span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1hXgEKx_Q4gBa2XYtH9RlnL8iA2UdDg0LpeYRoROFcpplQ8YwZlXptQUhZjNBjh-m8akBJ22uGoRjfRVFbl6GHxharZNnFr8EO7GclU-o3mAkCMEfhch0-ROx88sJhmk3NJirbBnbGDE/s1600/srep00335-f1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1hXgEKx_Q4gBa2XYtH9RlnL8iA2UdDg0LpeYRoROFcpplQ8YwZlXptQUhZjNBjh-m8akBJ22uGoRjfRVFbl6GHxharZNnFr8EO7GclU-o3mAkCMEfhch0-ROx88sJhmk3NJirbBnbGDE/s1600/srep00335-f1.jpg" height="254" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120329/srep00335/full/srep00335.html">source</a>, in Nature.</span></div>
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Presumably, some scientists woke up one morning and said to themselves, "Gee, a lot of activity happens on that Twitter website. And didn't that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_spring">Arab Spring</a> thing get a lot of help from social media? What else can we find out from it?" So they <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5399400/retrieve-public-info-from-twitter-throug-api">fished around</a> <a href="https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-apis/streams/public">Twitter's public API</a>, got a sample size of several million users and hashtags, and started tracking who was re-tweeting what. The result is the picture that you see above.</div>
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The hashtag "Japan" was followed to monitor how word of the March 2011 Earthquake in Japan spread, while "Egypt" and "Syria" showcase the spread of the Arab Spring. And the "GOP" hashtag on the top right? Each giant hub you see roughly represents the two political factions in the United States. Republicans will occasionally tweet #GOP for the sake of loyalty, democrats will occasionally tweet #GOP for the sake of mockery. Notice how polarized the connections are, implying that each group is mostly just preaching to their respective choirs on Twitter. It turns out that conservatives and liberals really <i>aren't</i> talking to each other very much! That certainly can't have impacted <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/politics-cyberbalkanization-and.html">anything important</a>, right?</div>
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The source paper also studies how these hashtags compete with one another on Twitter. This raises some interesting concepts - we live in an age where our ability to consume information cannot keep up with the amount of information being produced online. The limits of our attention become important when determining which ideas spread through our culture and which do not. You can imagine a sort of "attention economy" working behind the scenes of online culture.<br />
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Some Japanese scientists presumably saw the above study and thought to themselves, "That's neat, but can we measure what sort of things can grab everyone's attention at once?" They also did some data mining on Twitter, and produced a picture of their own.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO6fD9Dqz3u3zjpaELPb4IvzhiMvw82JHFHRxS-LjqrkBen1iHzrRCZCmiNpeB0zGVXg9xgastml4Gp8pVMdkFJGlLi5c2vXDFJQ5OJChQSvCiQCZ2WKTGj-_lZkQiIC009PG0KtkFe70/s1600/paMECIG.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO6fD9Dqz3u3zjpaELPb4IvzhiMvw82JHFHRxS-LjqrkBen1iHzrRCZCmiNpeB0zGVXg9xgastml4Gp8pVMdkFJGlLi5c2vXDFJQ5OJChQSvCiQCZ2WKTGj-_lZkQiIC009PG0KtkFe70/s1600/paMECIG.png" height="320" width="309" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0061823">source</a>, in PLOS ONE.</span></div>
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The darker and denser the cluster, the more tweets that concentrate on a single subject. The bottom two were measured in reference to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Sky">a popular movie</a> and a lunar eclipse, respectively. You can see there's some sharing activity, but it's fairly decentralized. The top right picture is a measure of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the top left picture has to do with the March 2011 Earthquake, both earning far greater public spotlight. The researchers asked questions about how these responses differed from one another <i>numerically</i>, which could not be done before we were leaving traces of our behavior all over our computer monitors.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>2. The Strangeness of Stock Markets</b></i></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxHFtpvkqNW_K_G3BbxSXHmYpTJR92xSc_bMG31T72NhD3sCM7e4xNCryYzFvLxbc73daDSIHHOP6x1tbNEa3F4Lrp_7MgUyHAeqxPO7Ss_BNl5ns5XGUZ-7k-8VcSsg2RsdeVK2kRF8/s1600/wikipediasea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxHFtpvkqNW_K_G3BbxSXHmYpTJR92xSc_bMG31T72NhD3sCM7e4xNCryYzFvLxbc73daDSIHHOP6x1tbNEa3F4Lrp_7MgUyHAeqxPO7Ss_BNl5ns5XGUZ-7k-8VcSsg2RsdeVK2kRF8/s1600/wikipediasea.jpg" height="204" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130508/srep01801/full/srep01801.html">source</a>, in Nature.</span></div>
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I'd love to guess at how researchers came up with the idea for this one, but I'm kind of surprised at the connection here myself. These researchers looked up statistics on the Wikipedia pages of companies in the Dow Jones Index. Using a data set that spanned nearly five years of Wikipedia activity, they found that if you were making investments into companies based on how many views their Wikipedia page was getting, your returns on investment would be significantly higher than what you'd expect from random strategies.<br />
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We can make sense out of this finding in hindsight. If a company is generating a lot of buzz, then investors are probably more likely to search for information on that company. Wikipedia happens to be very ubiquitous, so an online search is probably going to take searchers to a Wikipedia entry. Would that imply that Google searches could also provide insight to stock market activity?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi839rIh0eg4gzgXeVpmuyIUy1O6JfpJnssHLRMIq1zBfwAUu334_ASQ690DtyWQeiUrz3I47EtRM9lRtAGUO8WYVMRNpAHG4M-J2GV9X6z2BB4IwVEC3iJvAbPf9FhWOX_om8wWJWz61A/s1600/srep01684-f2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi839rIh0eg4gzgXeVpmuyIUy1O6JfpJnssHLRMIq1zBfwAUu334_ASQ690DtyWQeiUrz3I47EtRM9lRtAGUO8WYVMRNpAHG4M-J2GV9X6z2BB4IwVEC3iJvAbPf9FhWOX_om8wWJWz61A/s1600/srep01684-f2.jpg" height="109" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The <a href="http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130425/srep01684/full/srep01684.html">source</a>, in Nature.</span></div>
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As it turns out, the same group of researchers also worked on a similar study using Google Trends. Your returns seem to improve when you use Google Trends to inform your investment strategy. This is crowd wisdom in its natural habitat - the network is just people all the way down. We have a measurable and quantifiable way to find correlations between online activity and market activity, and it's not too hard to imagine when we'll start using these correlations to <i>systematically</i> predict future market activity.<br />
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The nice thing about these studies as well is how large their sample sizes are. There's a handy thing in statistics called the <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LawofLargeNumbers.html">law of large numbers</a>, which tells us that the larger our sample size of data, the more representative its statistics are to the general population statistics. When you are pulling data from sources with <i>millions</i> of data points, you can expect results that are more representative of the general population than most studies before the Internet could ever hope to be.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>3. How the Networks Tick</b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6109">source</a>, archived in Cornell University Library.</span></div>
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One day, some Swiss researchers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mFJdOsjJ0k">watched an Onion video</a> and asked themselves why some social networks die out. Then they did...something.<br />
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To be honest, the nuts and bolts of the process in their paper uses a lot of methodology that I'm not familiar with, so I don't trust myself to explain it in simpler terms. The general idea seems to be that there is a cost and benefit to staying with a social network. Certain events on the network - such as interface updates - can briefly increase the cost-to-benefit ratio. Not all networks are resilient enough to withstand these moments of stress, and some collapse in themselves.<br />
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It's an interesting paper, though as far as I can tell it isn't actually published anywhere yet, so we don't know if it's passed the test of peer review. While we may have to take its findings with a grain of salt, the concept behind the paper is certainly interesting. It presents itself as an autopsy of Friendster. Why did Friendster fail, why are networks like Orkut and Myspace failing, and what is making Facebook endure despite everyone's gripes about its interface updates?<br />
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These are interesting questions that can reveal a lot about our psychology. We can learn how to make more resilient online hubs. We can learn about what coaxes activity out of more users in the hub. Not only does this benefit advertisers and site owners, it also allows us to gather more data from them. We've seen what researchers can do with Twitter, and it may be inevitable that other online hubs start being analyzed.<br />
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I <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">mentioned the idea</a> of modelling the information exchange among secular networks to monitor and optimize the atheist movement once. What happens to social movements when you're able to model - and even predict - their life cycles? The data at our disposal increases every day. There may come a time where some serious social engineering will be possible.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Looking Ahead</i></b></span><br />
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Analyzing how information spreads in networks, how networks thrive, and how networks impact other networks all play a part in the previously mentioned attention economy. As we learn more about how networks work, we will be better able to engineer them, refine them, and exploit them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEaXw1aQSlSITXH3HQl-jUCSIC6SHPXCQAQC5fZ_ucl3X30PtlXW9GXpS2Nu6jxejwYK8wdauSoOdglXz3wNWQ8Uo3UKhPZ6mBKna56eg5c5n-4RWNk_P7d4VkVamCojBfz6ydgszybA/s1600/interfaces+presentation2+b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEaXw1aQSlSITXH3HQl-jUCSIC6SHPXCQAQC5fZ_ucl3X30PtlXW9GXpS2Nu6jxejwYK8wdauSoOdglXz3wNWQ8Uo3UKhPZ6mBKna56eg5c5n-4RWNk_P7d4VkVamCojBfz6ydgszybA/s1600/interfaces+presentation2+b.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">What do you mean, <a href="http://www.shrzd.com/The-Attention-Economy">I'm late to the party</a>? <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy">Again?</a></i></span></div>
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When will we truly be able to observe the 'planned attention economy'? Arguably, you can already see the beginnings of it in action. Targeted online ads make use of user information in order to more effectively grab viewers' attention, attempting to redeem online advertisers for <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-great-ad-problem.html">years of complete incompetence</a>. Wait until the agenda becomes more complex than simply selling you a product.<br />
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Of course, since some people balked at the idea of the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">government monitoring communications activity</a>, they might also cringe at the idea of scientists, advertisers, and other factions monitoring communications activity just as closely. As these models become more sophisticated and gain more predictive power, we can expect them to stop being merely observational.<br />
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There aren't many options in front of us. There is no option to cease using the Internet - it is a tool with which society has gotten fantastic mileage. Even if the Internet were to <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/network-of-networks.html">split into smaller networks</a>, it would only be a matter of time until those networks could be similarly analyzed. You can't ask researchers to stop researching this information, either - you have to remember that if your researchers aren't doing this work, there is a good chance that someone else might be. The rewards to having models of sufficient accuracy are too tantalizing to be discounted.<br />
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It is worth pointing out that I am talking about models <i>using</i> the Internet, <i>on</i> the Internet, with information <i>accessible from</i> the Internet. That implies that information on these models is fairly transparent. Perhaps instead of resisting the creation of these models - and sabotaging the benefits that we'd get from them - we should work to make sure that they are tools that are accessible to everybody. Keep people educated, and keep the material public.<br />
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There's one thing I'm not mentioning, though - the <a href="http://jsterman.scripts.mit.edu/docs/Sterman-2002-AllModelsAreWrong.pdf">limitations to models</a>. This isn't to undermine the new insights that models give us, but before they can be useful, a lot of foundation work still needs to be established, and our data collection strategies need to be refined. These are challenges that will probably continue well into the decade, if not beyond that.<br />
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Still, if the 21st century gets defined by something that <i>isn't</i> the Internet, then it will likely be defined by something <i>emergent from</i> the Internet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-40548176889943994922013-07-29T08:17:00.000-07:002013-07-29T13:30:39.093-07:00Digital JargonI once wrote a blog post talking about <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">insular communities on the Internet</a>, complete with shared quirks of language that help members of the group identify one another. In that particular post, I used fairly mundane examples of quirky language - mostly single phrases that function like passwords to the group, like Reddit's "What time does the narwhal bacon?"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2VxULTEKq2LF2iC2ELv4sPdqiMhp3xZpwar5xUqsHMFqw4a3swecpas3onhIhfUp4mNXuIoMhL3CLPfJ70CIVGepXtoxDAp1iPMLZQsmrstoa3gmXg82yhUR73r2eiJPKA6rA0aDAzxI/s1600/6be.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2VxULTEKq2LF2iC2ELv4sPdqiMhp3xZpwar5xUqsHMFqw4a3swecpas3onhIhfUp4mNXuIoMhL3CLPfJ70CIVGepXtoxDAp1iPMLZQsmrstoa3gmXg82yhUR73r2eiJPKA6rA0aDAzxI/s1600/6be.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Still loving this picture.</span></div>
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Some online communities have more specialized vocabulary than others. Sometimes an online community gets to a point where they have so many inside jokes that outsiders have trouble understanding people's messages. But sometimes - in rarer instances, admittedly - it's a conscious construction of a new way of speech. Sometimes it's so extensive that you, as an outsider, can't interpret basic statements without having prerequisite knowledge about the community.<br />
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Today, we're talking about two websites that are particularly insular in this way: TV Tropes and Less Wrong.<br />
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Let's start off with a disclaimer: I'm not actually a regular visitor to either of these websites, and it's hard to do justice to insular communities if you're speaking about them as an outsider. I'm not going to speak about these communities with the same amount of love that their own members would, because I don't really like these communities. It's also hard to justify harping on other people's use of language when everyone - including myself - has their own quirks of language. I'll try to keep the language discussion fairly explanatory, and only make stronger claims when we talk about phenomena that arise beyond the language itself.<br />
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TV Tropes is an encyclopedia of common conventions - referred to as tropes - found in fiction. All such tropes are submitted by the website's users, making TV Tropes a collaborative project in the same spirit of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-age-of-collaboration.html">many other such projects on the Internet</a>. Since <a href="http://io9.com/5479423/behind-the-wiki-meet-tv-tropes-cofounder-fast-eddie">launching in 2004</a>, TV Tropes has put together hundreds of terms for the various tropes that appear in media, complete with examples of the trope from actual shows, books, and other media pieces. The site has gotten so extensive that any one trope page can send you through ten other trope pages so that you can keep up with the terminology.<br />
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For example, there's a trope called the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl". Just looking at this term (perhaps for the first time), could you guess what kind of trope this is describing? Maybe to some degree - "dream girl" might be pretty intuitive, though you might have trouble figuring out where "pixie" and "manic" factor in. So, curious, you <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl">look at the TV Tropes page</a>.<br />
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The first two paragraphs (and the many examples lower in the page) probably help you understand what the trope is. You might, however, run into trouble with this sentence: <span style="font-family: inherit;">"<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">The </span><a class="twikilink" href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: midnightblue; line-height: 19px; text-decoration: none;" title="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl">Manic Pixie Dream Girl</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"> may be featured as the </span><a class="twikilink" href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SecondLove" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: midnightblue; line-height: 19px; text-decoration: none;" title="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SecondLove">Second Love</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">, in order to break the character out of </span><a class="twikilink" href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheMourningAfter" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: midnightblue; line-height: 19px; text-decoration: none;" title="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheMourningAfter">The Mourning After</a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">." What the heck is "The Mourning After"? Maybe you could piece together <i>some</i> sort of idea, but you can't be sure, and now you're curious. There's a provided link that explains the trope for you, so why would you waste time inferring? </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">"Second Love" is probably a more intuitive name than "The Mourning After", but the link is right there so why guess?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">So you go to the trope page for "The Mourning After". When you start reading <i>that</i>, you get hit with new terms like "Cynicism Catalyst", "I Will Wait For You", and so on. You click on <i>their</i> links to pin down their definitions. Suddenly you're several links deep in tropes, and y</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">ou're too intellectually curious to stop.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;"> You're probably the same kind of person </span><a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/cracked-and-online-information.html" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">who gets trapped on Cracked all day</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">. In fact, I bet you've even went to Cracked </span><a href="http://www.cracked.com/funny-4848-tv-tropes/" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">to see what they had to say on TV Tropes</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">. Good work.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKrQqMqAlMlU3uFij2QNHiPZd_CCdmqQJKcK9eb2HfQyEEippJm6NL79rG-Q1nQg-bRPIpKIzEPZmrH_qCgPUMek9ELCtn9sTkxHIERCoTwMrvw5fOHglEoDyihKfOc9Tm2sjEPPABPnw/s1600/tv-tropes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKrQqMqAlMlU3uFij2QNHiPZd_CCdmqQJKcK9eb2HfQyEEippJm6NL79rG-Q1nQg-bRPIpKIzEPZmrH_qCgPUMek9ELCtn9sTkxHIERCoTwMrvw5fOHglEoDyihKfOc9Tm2sjEPPABPnw/s1600/tv-tropes.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Stolen from <a href="http://xkcd.com/609/">XKCD</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Unlike Cracked, the language used on TV Tropes <a href="http://socialjournalism.com.au/tv-tropes-fandoms-dictonary/">gets obtuse very quickly</a>, but people's love of pop culture gets the website <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tvtropes.org">lots of traffic</a>. I would bet that most people who use the site appreciate the depth of analysis the website offers on their favorite TV shows and movies, and not much more beyond that. But there are some who get far more immersed in the TV Tropes jargon.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">The TV Tropes website has a page <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealLife">treating real life as a series of tropes</a>, where the "examples" chronicle instances where tropes appear in real life. Sometimes they seem fairly tongue-in-cheek, but the sheer number of examples demonstrates some people's eagerness to project their fictional terminology on their non-fictional world.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">Then you have the "This Troper" pages, where contributors to TV Tropes post about themselves in terms of the tropes that they create. <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Darkclaw">Here's one such example</a>. <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/ABNDT">Here's another.</a> If you look through the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/contributor_list.php">big list of contributor pages</a>, you'll see that not <i>all</i> of them are so creepily self-indulgent, but the behavior certainly has a presence among these pages.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">And then you have "Troper Tales", shut down from TV Tropes proper <a href="http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Troper_Tales_Wiki">but since continued on its own website</a>. This is when tropers contribute examples of tropes by recounting events in their lives. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsLewMsZlLU">It's</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT4vg9MtsLU">usually</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpKmmzRsgNE">more</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6xJ7q0YsL0">than</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rITtv98aa68">a little</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxCkrkfbaiw">depressing</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">So, the community's got a decent number of people that are fairly detached from reality. How detached can these people possibly get?</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/OWwZlXWu2uU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; line-height: 19px;">Oh, what a question.</span></div>
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TV Tropes has featured its share of <a href="http://youtu.be/O60H4_QA8JI">pedophilia</a> <a href="http://www.themarysue.com/tv-tropes-restores-rape-tropes-but-disturbing-questions-remain/">apologists</a>, and has gotten in trouble with Google over its extensive number of pages on rape. That is odious thing about having a collaborative website that can deal in graphic content - some people will use the website to show how <i>enthusiastic</i> they are about the graphic material. As evidenced by the previously linked YouTube videos above, TV Tropes' dedicated community is <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/TV_Tropes#The_ugly">filled with undesirables</a>.<br />
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However, we ought to remember that a website dedicated to talking about TV shows and consumable media probably isn't going to bring in the most sophisticated people. A lot of them <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/tvtropes.org">are still in high school</a>, and their strange fixation on fictional conventions might easily be as forgiven as <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/deviantart-and-teenage-psyche.html">DeviantArt's strangeness</a>. If deconstructing fiction with code words and projecting their language onto their own lives is how they can make sense of their turbulent teenage world, then maybe TV Tropes' most laughable users are just going through a regrettable phase of their life.<br />
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Let's look at a community whose demographics are estimated by Alexa to <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lesswrong.com">over-represent graduate students</a> on the Internet: Less Wrong.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQMRHp6j-R8qSpPBHmjxm6HHKXq8iBQovgpNYalSsdQ1aHGJT4bdfz0oNy2WkmS86RWz0KnVzHFg_tpn_kV9RuQONKgTHKYYADNhvGyQ40ENJ2wLDghRTnhUYH2moR5gCmcWqBvtg9jo/s1600/LessWrongLogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQMRHp6j-R8qSpPBHmjxm6HHKXq8iBQovgpNYalSsdQ1aHGJT4bdfz0oNy2WkmS86RWz0KnVzHFg_tpn_kV9RuQONKgTHKYYADNhvGyQ40ENJ2wLDghRTnhUYH2moR5gCmcWqBvtg9jo/s1600/LessWrongLogo.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">oh god what's going to happen in my comments section</span></div>
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Compared to TV Tropes' ranking among the top 10,000 websites online, Less Wrong is fairly obscure and sits among the top 100,000. It is a community blog with its roots found in <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong#History">blog posts authored by Eliezer Yudkowsky</a>, and with a viewership that is <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/">somewhere in the thousands</a>. The average age of its self-reported members is in the late 20s, with most of them possessing an undergraduate degree or higher.<br />
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The website is a space where people explore human biases and how they detract from making rational decisions, with an emphasis on preventing these biases from developing inaccurate perceptions. Now, that alone isn't anything special - blogs like <a href="http://youarenotsosmart.com/">You Are Not So Smart</a> and portions of the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/online-atheism.html">developing online atheist movement</a> are also in the business of addressing the many cognitive errors that people make. Less Wrong differs from these other spaces by having an emphasis on transhumanist concepts, and by having a specialized terminology that can be very difficult for the casual viewer to penetrate.<br />
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We'll do what we did for TV Tropes, and explore an example.<br />
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We look at Less Wrong's featured articles, and we click on the article "<a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/6pm/secrets_of_the_eliminati/">Secrets of the Eliminati</a>", because that sounds strange and interesting. I start reading, and I get hit with the term "ontologically fundamental" in the first sentence. This term might be intuitive to people with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology">some background in philosophy</a>, but not to me. Luckily, our author explains the meaning of the term, but not long after that mental hiccup we hit the term "utility-maximizing AI". I know what we mean by artificial intelligence, and I have a vague sense of what 'utility' means, but I'm still left to infer what the author means when you mash the terms together.<br />
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Then I get hit with "blue-minimizing robot", and I guess that term was sufficiently odd enough that it merited a link to <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/6ha/the_blueminimizing_robot/">a new article explaining it</a>. The article beyond the link explains that "blue-minimizing robot" is an entirely hypothetical device, and to fully explain its implications are going to involve <i>other</i> vague terms like "automatically strategic" and "lost purpose".<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXi81ICkSRoXk2gM5n9U8PYjRIOXIifWpdbhVF6hpht39hN_LMWxdv7IFsEDtBXX9gDaBhSiArE_SKt3r5mLSrPERUdi6DYSBvVQtOgdKaANPvhk3XtISUbfEMrpmKMCFAwbG3FTT-jGI/s1600/robot-artificial-intelligence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXi81ICkSRoXk2gM5n9U8PYjRIOXIifWpdbhVF6hpht39hN_LMWxdv7IFsEDtBXX9gDaBhSiArE_SKt3r5mLSrPERUdi6DYSBvVQtOgdKaANPvhk3XtISUbfEMrpmKMCFAwbG3FTT-jGI/s1600/robot-artificial-intelligence.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Also, hey! Don't you like <i>these</i>?</span></div>
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Like TV Tropes, Less Wrong uses lots of community-defined terms that refer to very specific concepts. Words and phrases like "the map and the territory", "antiprediction", "inside view", "steel man", and others all feature in the community's shared vocabulary. Not all of the terminology is home-grown either; sometimes technical terms start getting borrowed from existing fields - like the economist's "comparative advantage".<br />
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<i>Unlike</i> TV Tropes, whose terms are meant to apply to our understanding of fiction, Less Wrong's terms are meant to apply to our understanding of the real world. A term like "blue-minimizing robot" might not sound as creative as "manic pixie dream girl", but it's also a term meant to convey ideas that help shape understanding of AI (and ultimately intelligence). Since there are thousands of media pieces compared to our one reality, TV Tropes probably features a greater number of site-specific terms than Less Wrong does. But that doesn't mean that Less Wrong's terminology gets used any less frequently or passionately. Nor does it make their communication any less obtuse.<br />
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They have a page that compiles <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Jargon">their quirky terminology</a> - or at least, the parts of their terminology that <i>they</i> recognize are quirky. But a common response to people who don't quite understand their prose - or their arguments - is to advise them to "read the Sequences". The <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences">Sequences</a> are a series of blog posts that form the foundation of most arguments on Less Wrong. They are also extremely long, supposedly <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong#Culture">longer than Tolkien's <i>Lord of the Rings</i></a>. This isn't exactly the most practical solution for the casual viewer.<br />
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Less Wrong's particular use of terminology and high demand of prerequisite knowledge make it a very hard community to penetrate. In a way, it's an ingenious filtration system. I've <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">praised SomethingAwful in the past</a> for its use of a paid model and strict moderation in order to maintain its quality, but Less Wrong manages to filter out its undesirables by just sort of...being themselves.<br />
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Their most dedicated members happen to be the sort of people who would <i>actually read</i> a bunch of really long blog posts about artificial intelligence and Bayesian epistemology (don't even ask), and then throw around a bunch of self-coined terms with one another. When people don't understand what they're going on about, they get pointed to the prerequisite reading. When <i>that</i> ends up being difficult or even disagreeable, the community doesn't seem to bat an eye about the loss of potential new members.<br />
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But hey, if the community <i>wants</i> exclusivity based on their personal standards (and I can't fault people for that), then they're doing a great job! They can attract exactly the kind of people that they want in their community, and that is something a lot of other online communities have trouble accomplishing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBSkiLVZ8fIjq9QFqo5PBfh6u2Tq8Qjgxd24v6HABy9wvp1cBKdZ0b5PbcSzcialRqDB729qvIWZxqrEx2EYwiJudoMItukC7lDE4zOqYgPaAB4rp4NQd9yqLdESgNsxhb80M1-9hXtrE/s1600/Ivory-Tower-Syndrome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBSkiLVZ8fIjq9QFqo5PBfh6u2Tq8Qjgxd24v6HABy9wvp1cBKdZ0b5PbcSzcialRqDB729qvIWZxqrEx2EYwiJudoMItukC7lDE4zOqYgPaAB4rp4NQd9yqLdESgNsxhb80M1-9hXtrE/s1600/Ivory-Tower-Syndrome.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Even the Internet has these. Except instead of institutional precedence, they have...blogs.</span></div>
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That said, there have been people <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/fp5/2012_survey_results/">on the inside</a> and <a href="http://plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html">on the outside</a> of the community to accuse Less Wrong of being a cult, or at least cult-like. Whether Less Wrong's community is <i>actually</i> cult-like is not a question I'm willing to address at the moment. If anything, it just makes me want to write a future blog post looking into online cults, since I honestly have no idea what an "online cult" would involve.<br />
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Perhaps the most interesting incident within the community was <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk">Roko's Basilisk</a>, wherein someone posited what could be described as a new version of Pascal's Wager involving the singularity. This idea left members of the community with actual nightmares, and with many wondering about what they can do to help bring the singularity sooner. The internal response to this was a hasty mass-deletion by Yudkowsky himself.<br />
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In a lot of ways, TV Tropes and Less Wrong resemble each other. Their communities might be strange, but they also consist of fairly bright people with a passionate appreciation for their particular interests. Their websites feature a lot of well-crafted amateur content, and can sometimes leave you with some interesting thoughts if you decide to dig a little.<br />
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But what's really fascinating to me is the development of their vocabulary. The way they use their terminology to define themselves, their community, and their world is on a level beyond what I've seen in most major online communities. Perhaps there are many other online communities like them that I haven't happened to run into, but TV Tropes certainly has popular appeal and Less Wrong certainly dances with interesting topics. They may partially be cyberbalkanization at work, but they're also great examples of developed and self-sustaining online subcultures.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-79831980030906997372013-07-22T07:41:00.000-07:002013-07-22T07:42:02.509-07:00The Age of CollaborationSitting as the 8th most popular website in the United States (<a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org">and 7th, globally</a>) is <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixXqA1CtcvygNx-RNaEPEBFokG1oqTgD2YlDZKdEvI8AgX-ADP5WrESSysWQnwGGhpKvWxbow4Akx-Ri9us8wGZPu9wObNyVnKU61zWbAzSZmVRp3phRq3CbVrReEq0U-GHjRSvIJC2c8/s1600/wikipedia-logo2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixXqA1CtcvygNx-RNaEPEBFokG1oqTgD2YlDZKdEvI8AgX-ADP5WrESSysWQnwGGhpKvWxbow4Akx-Ri9us8wGZPu9wObNyVnKU61zWbAzSZmVRp3phRq3CbVrReEq0U-GHjRSvIJC2c8/s1600/wikipedia-logo2.png" height="320" width="261" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">On an unrelated note, have you ever tried reading the <a href="http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Walcome">Scottish wikipedia</a> out loud?</span></div>
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Wikipedia has become a fantastic resource over the years. It features millions of articles on nearly any subject you can think of. Although people will <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-gordon/the-truth-according-to-wi_b_819247.html">debate its credibility</a> (and indeed, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia">even Wikipedia says</a> that Wikipedia shouldn't be trusted at face value), the website is still a <a href="http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page346376">good starting point</a> for deeper research on a subject, and can guide you toward resources with higher reliability.<br />
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The truly interesting thing is that Wikipedia is crowd-sourced. Its contents are entirely determined by user contribution. There are <a href="http://wikipediareview.com/">Wikipedia editor communities</a>, <a href="http://abeautifulwww.com/2007/05/20/visualizing-the-power-struggle-in-wikipedia/">editing</a> <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5606897/the-greatest-and-most-dramatic-wikipedia-edit-wars">wars</a>, and even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Great_Wikipedia_Dramaout">problems with editor drama</a>. Through this bustling and sometimes chaotic group dynamic, an invaluable resource emerges.<br />
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And this is something that can be observed in other places online as well.<br />
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Wikipedia is one example among a long list of crowd-sourced jewels online. We've seen the power of the crowd emerge in our explorations of <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/04/internet-vigilantism.html">internet vigilantism</a> and <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-social-justice-army.html">online social justice</a>. While those two things involve the online crowd actuating social movements, Wikipedia and other crowd-sourced projects are just that: projects. Goods and services, tangible or otherwise, that can come about from the collective efforts of a mob.<br />
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'Open source' projects have gotten <a href="http://opensource.org/">a lot</a> <a href="http://opensource.com/">of popularity</a> <a href="http://sourceforge.net/">online</a>. For a program or software to be 'open source', its code must be <a href="http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/open_source.html">public and free for anyone to peruse</a>. This permits people to make their own modifications and additions to the code, which can then be uploaded for other people to use. The contributions can vary wildly in utility and quality, but the individual contributions ultimately improve the overall project.<br />
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There are <a href="http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Intelligence/Open-Sources-Greatest-Hits-259852/">plenty of examples</a> of successful open source projects. One such project is <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/">Mozilla Firefox</a>, the famed alternative browser to Internet Explorer that <a href="http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/08/18/the-popularity-of-firefox-around-the-world/">rose to prominence in the mid-2000s</a>. You could find the relevant source code <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Developer_Guide/Source_Code/Downloading_Source_Archives">here</a>, if you felt inspired to add anything to the browser. Another example is the Linux operating system, presented as an open source alternative to Windows and is completely accessible to people online.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKicVCAN8diRNcDFu6v6efMkXiexC8psRWnM0f2BCweLk2YVSf7Gb57nwgLO2TeYkFLXy-YBIrFIPpM3ARKwSiWsyLIQf3wMsfhrmhoeHI6yauLn7-IucWvLtTHAKiAyHQrRB5liaSrDo/s1600/linux.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKicVCAN8diRNcDFu6v6efMkXiexC8psRWnM0f2BCweLk2YVSf7Gb57nwgLO2TeYkFLXy-YBIrFIPpM3ARKwSiWsyLIQf3wMsfhrmhoeHI6yauLn7-IucWvLtTHAKiAyHQrRB5liaSrDo/s1600/linux.jpg" height="190" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Open source logo selections are hit and miss.</span></div>
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Certainly, it's not hard to understand why these projects can find appeal online. The Internet is a medium where <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/07/leaders-of-tribes.html">enterprising individuals</a> can make great products that reach millions of people. Open source projects empower everyone with the opportunity to contribute to something bigger than themselves. Open source is especially interesting when we also consider the <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/randnet.html">cultural libertarianism</a> that we see online. It's easy to see how bottom-up projects for the people, by the people, would have strong individualist appeal.<br />
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Certainly, we must consider that the vast majority of people aren't actively contributing to open source projects, but instead just using the free software. This likely goes along with the cultural libertarianism mentioned earlier, as it can reinforce the sense of entitlement often seen online. After all, this free and open software is available for download as soon as you feel like having it.<br />
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That said, the <i>actual</i> contributors do assist in great work. Obviously, collaboration is nothing new - human beings have been collaborating since the beginning of humankind. But while the Internet doesn't <i>introduce</i> the concept of collaboration, it certainly enables collaboration <i>on a larger scale</i>. People can work with one another from great distances, and keep in sync with one another at previously unimaginable speeds. They can be working in tandem with thousands of other people.<br />
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The value of online collaboration is so great that people now develop goods and services that make collaboration easier. Websites like <a href="https://github.com/">Github</a> allow programmers to upload their code and share their work within a group. Cloud storage tools like <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a> allow for quick and easy transfer and synchronization of files within groups. These tools are purely organizational - they exist to help us collaborate better, to keep us moving towards a project direction. The crowd can be a bunch of individuals working remotely, but working in the right environment, they can still be guided towards greater work cohesion.<br />
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This brings us to one of the most impressive crowd organizers of them all: <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_pSDzxUCXJBSUAy_PwLAx2D4hOclyyONQD7t-ycHMzDy0D1WZ8tetHOZbDyefVmJDKZApKpofhsoV729Bzrd0GvaR3Grx73CuspTB3e5EjdylgVv1I-k7bBqdDzzDA71hwYRCztyGRrY/s1600/kickstarter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_pSDzxUCXJBSUAy_PwLAx2D4hOclyyONQD7t-ycHMzDy0D1WZ8tetHOZbDyefVmJDKZApKpofhsoV729Bzrd0GvaR3Grx73CuspTB3e5EjdylgVv1I-k7bBqdDzzDA71hwYRCztyGRrY/s1600/kickstarter.jpg" height="190" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I think I'm just going to keep using logos for my pictures in this blog.</span></div>
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Kickstarter is not about open source, but rather open <i>funding</i>. Enterprising groups propose a project and ask for a certain amount of money. Individual members of the online crowd donate small amounts of money, often being offered incentives if the project meets its funding goal. Many notable projects have gone through this system, from <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project">resurrecting dead TV shows</a> to <a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-amazing-indie-video-games-that-kickstarter-made-possible/">empowering independent game developers</a>.<br />
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Kickstarter has facilitated the transfer of <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/48725154">hundreds of millions of dollars</a> to its many independent projects, turning crowd-funding into a legitimate option for aspiring entrepreneurs. Europe has since found its own version of the website in <a href="http://www.ulule.com/">Ulule</a>. The website <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/">IndieGoGo</a> presents itself as a similar international platform with some <a href="http://crowdfundingdojo.com/articles/kickstarter-vs-indiegogo-choosing-your-crowdfunding-platform">slight differences in their funding model</a>. The beauty of these websites is that they are purely organizational, much like Dropbox and other services. They are a way to empower individuals to contribute to a project bigger than themselves, by guiding them toward an entrepreneur with greater resources. Since this is purely a monetary exchange, the barrier of entry is much lower than that of a programming project.<br />
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Crowd funding has found its wings in charity ventures as well. The <a href="http://desertbus.org/">Desert Bus</a> is a group of gamers who record themselves playing video games, and stream it live over the internet. Through this live event, viewers are encouraged to donate money to <a href="http://www.childsplaycharity.org/">Child's Play</a> charity. The stream gets thousands of viewers, and any one individual will only donate a small amount, but the organization has managed to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to this charity. This streaming model is used by <a href="http://www.childsplaycharity.org/events">many other online groups</a> as well, relying on the casual benevolence of the online mob.<br />
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Open source, crowd funding, and other crowd-focused ventures have caught on like wildfire and are already poised to begin disrupting old infrastructures. One big example of this can be found in the scientific community.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0bMwAPMM82k5lM8jXoOts0TlYaMS8IYb8xwP9vcES93HuZDRIzlBsY2l64U_hyphenhyphenOb7_u1HEGi8EtUlq_F56zztZ_vrojZKDEhezQrZzHG-6UMugqQOIIqKlgHIZA2_HesB5iroFbRwTOM/s1600/science_online_09_card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0bMwAPMM82k5lM8jXoOts0TlYaMS8IYb8xwP9vcES93HuZDRIzlBsY2l64U_hyphenhyphenOb7_u1HEGi8EtUlq_F56zztZ_vrojZKDEhezQrZzHG-6UMugqQOIIqKlgHIZA2_HesB5iroFbRwTOM/s1600/science_online_09_card.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Science? On the Internet??</span></div>
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Science is one of those fields that is entirely run on collaboration, even before the Internet. A lot of work in these fields, however, remain very difficult to access unless you're already a scientist. Scientific work gets published in costly journals, and the dialogue of inquiry between scientists is often very difficult to access if you're on the outside.<br />
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The Internet has given rise to the <a href="http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm">open access journal</a>, which publish like any other journal but are <a href="http://www.plos.org/">free for people to peruse</a>. A number of these have already <a href="http://www.doaj.org/">popped</a> <a href="http://www.wileyopenaccess.com/view/index.html">up</a> <a href="http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page">in</a> <a href="http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-journals">existence</a>. This gives scientific work a greater degree of public accessibility, which is something that some people <a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html">have literally died for</a>.<br />
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Open problems within scientific fields have also become more transparent to the public eye. Websites like <a href="https://www.innocentive.com/">Innocentive</a> have made bounties out of challenges in the STEM fields. A resourceful and imaginative individual could find a problem that interests them, contribute meaningful work, and then win a prize for their submissions. The website <a href="https://www.microryza.com/">Microryza</a> is a science-specific crowd-funding website, where donations are accumulated much as they are in Kickstarter. Suddenly, we have open and crowd-sourced alternatives to the journal system, the grant system, and even the research process.<br />
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Of course, crowd-sourced projects have a lot of traps and pitfalls to them. We see it with Wikipedia - sometimes the open content is not reliable. There have been reports of <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/09/the-dark-side-of-open-access-journals/">predatory science journals</a>, funded kickstarters <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-21/kickstarter-s-funded-projects-see-some-stumbles">that fail to launch</a>, and <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/108831/Lack_of_Support_Slowing_Spread_of_Open_source_Applications">lack of long-term support</a> with open source software. As it is with <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/fighting-terrible-internet-comment.html">other free and open things on the Internet</a>, sometimes the crowd-driven option isn't necessarily the option with the best quality control.<br />
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But an awareness of these pitfalls can only help us use these tools - and perhaps regulate them - more efficiently. I don't know if these new ways of collaboration will ever overtake the traditional ways that we allocate our resources - in fact, I have a hunch that they won't. But they are one more tool in our arsenal, and having more tools is always a good thing. The crowd is a powerful tool...when guided correctly.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-48895817787634375272013-07-15T06:20:00.002-07:002013-07-15T06:32:31.228-07:00The New Face of MusicI've been doing a lot of songwriting this past week. It's just been me, a couple instruments, a <a href="http://bluemic.com/snowball/">decent USB microphone</a>, and <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>. Here and there I'll even collaborate with friends of mine online to put together musical parts I can't get on my own. Then I upload the fruits of my work to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/ripuarian">Soundcloud</a>. Yes, that link will take you to my music. I can't promise you that my music is good, but I like what I write, at least.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">My life right now, but cheaper and jankier.</span></div>
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Nonetheless, it's a wonder that I'm able to do any of this in the first place. It used to be a very costly and sluggish process to produce music. Promoting your music was a matter all on its own - there's a booming industry of record labels and producers holding the keys to the gates of fame. Your options for music as a consumer were the radio, live showings, and media like records and tapes.<br />
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Things are much different now. Today, we'll be talking about how the Internet has changed the music industry.<br />
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I have to admit that the evolution of the music industry in the past 20 years isn't just a story about the Internet. Emergent technologies like the CD and digital media, along with the lowering cost of electronic devices like microphones and cameras, all happened concurrently with the rise of the Internet.<br />
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That said, digital media can be digitally transferred, and the Internet was at the right place at the right time. In the early 2000s, services like Kazaa, Limewire, Napster, and torrent software flourished in use, allowing users to get as much music as they'd like for free. They were sort of mystical software at their time - the contents that you'd find when you searched on Limewire were not contents you could find so easily on a typical Internet browser. These files would transfer through a part of the network in <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/06/network-of-networks.html">ways we don't necessarily expect out of the Internet</a>.<br />
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Of course, people in the music industry did not appreciate that their music was being pirated. The RIAA <a href="http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/napster.html">went to court against Napster</a> (with very public participation <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20071129061341/http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=195&wit_id=252">from Metallica</a>, too!), but all that did was <a href="http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/topclones.html">draw people to other file-sharing tools</a>. The RIAA would move to file <a href="https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later">many more lawsuits</a>, and the music industry would attempt to use software tools like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management">DRM</a> to protect their products. Unfortunately for them, the online collective was too large and too resourceful for these efforts to have much impact.<br />
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While the old-world music industry fought hard to make the Internet conform to their business models, new businesses were popping up that conformed to the Internet instead. Radio has found a re-emergence in our culture through <a href="http://www.pandora.com/">Pandora Radio</a>, which allows streaming of music much like traditional radio. Pandora stays afloat from ad revenue and sponsorships - much like traditional radio - and has found <a href="http://mashable.com/2011/03/18/pandora-success/">plenty</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/technology/08pandora.html">of</a> <a href="http://www.lendio.com/blog/pandora-internet-radios-misadventure-success/">success</a> with this model. And of course, unlike all of those other music services, Pandora was <i>actually legal</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUlXNOBEthQvDYSh-n6ObZV07tH91JFdsloCnFx1bPsriaHxbiKjajDXb4mOe-ye8Dwm8BUP26tc2WVsU0x0oNUIDBZAmocj4nFyhelX6KFT7siClSLE5bl2y3hpI0L0S1EgRY1sYwjVE/s1600/pandora-internet-radio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUlXNOBEthQvDYSh-n6ObZV07tH91JFdsloCnFx1bPsriaHxbiKjajDXb4mOe-ye8Dwm8BUP26tc2WVsU0x0oNUIDBZAmocj4nFyhelX6KFT7siClSLE5bl2y3hpI0L0S1EgRY1sYwjVE/s1600/pandora-internet-radio.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Bruno Mars only included <a href="http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2012/10/21/snl-bruno-mars-as-pandora-radio-intern-video/">if you want him to be</a>.</span></div>
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Other radio services exist that put a spin on Pandora's business model. Pandora streams music of a particular genre or band that you specify, and generates playlists using <a href="http://www.pandora.com/about/mgp">some fancy software</a>. <a href="http://grooveshark.com/">Grooveshark</a>, a website where people can stream music of their choice, operates on ad revenue as well as a "freemium" model, where users can get more features if they opt to pay for a premium account. <a href="http://8tracks.com/">8Tracks</a> is a website with a similar financial model where users make public playlists that get streamed as radio.<br />
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Although piracy is still <a href="http://globalstudy.bsa.org/2010/downloads/study_pdf/2010_BSA_Piracy_Study-Standard.pdf">alive and well</a> on the Internet, there are now options for free music that don't hurt the music industry. With online radio, the user can listen to as much music as they'd like, the artists make their money, and these businesses stay afloat. And of course, traditional music vendors have popped up online in the form of <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/">iTunes</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/music">Amazon music</a>, <a href="http://bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a>, and others. It's nice to think that there are lots of people who would choose to support the artists over downloading the music for themselves.<br />
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But that's just on the music consumption front. The way music gets public exposure nowadays is different as well. Music forums, like any other category of forum, have flourished online. Websites like <a href="http://pitchfork.com/">Pitchfork</a> offer lots of opinions that enthusiasts can peruse (even if some of those opinions are <a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/pitchfork-gives-music-68,2278/">asking to be lampooned</a>). MySpace, despite its lack of cultural presence in our society these days, still offers itself <a href="http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/networks/myspace4.htm">as a platform for bands to promote themselves</a>.<br />
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And then there are websites like SoundCloud, where chumps like me can put up their music for everyone to hear. If I were feeling bold, I could send links to my music more aggressively, put up some of my music for sale on iTunes or Bandcamp, and start an amateur music career. If I were feeling extra bold, I could even start going on YouTube and making music videos.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_g6f0arqYq7Vn8SmR4HlM4Py22Xac5EZ9DcCVl7Xqf3i40jD2PLVaju_rYDViHLTuUdNPZfi98bwkT4e_wK15ITDxfaypFs7N12_9T8YkwZ6z_GtIHwUgYSCVZk8UTau_hsuG9JtaUQ/s1600/istock_000010941845xsmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_g6f0arqYq7Vn8SmR4HlM4Py22Xac5EZ9DcCVl7Xqf3i40jD2PLVaju_rYDViHLTuUdNPZfi98bwkT4e_wK15ITDxfaypFs7N12_9T8YkwZ6z_GtIHwUgYSCVZk8UTau_hsuG9JtaUQ/s1600/istock_000010941845xsmall.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Now if only my workspace were a little less jank.</span></div>
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YouTube's become a very special kind of hotbed for music. Ever since they <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-business-of-youtube.html">solidified their ad revenue model</a>, big-name artists have been putting their music up on YouTube through <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/VEVO">VEVO</a>. The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/charts/videos_views?t=m">YouTube charts</a> function a lot like music charts nowadays. The fact that it's also a video platform makes YouTube a sort of MTV on demand, back when MTV actually played music.<br />
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But smaller-name artists have found success on the medium as well. In 2006, the band OKGo made a music video that managed to go viral on YouTube. The "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA">Here it Goes Again</a>" music video was a simple low-budget choreography piece that gathered millions of hits back in YouTube's early days. This public exposure prompted the band to release <a href="http://www.newburycomics.com/rel/v2_viewupc.php?storenr=103&upc=72435788002">a deluxe DVD version</a> of their album.<br />
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But that's nothing. Wait until you hear about the YouTube user kidrauhl. He put up a few videos on YouTube back in 2007 and 2008, and got found by a marketing executive completely by accident. He was then flown out to Atlanta, Georgia to record some demos. This ultimately resulted in signing onto a record label and kidrauhl becoming a global superstar. His name? <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/fashion/03bieber.html">Justin Bieber</a>.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/1XC1jNo2g8s?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Even if you don't manage to get signed onto a major record label, musicians can still find success online. So many artists <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/collectivecadenza">move</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/collectivecadenza">to</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/goonieman86">YouTube</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/lindseystomp">to</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/ThePianoGuys">promote</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/gootmusic">their</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/chestersee">work</a>, just waiting to be discovered by the casual viewer. Some principal investment on recording gear and instruments are necessary, but these electronics are cheaper than ever, and will only continue to be more affordable. You could be a random person just putting up videos of yourself <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/SmoothMcGroove">singing acapella versions of video game music</a>, and you could turn a profit from making your performances available as downloads.<br />
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All of these developments lead me to wonder what the music industry is going to look like in a few years. What will be the role of the major record label?<br />
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To drive the weight behind that question home, let's talk about YouTube some more. I recently got into a conversation about the future of YouTube's role in media with a friend. He brought up some things that I hadn't really thought about in <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-future-of-youtube.html">my last blog post on the subject</a>. YouTube may be self-sustaining, but will it eventually disrupt television and film industries?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Your move, Comedy Central.</span></div>
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars get spent by individual YouTubers for their productions, which are drops in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the film industry. Because of the large amounts of money that big budget films command, it's often the case that we see film-makers playing it very safe with their productions - I mean, why else are we already up to an Iron Man <i>3</i>?<br />
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If big-name industries start to stagnate, then this hotbed of creativity that we find on YouTube might start becoming more popular, and generating more revenue. But YouTube is also cheaper than film and television for investment. Eventually, we might start seeing less money go to television and film, and more money going to small, independent groups on YouTube. That could result in fewer movies and shows being made, and completely change where we look for entertainment.<br />
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What if the same thing happens with music?<br />
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What's the point of a musical album when you can buy individual songs on Amazon? What do music contracts look like when songs can proliferate on their own online? What advantages do big-name record labels offer when high-quality home studios get cheap enough?<br />
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The Internet has empowered people to be more informed and more connected, and the individual musician is no exception. It's possible that the major record labels will no longer be the gatekeepers to success. We've already kind of begun to see this with <a href="http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1098334/the-rise-of-indie-bands-in-advertising">the rise</a> <a href="http://www.edinazephyrus.com/the-rise-of-indie-music/">of indie music</a> <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7704-the-decade-in-indie/">in the past decade</a>. Will the industry splinter further as the Internet becomes more sophisticated?<br />
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The music industry first tried to respond to the Internet by pushing for controls on what can and cannot be done online. This failed. It will likely continue to fail. As the Internet continues to mature, the old music industry will likely be brought to its knees. It will be interesting to see what will rise in its stead.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00240215217688710841noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8417250538679233301.post-24895152618973765942013-07-08T04:40:00.000-07:002013-07-08T04:40:02.258-07:00Leaders of the TribesWe live in a time where the concept of being an "online celebrity" has really taken flight. Of such Internet celebrities, Mark Zuckerberg might be one of the most widely known and celebrated.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">He's only got a couple years on me. And a couple billion dollars.</span></div>
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This man has earned the status of being a household name and all-around cultural juggernaut. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He's had an academy award-winning film made about him. His Facebook page has over <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck">18 million followers</a>. All this, for being the man behind Facebook.</div>
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And there are others like him, too.</div>
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The Internet is a network of networks. Its content comes from individuals, and can range from simple videos to entire websites. Those who provide us with social networks and other online hubs are in a unique position for getting personal exposure.</div>
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For example, take Tom. Do you remember Tom?</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The notorious mug.</span></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Anderson">Tom Anderson</a> was the co-founder of Myspace. When Myspace was still important, new accounts would automatically include Tom as a listed friend. This has given Tom <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/04/8384727/">massive</a> <a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/235928/myspace_founder_tom_anderson_budding_social_media_analyst.html">publicity</a>, and earned him the nickname "Myspace Tom". Incidentally, it turns out that <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/20/myspace_tom_anderson_s_twitter_zinger_reminds_us_why_we_chose_facebook.html">you'd never actually want to be Myspace Tom's friend</a>, but it's undeniable that his position on MySpace was what gave him such cultural fame.</div>
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Of course, if you never used Myspace, then Tom might not mean a whole lot to you. The same could be said about Mark Zuckerberg if you never used Facebook, but good luck finding people my age that don't use Facebook. The point is that a successful online network often brings fame to the network creator, and their presence can be especially felt within the network.<br />
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Something interesting happens when we leave social networks and start getting into the various online hubs. Websites like Myspace and Facebook are fairly decentralized, and don't really have a community to speak of. What goes on when we start looking at <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-password.html">places where insular communities can form</a>?<br />
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Jeff "CJayC" Veasey was the founder and <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/07/the-founder-of-gamefaqs-to-step-down-its-time-to-show-some-respect/">former administrator</a> of GameFAQs, a gaming-oriented website <a href="http://kyleorland.com/thegamebeat/?p=94">primarily ran by himself</a>. The forums on GameFAQs have accumulated over <a href="http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/11-sballin/51910546">80,000 users</a> and over <a href="http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/11-sballin/44064783">60,000 message boards</a> over the years of its existence - certainly small numbers compared to Facebook, but still a significant number of people. Whenever Veasey would make a post on his own forums, the site users would <a href="http://wikicedia.net/wiki/CJayC">swarm his post</a> with their own posts, just so they could say that they "posted in a CJayC topic". During his tenure on his website, the user base made up nicknames for him like <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ceejus">Ceejus</a>, a portmanteau between Veasey's username and Jesus.<br />
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Veasey's role as site owner and administrator gave him an automatic leadership position within his website's population. His online handle was immediately recognizable. He would be given respect when seen and blamed for when something bad happened on-site. This is similar to what we see happen to Mark Zuckerberg and the <a href="http://www.blogworld.com/2011/09/23/why-you-should-stop-complaining-about-facebook/">various routine changes</a> that Facebook undergoes, except Facebook users don't respond nearly as uniformly or personally to Zuckerberg's every action. Certainly, nobody's saying that Mark Zuckerberg is Jesus. Well, except <a href="http://nvechols.com/is-mark-zuckerberg-jesus/335">this guy</a>, I guess, but that's just one guy.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">If you are Jeff Veasey in the mid-2000s on AOL, then you are in a waking nightmare.</span></div>
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All site owners and administrators have a privileged role in their websites by virtue of being the most important contributor to it. However, the site owner's role in their website <i>community</i> can be observed to do interesting things. On smaller forums, administrators are usually treated as just another forum user because of their immediate availability. On larger social networking sites, administrators are recognized, but don't offer much personal connection.<br />
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Look somewhere in between, and you'll start to find the administrative cults of personality. These online hubs have a large user base interacting with the administrator, but it isn't so large that the interaction is completely impersonal. These people are the leaders of their own tribe, conveniently assembled in the online hub that they created.<br />
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Some website communities like going above and beyond to celebrate their administrators. In 2009, Time Magazine's "World's Most Influential Person" title went to a relative unknown named <a href="http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1894028,00.html">Christopher "moot" Poole</a>. Moot is the creator, owner, and administrator of the website 4chan. The people of 4chan decided that not only were they going to vote en masse for their glorious leader, they also coordinated the vote <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/27/time-magazine-throws-up-its-hands-as-it-gets-pwned-by-4chan/">so that the top spots spelled out one of their inside jokes</a>. In a list normally reserved for world-renowned individuals in the mainstream public eye, an Internet website owner emerged victorious instead. This was not organized or requested by moot himself - his community members <i>voluntarily did this</i>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">More important than your silly civil rights leaders.</span></div>
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Administrators likely appreciate the community enthusiasm, since it's often a sign that people like going on the website and are consistently contributing to page views. The personal adulation, however, gets mixed responses depending on where you look. Jeff Veasey didn't like the attention that he received very much, and the frenzied behavior of his user base was reason enough for him to make fewer non-administrative posts on his forums.<br />
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Usually the more passionate user bases are also younger, so the administrator often has an additional authoritarian role. The website YTMND has one such younger user demographic, with members doing stupid things like <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/02/cyberbullying-and-old-internet-war.html">wage cyber-war with Ebaumsworld over image-stealing</a>. When such an incident occurred, administrator Max Goldberg had to step forward and tell his userbase to stop their behavior. He then had to deal with Ebaumsworld's administrators through a very public exchange of letters. Goldberg's actions could fit the profile of a parent, or at least a very devoted babysitter.<br />
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If we look at SomethingAwful, with a user demographic primarily in the 20s and 30s, then we can see a different administrative style. Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gvo1uWAhHc&feature=youtu.be&t=36m">approach to managing his website</a> was to create a website suited around his own interests, which means that anyone regularly visiting the website automatically has things in common with Kyanka. The simple filtration system in place to keep out low-content posters also brings up the average age of the community. The result is a community that Kyanka himself can relate to and actively participate in. He would even take up various PR stunts, including <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ajzcGsLaA">getting into a boxing fight with film director Uwe Boll</a>.<br />
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This kind of online cultural presence has been seen before, especially on YouTube's <a href="http://internetascent.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-youtube-frontier-new-culture-of.html">emerging entertainment community</a>. The admins are content providers. People flock to their content, and tend to stick around if they <i>like</i> the content. If the content is staying afloat and gaining in popularity, then the admins are likely doing their jobs well, adding to the credit that they receive. Although there is certainly cash flow by way of ad revenue, what really strikes me is the <i>cultural</i> capital at these people's fingertips. These people are beloved entirely for what they give for others to consume. Oftentimes, what these admins give are just parts of themselves.</div>
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