This Is A Label (Test: Full)

"This Is A Label" - a companion slideshow/film to my essay

Introduction

Coke. Pepsi. Bill Gates. Angelina Jolie. Nelson Mandela. Names carry a significance that is comprised of generations of experiences, reputation and effort. No two share a precise path of evolution, each splintered and refracted by the experiences of the people living it. In the language of rhetoric, names help us define the first and most essential of our earliest discourse communities, our families. In the tradition of familial closeness, language continues to assign significance dependent on discourse communities differentiated by name. As markers of these discourse communities, brands, signs and labels help to define the boundaries of discourse communities by identifying members and non-members and serving as conduits for inter-group conflict. They allow for rivalries between companies to evolve into near interpersonal feuds and help generations of cool (an uncool) high school students decide who they can sit beside at lunch.

Brand Culture

Pictured above are two of the most vocal and powerful discourse communities in modern capitalism. Coke vs. Pepsi. The soda confrontation that defined a generation (or more). But more importantly, it manipulated the public’s opinion of not one but both companies by convincing their adoring fans that only one discourse community could come out on top. So, despite Coke having finally taken a substantial lead in the sugary soft-drink market, both companies brought in revenue in the billions, with additional profit coming from the numerous smaller companies and extensions each owns, such as FritoLay. But the effect of good-natured advertisements such as the ad on the right, put out by Pepsi Co. just in time for Halloween, is one of congenial mockery. Understanding exists, not only between Pepsi and Coke, but between the companies and their audience, that neither one is attacking their opponent company. Rather than a cavalcade of accusations and factoids about how horrible Coke is for your health, Pepsi fires shots on the very subculture of Coke, the people who believe with their very souls that Coke is genetically superior to Pepsi. They achieve a mirror of popular athletic discourse with this method, similar to the trash talking that occurs between sports fans (and infects Facebook in the weeks leading up to Cat/Griz). The "fans," as it were, rally to the defense of their product, Pepsi gets some press, Coke-fans on Reddit respond with a pithy ad of their own, and the world spins on.

But this result would not be conceivable without the polarizing effects of the all-powerful discourse community. Because, as the advertisements indicate, you are either pro-Pepsi or pro-Coke (unless you happen to be one of the godless heathens that claims they can't tell the difference, but those liars have no place in either discourse). By using their distinctive images as their primary polarizing weapon, Coke and Pepsi, like other famous - and infamous - brands, have used the formation of discourse communities to their advantage. This formation is the most superficial of all the discourse communities related to the psychology of labels, but it functions as an undeniable mainstay of American economy and society. Brands using discourse communities to foster a feeling of "sameness" between a large group of people use what Fish refers to as a "manipulation of reality," attributed to rhetorical man. This manipulation, intended as a criticism of the inability of rhetoric to unveil truth, instead functions as a low-level type of societal glue, keeping an advertising audience with few certain commonalities together.

[Great Rivalries of Our Times. Burger King vs. McDonalds and Apple vs. Microsoft.]

Signs, Significance

These are signs. They denote possession of a thing, brand a place, person or item as the real or metaphorical property of an overarching agent – in this case, the Montana State University Athletic Department. Signs are abundant; all of the above and branding by a larger organization. It is clear, concise and largely unremarkable (unless you like me, feel like going out of your way to remark on it.) The false ownership that discourse communities feel through brand preferences becomes a fully realized phenomenon in the signage of our day to day lives. People love to literally label. We have a machine called a label maker and we use it exactly as the name implies: put your name on your belongings so everyone knows they're yours.

These are also signs. Unlike the personal sign, these denote function and location and deal less with the possession of the labeled thing and more with the location, function and necessity of the labeled object or place.

What do these signs have in common? All were photographed using and iPod. All live in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. And all of them denote possession, pertaining to a group or discourse community.  According to Tania Murray Li, “anthropologists have long acknowledged the social nature of property: that it is not a relationship between people and things, but a relationship between people, embedded in a cultural and moral framework, a particular vision of community” (Lee, 501-502). Signs, as Li is quick to point out in the description, are easy to misconstrue. They are, at first glance, a form of label, sure. That identification is simple, plain and yet as inclusive as necessary. They explain. Who the thing belongs to, what the things does, where the thing is. Signs are an analogue communication web, passing information from writer to audience in an efficient and simplistic manner. Signs fulfill a highly necessary function in the formation of literal networks, bringing groups together in places for functions, all denoted by symbols on a page. It is not until those symbols lose their physical form that they endanger clear communication.

This Is A Label

This is a label. It looks a little different than the examples above, but do not be deceived. This is the personal label. 

The personal label is most similar to the signage of ownership, but it can be both self-assigned and utilized as a personal version of the brand. In this way, it combines the most effective strategies of the top two methods of labeling.

The personal label serves as the mating call of social friendships, drawing geeks, nerds, jocks, preps and fangirls together across huge social strata, such as large school or work settings.

Not all labels are self-assigned. When I first pitched this project to the Digital Media class, I could see the blossoming horror on my classmates' faces as they recalled terrible names from childhood classes. I worked to make the video about more than name calling and hair pulling, because the function of the personal label means so much more.

The personal label can be a connection into a societal network, ready and waiting. Fangirls, a somewhat derogatory name from women madly obsessed with a type of media, is also a word that has been joyfully reclaimed by those it appears to exist to slight. To identify as a fangirl is, in many ways, to accept the mantle and trappings of a label given to you by someone else; and in making it your own also reinvent it.

The personal label can be a passing identification, a self-assured title that denotes what you feel, think, or believe at a given time. It broadcasts your emotion and communicates with others who also temporarily occupy the same brief discourse. In this way, internet forums have achieved enormous success by catering to the whimsical bitching needs of the multitudes online.

Lastly, labels can be arbitrarily assigned to you based on signs you express to the world at large. Short hair? You're a lesbian. Well-dressed and polite? You're metrosexual at best, probably gay. Tattoos and piercings? No good stoner.

These are the labels that harm and constrain. They can help disenfranchised parties to form groups in defense, but these groups are not high-functioning, collaborative discourses. The resentment produced by this last construct of personal labels undoes any good the labels themselves can enact, almost before it happens.

In Conclusion

People like judgement. It feed social situation and the gossip in all of us. And labels make gossip easy. Really, really easy. So easy, in fact, that people forget the function of labels as community. They forget the network that labels helped them build, the product it helped them sell, and the friends it helped them find. In an age where quotes are judged twice-over by their ability to condense into 140 characters or less, the complications of subterranean labels is not something the average human gossip machine wants to contemplate. So the discourse communities that we construct with the labels of our lives, the brands, the signs and the incessant name calling, culminate in an anticlimactic rush of information we feel compelled to simultaneously share and downplay the importance of.

Everyone is an individual. The trick is recognizing that everyone does not begin and end with you.

Be whatever.

1.1 The Video: This Is A Label

"This Is A Label" - Companion video to my critical photo essay.

2.1 Introduction

Coke. Pepsi. Bill Gates. Angelina Jolie. Nelson Mandela. Names carry a significance that is comprised of generations of experiences, reputation and effort. No two share a precise path of evolution, each splintered and refracted by the experiences of the people living it. In the language of rhetoric, names help us define the first and most essential of our earliest discourse communities, our families. In the tradition of familial closeness, language continues to assign significance dependent on discourse communities differentiated by name. As markers of these discourse communities, brands, signs and labels help to define the boundaries of discourse communities by identifying members and non-members and serving as conduits for inter-group conflict. They allow for rivalries between companies to evolve into near interpersonal feuds and help generations of cool (an uncool) high school students decide who they can sit beside at lunch.

2.2 Brand Culture

Pictured above are two of the most vocal and powerful discourse communities in modern capitalism. Coke vs. Pepsi. The soda confrontation that defined a generation (or more). But more importantly, it manipulated the public’s opinion of not one but both companies by convincing their adoring fans that only one discourse community could come out on top. So, despite Coke having finally taken a substantial lead in the sugary soft-drink market, both companies brought in revenue in the billions, with additional profit coming from the numerous smaller companies and extensions each owns, such as FritoLay. But the effect of good-natured advertisements such as the ad on the right, put out by Pepsi Co. just in time for Halloween, is one of congenial mockery. Understanding exists, not only between Pepsi and Coke, but between the companies and their audience, that neither one is attacking their opponent company. Rather than a cavalcade of accusations and factoids about how horrible Coke is for your health, Pepsi fires shots on the very subculture of Coke, the people who believe with their very souls that Coke is genetically superior to Pepsi. They achieve a mirror of popular athletic discourse with this method, similar to the trash talking that occurs between sports fans (and infects Facebook in the weeks leading up to Cat/Griz). The "fans," as it were, rally to the defense of their product, Pepsi gets some press, Coke-fans on Reddit respond with a pithy ad of their own, and the world spins on.

But this result would not be conceivable without the polarizing effects of the all-powerful discourse community. Because, as the advertisements indicate, you are either pro-Pepsi or pro-Coke (unless you happen to be one of the godless heathens that claims they can't tell the difference, but those liars have no place in either discourse). By using their distinctive images as their primary polarizing weapon, Coke and Pepsi, like other famous - and infamous - brands, have used the formation of discourse communities to their advantage. This formation is the most superficial of all the discourse communities related to the psychology of labels, but it functions as an undeniable mainstay of American economy and society. Brands using discourse communities to foster a feeling of "sameness" between a large group of people use what Fish refers to as a "manipulation of] reality," attributed to rhetorical man. This manipulation, intended as a criticism of the inability of rhetoric to unveil truth, instead functions as a low-level type of societal glue, keeping an advertising audience with few certain commonalities together.

[Great Rivalries of Our Times. Burger King vs. McDonalds and Apple vs. Microsoft.]

2.3 It's A Sign

This is a sign. It denotes possession of a thing and branding by a larger organization. It is clear, concise and largely unremarkable (unless you like me, feel like going out of your way to remark on it.) The false ownership that discourse communities feel through brand preferences becomes a fully realized phenomenon in the signage of our day to day lives. People love to literally label. We have a machine called a label maker and we use it exactly as the name implies: put your name on your belongings so everyone knows they're yours.

These are also signs. Unlike the personal sign, these denote function and location and deal less with the possession of the labeled thing and more with the location, function and necessity of the labeled object or place.What do these signs have in common? All were photographed using and iPod. All live in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. And all of them denote possession, pertaining to a group or discourse community. According to Tania Murray Li, “anthropologists have long acknowledged the social nature of property: that it is not a relationship between people and things, but a relationship between people, embedded in a cultural and moral framework, a particular vision of community” (Lee, 501-502). Signs, as Li is quick to point out in the description, are easy to misconstrue. They are, at first glance, a form of label, sure. That identification is simple, plain and yet as inclusive as necessary. They explain. Who the thing belongs to, what the things does, where the thing is. Signs are an analogue communication web, passing information from writer to audience in an efficient and simplistic manner. Signs fulfil a highly necessary function in the formation of literal networks, bringing groups together in places for functions, all denoted by symbols on a page.

It is not until those symbols lose their physical form that they endanger clear communication.

2.4 Label Me

This is a label. It looks a little different than the examples above, but do not be deceived. This is the personal label.

The personal label is most similar to the signage of ownership, but it can be both self-assigned and utilized as a personal version of the brand. In this way, it combines the most effective strategies of the top two methods of labeling.

The personal label serves as the mating call of social friendships, drawing geeks, nerds, jocks, preps and fangirls together across huge social strata, such as large school or work settings.

Not all labels are self-assigned. When I first pitched this project to the Digital Media class, I could see the blossoming horror on my classmates' faces as they recalled terrible names from childhood classes. I worked to make the video about more than name calling and hair pulling, because the function of the personal label means so much more.

The personal label can be a connection into a societal network, ready and waiting. Fangirls, a somewhat derogatory name from women madly obsessed with a type of media, is also a word that has been joyfully reclaimed by those it appears to exist to slight. To identify as a fangirl is, in many ways, to accept the mantle and trappings of a label given to you by someone else; and in making it your own also reinvent it.

The personal label can be a passing identification, a self-assured title that denotes what you feel, think, or believe at a given time. It broadcasts your emotion and communicates with others who also temporarily occupy the same brief discourse. In this way, internet forums have achieved enormous success by catering to the whimsical bitching needs of the multitudes online.

Lastly, labels can be arbitrarily assigned to you based on signs you express to the world at large. Short hair? You're a lesbian. Well-dressed and polite? You're metrosexual at best, probably gay. Tattoos and piercings? No good stoner.

These are the labels that harm and constrain. They can help disenfranchised parties to form groups in defense, but these groups are not high-functioning, collaborative discourses. The resentment produced by this last construct of personal labels undoes any good the labels themselves can enact, almost before it happens.

2.5 Conclusion

People like judgement. It feed social situation and the gossip in all of us. And labels make gossip easy. Really, really easy. So easy, in fact, that people forget the function of labels as community. They forget the network that labels helped them build, the product it helped them sell, and the friends it helped them find. In an age where quotes are judged twice-over by their ability to condense into 140 characters or less, the complications of subterranean labels is not something the average human gossip machine wants to contemplate. So the discourse communities that we construct with the labels of our lives, the brands, the signs and the incessant name calling, culminate in an anticlimactic rush of information we feel compelled to simultaneously share and downplay the importance of.

Everyone is an individual. The trick is recognizing that everyone does not begin and end with you.

Why the rhetoric of business is cheapening the way we connect to one another (and what we can do about it)

Because I'm a tasteless scum-bucket, I really like to read mainstream magazines. Nothing classy, like lit journals or independent presses. No, I mean things like Cosmopolitan. In an attempt to make myself feel more like a 20-something professional, I inevitably turn to the business and money section and inevitably come across the word "networking." Now, whatever Cosmo means by networking, it is not what Anil Dash meant by networking. In fact, the only thing that is for sure is that whatever networking is, people are doing too little, too badly as far as "business professionals" are concerned. I think it was largely due to this constant lauding of networking that for so long I misunderstood what it was.

It was, in fact, what I call "being nice to people" and "making friends."

So I want to talk about buzzwords and (self-)marketing today. Specifically, the idea of networking as something we can possess and control and of the colossal failure of Google+'s YouTube takeover.

To make my point, I would like to combine a series of the videos we watched, particularly Anil Dash and Chris Anderson. Dash's idea of networking appeals immensely to me because, as a 20-something about to charge into the world-at-large, the idea that communication is changing in a way that invites - and demands- that I join the conversation is reassuring in ways brown-nosing a boss never will be. Dash's networking has less to do with sucking up than with confronting whatever makes you world less awesome. Want a faster web browser? Better vlogging platform? Freedom from foreign oppressors? Networking is raising your voice and letting people know you are there to be heard. Better still, Dash's networking is skill-based, largely without the threat of privilege superseding talent.

Add to this Anderson's idea of crowd-fueled evolution of business and society and you find yourself at the helm of a powerful current that is poised to redefine

 Seth Priebatsch's idea that "the social building is done," is also of some interest to me, because it implies a backwards motion for most of the internet who are so intrigued by Tweeting, Liking and Re-blogging that they are largely disinterested at this point by the idea of moving on from those platforms. So this idea of evolution from social theory to game theory neatly connects my ideas about the hollow word of new-age networking, the deeper significance of true networking and the failure of Google+.

Google+ is a fine network.It function exactly as its supposed to and is conveniently located in the Google mega-plex of Chrome. Yet it has objectively failed at its initial goal: convince Facebook users to consolidate all of their interpersonal whining needs into one easy package. Why? The answer comes from all of the above argument. Google is a little late to the party and they did not bring anything new. They did nothing innovative to offer to new users and brought nothing new to the social networking conversation. Then, to top it all off, after failing to take off of their own, they installed themselves into the YouTube comments to bribe users of another site into using their product as the only way to make themselves heard. This, in Dash's example, is the exact opposite of how you network. This is note reaching out and building connections, but rather re-hashing a tired idea in the hopes of continuing the building of an online empire.

The dialogue is changing, as our videos for today showed. The price for not keeping up, apparently, is scorn from those who are at the forefront and confusion form other still behind you.

Also, for your viewing pleasure, a video on the ways we connect (or don't) with people using social media.
http://elitedaily.com/news/world/this-video-will-have-you-completely-rethink-how-you-conduct-yourself-online-and-in-person-video/

Critical Photo Essay Premise and Excecution

*All photos are not mine. Pending posts will be my photography.

Things I want to talk about in my photo essay:

The hippocracy of signage:

The significance we apply to otherwise insignificant items or occurrences:

The significance we apply (literally and figuratively) to our own environments:

I want to see the ways we label and apply language to our lives, especially places unconcerned with language and label as (such as idea and areas we wish to label as "possessions").

Everything You Never Wanted To Learn About The Kentucky Derby

My Infographic

The Words We Use To Make Ourselves

Like always, I want to start this blog post off with a story. Once, while I was playing pool in the summer, I found a piece of graffiti in the bathroom of a bar I would never choose to walk into. It read (if you'll pardon my French) "Fuck bitches get money." Now, clearly our inebriated author is slightly confused as to what exactly he is trying to say. And I realized that I had a Sharpie in my purse and a period would correct the sentence into something the original author clearly did not intend. But somehow, "Fuck. Bitches get money." seemed so much nicer on that puke-beige bathroom wall.

The point is, punctuation is the guideline within which we build society. Our communications are ruled by its inclusion, omission, and nuance. And we are painfully aware of this. When I searched typography art for images to add to this blog post, I steeled myself for the deluge of "Keep Calm And ___" memes. But instead I found something moving and profound.

We are intimately aware of the words that make us up, of the way we need language and how we lean on it throughout the day. Typographic are is a visual representation of our conscious and subconscious recognition of the nuances of type and punctuation Solomon introduces. Going back to our earlier studies of sign and signifier even, these pieces blur the lines between those things, making us question in we are sign or signifier ourselves. Certainly, we made words, but in some way are we ourselves not made by words as well?

Bad Science in CSI Miami: Visual Rhetoric Meets Iconography

Pictorial imagery catches us at unawares because, as intellectuals, we are trained to analyze texts and to treat drawings or photographs as trifling adjuncts. - Mishra

If computer simulations are documentary, they are subjunctive documentary. Their subjunctive nature lies not only in their flexibility in the imagining of events, but in their staging as well... - Wolf

Alright, kids, it's time to have a talk... a talk about fake detectives. Detectives of the following variety:

 You're mamas always taught you not to hurt other people, but they never thought to warn you about the dangerous siren-song of police work, did they? Actually, that probably has more to do with our generations increasing exposure to on-demand crime scene investigating that anything esle. We sell our children CSI kits as TOYS.

See, CSI is emblematic of a much larger problem: we, smart animals that we are, process information as it is given to us. And the visual rhetoric of CSI is entirely compelling. You can carry a gun, look like a model and put the bad guys away in a neat. 45-minute episode. But perhaps the most infuriating misconstruction of the franchise is the heavily visually-influences explanations of forensic science. In order to compress the show into its time slot and not overwhelm the readers, the franchise sacrifices authenticity for the Idiots Guide To _______. Obviously, not everyone who watches CSI feels the overwhelming assurance that they are ready to solve crime. But, like any other oversimplification of visual media to compress a complex idea, it introduces the allure of a vocation without acknowledging the work necessary to reach that point. Like selling products with an iconic brand, CSI has built an empire on the assurance that psuedo-science will sell (Big Bang Theory, anyone?). Audiences crave superficial reassurance, and with the compression of elegantly shot, useless machines, they barely need to pay attention to the dialogue to achieve it,

How to sort-of make adulthood work for you: the documentary

So last night, as I finished my other homework and began uploading my last videos, I realized that my flashdrive (and all my work thus far) was locked in a far-distant computer lab. So, at the crack of dawn this morning, I rolled out of bed and began re-creating my video from the ground up. This was slightly less awful than it might have been since, having done this once, I knew what I wanted it to look like. But it took forever to find comparable music and I am somewhat less happy with the final product that I was with the 75% I had before. However, I am quite happy with the addition of my final photos and video and overall the project turned out like how I envisioned it. I also now know more about WindowsMovieMaker (or at least, enough to hate it) which I think was the point of this project.

Enjoy!

Due to a lapse in government funding, this account will be inactive until further notice.

Why my future Kindle Fire is igniting a war on the internet and other things we don't appreciate about hypertexts

Jakobs is impenetrable to me. I thought I understood hypertexts until I read her piece. Now I understand nothing. I hope tomorrow's class clears some of this up.

Sosnoski, on the other hand, speaks to my soul. As a writer, with aspirations of publication, writing and reading lengthy texts on-screen is a part of my daily life. All of my word processing is done online. I read blogs, news and short fiction on my computer.

But I edit in print.

Essays, stories, poetry, articles. Whatever I am writing at the time. I print it out, mark it up, and type in the changes. And I've wondered before, in a distant sort of way, if that was a problem, or something to consider changing, but I've never given it much serious thought.

Now, though, it takes me back to last weeks discussion and my assertions about the significance of the way we write. I applied online writing to the idea that one for, has more or less merit than another, but now I am confronted not only with my own desire to signify the way I write, but with a critique of the way we read.

I contemplated starting this blog post by talking about my recent obsession with e-readers. Despite the presence of hypertext both on and off-screen in my life, this decision has been most inspired by the realization that moving my (tiny) library is going to be miserable. Books are heavy and take up a lot of space. A Kindle Fire can ride along in my purse (and lets me play Angry Birds).

But as I've begun shopping around for the e-reader I want once I'm gainfully employed post-college, I've encountered a bizarre cultural movement that coincides nicely with this article. There is rampant hate in certain circles of the internet for the idea that someone would dare to read on an e-reader rather than pick up a hard back book. To me, this seems someone egotistical and a little bit classist. To assume that someone is uneducated, lazy, or stupid for choosing the "less romantic" reading option is also to make the assumption that they have the money and space to buy and store those books, to move them. But a part of that reluctance also comes from the idea (as Sosnoski recognizes in his article) that this hypertext reading is less attentive and sloppier.

I also think that a percentage of these complainers are following the comp/lit fault line laid out by Sosnoski. They are reluctant to set aside what they perceive as the true way to enjoy and immerse yourself in a book and welcome a new technology for the amenities it offers; their reluctance has more to do with applied significance than practical function.

I suppose that this debate, like many we seem to encounter in this class, will only be solved with time and settling cultural norms.

Pencils, pens and the slow but sure devolution of writing into the mere amusement of the masses, oh my!

Note: I won't be in class tomorrow and I'm sorry. I try not to get catastrophically ill during the first month of classes, but, alas, this sinus infection is getting worse by the day.

I had a friend once in high school who would only write stories longhand. She said it helped her to be able to see the words, even when she had them crossed out. The delete button had too much finality for her liking. She was a lousy friend and a mediocre writer, so I never paid much attention to her peculiar creative process, but Baron makes me think she may have been on to something.

My all-time favorite xkcd take on the evolution (or devolution, as some would argue) of writing can be found here. Indeed, the sentiment expressed in the post is almost entirely opposite Baron's early reminder of what in incredible invention the pencil was. We, as modern writers, tend to look on past technologies as bygone eras, useless but for their effect of paving the way to modern writing methods.

For example:
How we feel writing longhand:

  How it actually is:


The typewriter, as Baron points out, was considered "so threatening...to the traditional literatus that in 1938 the New York Times editorialized against the machine that depersonalized writing" (emphasis mine). How different is that from the opinions of modern word processors. But how, I wondered as I read his piece, can something depersonalize writing if its only function is to facilitate that transfer of words from your mind to the page? What about pen and paper makes writing more personal that keyboard and screen? Does our romantic outlook as writers really so define our ability to adapt to new methods of annotating our thoughts? And does it hamstring us along the way?

In all seriousness, the universal in the changing reactions to new writing methods is the fear that, somehow, this new method will make writing less sacred than the method it replaces. Writers attach a deep significance to the way in which they writer (much like my friend from high school). To displace that sacred form is not to steal the words from the writers head, but to convince them that without their pencil/pen/typewriter/computer, the words are not worth writing.

And in that sense, my old classmates dislike of the delete button is just as valid as Baron's idea of the innovation and evolution of writing technology. Both are thoughts on new technologies, and while one is far more eloquently expressed, the other is more visceral and, in that way, more effective as an emotional plea.



Here is another favorite comic of mine, dealing with writers and their processes, much more than with their mediums. However irrelevant to the topic, go ahead and have a laugh: XKCD - On Writing (bonus round)

Internet Memes: Discourse communities and intertextual relationships making the serious into the comedic

Story time, intrepid readers!

Over the summer, I played on my parent's billiards team. One night, the conversation turned to the internet and I asked my mother if she knew what a meme was.

"Of course," she replied. "Like Michelle Obama's hair!"

To date, I still have no idea what about Michelle Obama's hair made its way onto the internet, but my mother was convinced that because it was a heavily repeated "internet sensation" it was also a meme.

Now, I am a child of the LOLcats generation and soemthing of an internet hipster, so I unwisely attempted to convince my mother that whaterver the FLOTUS's hair may look like, it was not a meme.

"Fine," she replied, clearly nearing the end of her patience with my hair-splitting. "What is a meme?"

...

...

What is a meme?

I've carried that question around with me since our conversation, and in Porter and Intertextuality, I think I've found my answer.

I would suggest, albeit temporarily, that there is no difference between my mother's idea of meme and my own experiences of it. To many people, in particular those who spend little to no time lost on the internet, there is no difference. A meme to them is a popular internet fad - somewhat confusing and difficult to identify. There is no word yet (although I hope it will be soon in coming) that denotes a "thing" on the internet that is funny for its individual characteristics. 

I suggest the need for such a word because, thanks to Porter, I personally define a meme as a text that derives its humor from one or more levels of intertextual conversation. Of course, all things are comprised of many texts, but some things, such as a book or a movie, can be defined as a group by something other than intertext (i.e. a book is read, a movie is seen). A meme can be spoken, watched, read or seen (or many at once) but it always overtly incorporates two or more texts.

For example:

Deconstruction: The humor in this particular image is reliant on the audience understanding the first picture (text) through the second text, the knowledge that in the television show Spongebob Squarepants the character Patrick Star is so incredibly stupid that this could be a real-life Patrick question. Therefore, here the meme takes two very different and explicit texts and combines them to create humor.

Another, more complex example:

Deconstruction: Overly attached girlfriend, as this meme is known, is based on the slightly manic looking woman in question. The memes are defendant on her image (and its visual humor) as well as pithy text that seems like something a too-attached significant other might do. But here, someone has taken an old, accepted meme, well known for its topic and applied current events and the governments violations of personal privacy and combined them to use these two texts (not to mention the layers therein) to create a social commentary.

Which brings us to:

Deconstruction: Because memes are created using the texts of our times, so to speak, they are privy to our worst pettiness, as well as our most brilliant commentary. One example of pervasive, but less-than-savory, intertext memes is the Fake Nerd Girl.  This meme takes the worst of society's internalized misogyny and gives it artistic and occasionally humorous form. 

To break down the above image, we have a girl (conventionally attractive, nicely dressed, ) wearing glasses popular in "scene" style and NERD written on her hand. Beside her, we have a boy (conventionally attractive, nicely dressed) wearing glasses popular in "scene" style and NERD written on his hand. Both appear to be dramatically posing for a picture. That is all. We have no other visual or textual clues as to who these people are and what they like.

What the meme form allows us to do is take the visual image of a girl who does not look like the cultural expectation of "nerd" and attach a vapid, petty comment (although I object that Harry Potter is a soft-nerd book). The comparison of these texts tells us that she is a fake.

Meanwhile, her nearly identical (MALE) counterpart is assigned "real-nerd" books and taken seriously. Following my argument of intersectionality, the reason the Fake Nerd Girl meme is so easy to laugh at is because of a cultural reading of the feminine as less intelligent and passionate than the masculine.

The only reason this second image was made is because of a society-deep inability to accept that the women you know are not the exception to the rule: there is no rule. This is intersectionality in action for me; practiacl application of rhetoric to examine societal trends and pressures.

Wow, sorry. It's late and I got a little into my feminist soapbox ranting. But the potential of intersectional modern texts to show us how we actually see things, as opposed to how we think we see them, is crazy huge.

So thanks for your patience. My new text would be meaningless without you.

I knew the day would one day come when my massive, useless knowledge of internet culture would stand me in good stead.

I Hate My Voice and Other Things My Webcam Taught Me

Alright, kids. This is me, in all my video-inept glory. Probably, I should not have watched Emily Jo's before I shot mine. My self-consciousness is crippling.

All jokes aside, I'm pretty happy with this. For a self-taught "vlogger," it turned out okay.

A new tool for every task

I like Keith Grant-Davie in equal measure for his dedication to detail and his sheer readability. Coming out of Rhetoric and Composition at this fine institution last year, I was convinced that commentators on rhetoric adhered to some invisible guideline that their writing should either be derisive of the subject or nigh-indecipherable in function. Grant-Davie, refreshingly, seems to belong to a school of thought that encourages both thoughtful and approachable commentary.

You go, Keith Grant-Davie. Four for you, Keith Grant-Davie.

How Keith Grant-Davie Laid Waste to My Inner Descartes

From the perspective of student who wants readings that take less time that dinner needs in the oven, I wish that all we read were the Grant-Davies of rhetoric. From the perspective of a student who wants to build and improve a knowledge base about rhetoric and rhetorical encounters, reading Fish before Grant-Davie (to say nothing of Geisler) makes perfect sense.

If Fish uses his article (and I feel he does) to address the potential problems with rhetoric and the Socratic Method by exaggerating and polarizing both, Grant-Davie brings us back to the world of practical application and examines why rhetoric can be seen as a Power of Evil ™ and how it can be harnessed and used to better understand basic human interaction.

For example:

My time spent as a (secret-alter-ego) TA was one blessedly short-lived semester, wherein I assisted in teaching a section of the MSU Honors College seminar. Early in the semester, we read Descartes ("I think, there for I am") as a class and discuss the ramifications of his theory. In my experience, as a student and a TA, there is always, always, one student who becomes so enamored with the idea of "questioning everything," that discussion for the rest of the semester always comes back to the very existence of the physical world and everything grinds to a standstill. The best remedy, for the sake of class discussion, is to come to an early agreement that some things (such as the existence of sentient life on Earth) are to be accepted as "fact" so that conversation may roll onward.

Fish reminds me, in a distant way, of Descartes, posing necessary questions about the nature of rhetoric and of its opponents, questioning the very tenants of the idea. Grant-Davie, then, proposes the breakdown by which we, as scholars of rhetoric, can agree on some simple terms and continue building and learning. This way, once we have immersed ourselves in the actuality of rhetoric, we can come back to Fish and re-asses his questions. But for the moment, we can safely cross over the handy bridge of Grant-Davie's writing and learn about the function of rhetoric. While mindful of Fish and his theory, we need not be overrun by him.

All this is to say that Grant-Davie takes something as massive and confusing as rhetoric and breaks it down into a basic method of analysis. For me as a student and a rhetor, this both allows me to study the uses of rhetoric as an art and begin to amass an internal definition of rhetoric that I can carry with me into other schools of thought and use to compare against their definitions and theories. 

But…What?

What, as luck would have it, is exactly the word that makes all of the difference for me between Fish and Grant-Davie.

What is the discourse about? Why is it needed? What should it accomplish?

As someone who had been forced encouraged to study rhetoric for a handful of semesters, coming across these lines made all the difference in the week’s reading. I had always personally considered rhetoric to be a study of human communication, much of which is so ordinary as to be almost accidental. But to deliberately decide if a situation requires rhetoric? That implies a level of attention far greater that a simple conversation. These questions and their implications elevated my internal definition of rhetoric from everyday conversation to the study of communication. This questions introduces the stage at which morality and judgment enter rhetorical debate, in choosing whether or not to even enter an argument (see: YouTube comments section) and it demands a level of considerate thought be given to a project.  

In Conclusion

In my personal rhetorical studies, I need Grant-Davie as much as, or possible more than I need Fish. Up until now, my narrow focus has been on the morality of rhetoric and my attempts to build a staunch defense of it have suffered considerably from their basis in theory rather than practice. What Grant-Davie demands, not only with his questions of exigence, but his exploration of the rhetorical process and rhetorical situations as a whole, is the suspension of my reliance on theory until my understanding of practice is at least underway. And that, if nothing else, is the perfect, unsettling, useful way to kick off a new semester.

Digtital Rhetoic: Welcome to my blog...again

I have had classes with some of you before, so this process may be getting fairly stale. But here, for at least the third time, I present myself and my blog. Poor Succinct Obfuscation, used for every class that requires a blog. Do you belong to a social scientist? A rhetorician? A power-mad internet junkie? No one will ever know...