Moby-Dick and Fan Culture

What I have decided to focus on for this post is communication within fandoms, particularly criticism about the fandom itself. 

Moby-Dick is considered a unique novel because of the broken or one-sided communication performed by the characters. As with all types of communication, the aggregate of the communication within the novel leads to a certain conclusion.   "[The] atypical nature of most speaking in the novel encourages the negative view[...]that the world is a place where communication is suspect and perhaps impossible" (Barnett 140). Although throughout the book various speeches and conversations are made about the White Whale and Captain Ahab, "the multitude of verbal styles consciously represents the heterogenious collectivity of mankind" (141)  Likewise, indvidual fans think differently and have different ideas, but they all generally come to the same conclusions.  

 Can fandoms be compared to a product?  Technically they start out as a product or series of products, such as a book or movie.   As the item increases in popularity, authentic merchandise as well as fan-created materials begin to circulate.  As people invest themselves emotionally within a fandom, or begin to immerse themselves within it, they seek to know whether or not the immersion is worth their emotional energy based on the opinions of others.  Fans promote fandoms because they like their involvement and seek to express their liking and their identity within it.  This especially happens within social media, because it brings together a variety of people who are not necessarily geographically or socially connected, but sometimes people who share mutual ties of trust.  Interested fans also examine the opinions of other people they don't know to get a feel for what the quality of something is. 

A study by Buzzetto and Moore found "participants exhibiting prosumer behaviors through the use of social media as a means to share comments, perspectives, and opinions about goods and services. As such, mediated messages conveyed through SNS [social networking sites] are influencing purchase decisions with word of mouth messages paramountin consequence and ability to impel action" (Buzzetto-Moore 77.)  In Moby-Dick, Ishmael starts out as a prospective whaler who goes off information he gathers from Queequeg, Captain Peleg, and other people with experience in the industry.  Later, Ishmael becomes such a fan of whaling that he spends most of the book promoting and detailing its work.

Participating in a fandom sometimes requires spending money to attend movie screenings, buy books/DVDs/Blu-rays, or to buy paraphanelia to the materials to make it.  Individuals who want to spend money may be influenced by their peers in their decision whether or not a product is worth investing in.  To give a personal example, I am not a Whovian (follower of Dr. Who), but I want to be because I have seen Whovian-generated memes on Facebook promoted by friends who ARE Whovians, and since I trust their reputation (aka I know they're awesome) I am inclined to think positively of the fandom.  Fandoms can also require serious time commitments (e.g. making memes or costumes). This is also true of online missionary work of the LDS Church, but that's another story.

David Tennant as the 10th Doctor.  Photo Courtesy ABC Radio. 

Then fans make them into something their own. Fans recreate their fandoms on social media sites for bite-sized chunks.  On You Tube, for instance, "they come to consume pop culture like movies, television, and songs thesame way they enjoy cookies or chips – in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggetsmade to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed (Miller,2007) [...] It can be considered a buffet of “snack” videos, highly meeting people’s needs for high-speed entertainment munching" (Shao11 ) It's called getting your daily dose of [Insert fandom name here]).  Consider this version of "Call Me Maybe."  All current episodes of Star Wars in one setting.  If that isn't a pick-me up I don't know what is.

For fans, creating content can fulfill personal needs.  "On Wikipedia, people can create new items or edit existing items with results that are immediate, obvious, and available to the world. Such contributing experience can help people believe that they have an impact on the group and that support their own self-image as an efficacious person (see Bandura, 1995; Kollock)" (14-15).  So when I make or share a meme, I do it because I have observed something insightful about a fandom and want others to know about it.  I want to be a part of the fan dialouge and enlighten others about how awesome something is.

Self-generated meme.  Picture courtesy of ABC.

Then fans evaluate media created by other fans and the industry.  Because the internet is so customized to the individual user, user customization and feedback is vital to sites as well as fandoms and the creators themselves.  "Customization provides individuals with an opportunity to express their interests, tastes, thoughts, and values. It also has the potential to generate positive attitudes and behaviors towards the sites (Carpenter, 2000; Graham, 2002; Kalyanaraman and Sundar, 2006)" (Shao 18).  And in this way, fans get feedback from each other about their common interests and ideas.

So how about Marvel's Agents of SHIELD?  How does social media inform us about this show?  Following the conversations on Facebook that the FB site for the show has posted,  I have noticed the generally negative trend of commentary on the show.   However, the fans who are defending the show usually have the following reasons:

1. The show is just barely starting and it could take a season or two to get on its feet.
2. The show is supposed to be about the AGENTS, so obviously people who are expecting a mini superhero movie every episode WILL be disappointed.
3. The show has a very small budget, which accounts for the lack of certain elements the viewers could be wanting, like having an actual superhero cameo.  For instance, a Hulk cameo would never work because the show does not have the budget for that (and in my opinion, even if it was just Bruce Banner it would still be difficult to pull off because the Avengers are level 6 and don't know that Coulson's back--and they might not respond well to that revelation)
4. The real reason the ratings are low is because people have the option of watching episodes on ABC.com or Hulu on their own time. (not actually said online, but true)
5. People who are now disaffected with the show need to get off the Facebook sit.

However, in the last two weeks the general comments have improved because apparently the episodes were more appealing  (except I'm not sure about last week.  Last week's episode I didn't like so much).

Screenshot of my FB status after last week's episode.

 Discussion within fandoms also focuses on the subject of the media at hand as well as its quality.  This link to a fan discussion board discusses the ending of the latest Marvel film, "Thor: The Dark World" (but it contains serious spoilers, so don't look at it if you haven't seen the movie yet).   Although the participants in this conversation say a lot of different things, their discussion also arrives at a consensus. 


What this is telling me is that although people can be of different backgrounds and ideologies they can still come to an agreement in order to navigate a common problem.  However, this seems to contradict the effect of conversation taken in the earlier quote from Moby-Dick, that communication is hopeless and pointless.  This might seem to make this positive perception of fan culture a little superficial, but taking the quote in context of the book, it is more easily understood.

  Moby-Dick is quite a different animal from today's social networks.  Unless you're FB friends with someone, you can hardly see the character development visible in books that lies behind the day-to-day conversations, and even with FB friends sometimes it's still obscure.  While we can communicate, we do fall short of true understanding, because we cannot see what lies behind people's statements.   This is why there are such terrible miscommunications on board the Pequod, if this holds true.  Ahab is so deeply immersed in his monomania that he refuses to allow the objections of Starbuck or anyone else to deter him from his quest.   Ishmael is keenly aware of the limitations of his relationship with Queequeg, who is from an exotic culture and whose values and ideas are completely different, but this only heightens the sublimity of their friendship.  In fan culture, everyone watches a movie or reads a book differently, even if such media are mass distributed, and it is easier to come to an agreement with people who agree with your tastes than those who do not.  But as far as superficial information-gathering is concerned, it's still the best way to gather information, even if we really don't know how to use it.

Curation on Fan Culture

Fandoms in General: 
So following various fandoms on Feedly had amazing results as far as current events.  I watched when the writer for Star Wars Episode VII was dropped and the preview for the next Captain America movie was released.  I also witnessed casting decisions for the upcoming 2015 film "Avengers: Age of Ultron" were hinted at or made. 

As a curation tool, Feedly had its drawbacks because since I am focusing on fan culture I want to keep in touch with the fan base, but the news articles were mostly from established news organizations and were at most opinion editorials about the occurring events.  So for more specific data, I logged into my newly created twitter account and looked up the response to Aaron Taylor-Johnson's casting as Quicksliver in Avengers 2.  The response has been mostly positive, in the sense that the fans seem to think he will be good for the role.  But there is some indignation that he was hinted at getting the role at least four months ago and this only just became official.

Specific Fandoms: Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.
 I used Storify and Twitter to follow Marvel's "SHIELD" and fan responses to the show.  I used links from Twitter to find reviews and fan comments.  What I am finding is that in spite of the show's huge opening ratings, ratings are declining and fans are complaining about the weakness of characters/actors/storyline/etc.  But the fans who are supportive of the show--and  friends I have talked to--say that the naysayers were expecting too much since the show has just started and the story needs time to build.  And the low ratings are because people aren't tuning in to ABC on Tuesdays at 7 or whenever but they are downloading the show from ABC.com or Hulu.  The responses on Facebook seem a little more moderate.  At Medieval Club tonight a friend told me that he watched SHIELD on the internet during work--and even Joss Whedon's other shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, took a while to take off. So these findings show that the fans have nothing to complain about--yet. It is clearly a good strategy to utilize both online resources and my social graph. 

My personal questions about the show:
1 . What do I think of the girl in the flower print dress from the last episode?  She's creepy.  I look forward to her creeping me out because apparently she's good at it. 
2. Is Coulson really "alive"? I am hoping against hope that he is.  But apparently "they" did something to him.  My friend at club was hopeful. 

self-generated meme

I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm doing or what I'm planning to do. What I need to do next is find online forums and blogs for the fandoms as well as do more in-depth investigation of current events and talking to people.

Fan Culture Bonding Time

So this weekend my Literature of the American West class visited Arches National Park.  While I enjoyed finally being able to check something off my bucket list, I also bonded with my classmates by climbing on the red rock and talking fan culture with my classmates.

Self-portrait in front of Landscape Arch. Personal Photo.

It started about six in the morning when we left Provo.  One of my classmates, Amanda, told the most unbeleivable fan story I have ever heard.  The previous evening her ward threw a Halloween party, and her sister/roommate wanted to be the She-Hulk and go all out--that is, entirely bedeck herself in green laytex paint.  Amanda still had the paint in between her fingernails to prove it, not to mention the paint was all over the bathroom, the floor, etc.  So they go to the party.  Nobody recognizes what character Amanda's sister is--except for a guy who approaches dressed as Captain America (and may I add, fangirls, he also had a similar build to Chris Evans).  They dance, and as it turns out both of them are Latin dancers.  At the end of the night they exchange names and phone numbers.  Deciding not to take any chances, Amanda and her sister go home and facebook stalk the guy in case he's a creeper.  As it turns out, he is not. And not to mention, in spite of the Marvel-themed costumes at the masquerade she discovers that they both like the Justice League. 

Now be honest: how many of us singles have common fandoms as requirements for potential spouses?  And how many married people are with their current spouse because they had a fandom in common, among other things?  My parents, for instance, both like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. 

Navajo Arch, personal photo

And of course, friendships are often fueled and enriched by fandoms. I spent a good part of Saturday talking and hiking with Amanda, and although we were able to relate on a number of different subjects, it was the initial interest in our common taste in superheroes that allowed us to bond during the day. 

The last area of the park we visited that day was the Windows area.  Although quite an interesting area in its own right, one of the reasons we stopped there was because the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here.  I have never liked Indiana Jones, despite my parents' efforts to breed me to the contrary, but I have seen most of the Last Crusade and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  But my classmates were a little more enthusiastic.  I just tagged along because I wanted to see Double Arch.  While walking over, one of the class' pop culture gurus, Andrew, whom Amanda and I had also been hanging out with, put on a bandana and turned it backwards to imitate young Indy as a boy scout.  So to Andrew and the other Indy fans, the Windows Area was a pilgrimage to an area connected to a fan culture they were part of. 

Double Arch. Wikipedia Commons.

In much the same respect, a Star Wars fan like myself would want to visit Tikal, Guatemala where A New Hope was filmed, because ever since I saw that movie for the first time as a little girl my mother has been telling me that that place is in Guatemala (I would also like to visit Tunisia but unfortunately the movie sets there are buried!). Fan culture is an imaginative way of viewing the world, and visiting movie backdrops is a way of connecting to the physical reality of that imaginary world--these are physical places that have been manipulated by the human imagination to have a whole new meaning, rather the same way religious sites become places of pilgrimage.  So that's where the anthropology of fandoms and the digital universe becomes apparent.

Post-Midterm Mapping

No thanks to the time crunch last week, my paper didn't turn out as good as I would have liked it to, but my topic of immersion really caught Dr. Burton's interest.  In all honesty, I wrote about immersion because that was the topic that caught my interest.

 I would like to continue exploring the topic of immersion, partly to articulate my ideas the way I would have liked to in the paper and partly to see if there is actually evidence to support my claims.  I want to focus specifically on immersion in fan culture.  I think Dr. Burton got my number during the interview when he asked me to describe a digital subculture.  Fan culture is the subculture I am most familiar with and most deeply immersed in myself.  I like being a fan of popular sci-fi and fantasy brands because they give me something in common with other people, even if my tastes aren't quite as conventional as other fans'.  I feel like this is a topic that would give me an excuse for answering my own questions about fandoms and also exploring how fan cultures behave as, well, cultures, and how do people behave or immerse themselves within these groups or within the imaginary worlds they have in common.

I feel like since working on the paper that using the term "culture" has been a reminder that I am an anthropology minor.  In an anthro class I once took the professor once asked me what English has to do with anthropology?  Well, everything.  Language and literature are what make us human.  Referring to Dr. Wickman's lecture on Wednesday, the humanities exist to help us think and engage, and people who are immersed in fan cultures think and engage in specific ways because their worldviews are informed by certain media.  In a telephone conversation I had with my dad earlier today, he commented on my ideas about war and peace, justice and right and wrong, etc in the draft of a fantasy novel I am working on.  I told him that I got my deep ideas on these subjects from reading the Redwall and Harry Potter books as a teenager.  Within a fandom, fans engage with certain media that, via their immersion, give them reasons to think deeply about certain issues. 

I am also encouraged to go in this direction because I have other classmates discussing these issues, specifically Kylee, who wants to discuss fan fiction, and Mary, who is curating material on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  This is going to be exciting!

Meme Contagion

So when Dr. Burton introduced me to The Information by James Glieck I found a new way to look at how ideas are shared--especially in the sense of memes. The original term "meme" has nothing to do with the quirky captioned pictures that we enjoy today.  Gleick re-envisions the world of ideas or human culture as an "ideosphere" coexisting alongside the biosphere where all organic life exists. And like life, ideas have a life of their own, and they grow, spread, and multiply like other life forms. 


As early as 1976, scientist Richard Dawkins proposed the term meme to define the "bodiless replicator" of ideas, similar to the term gene.  Within human culture, memes are transmitted between human brains through language and then within the brain are reconfigured (or mutated) and re-emerge as new, bigger ideas. Categories of memes or "meme pools" include ideas, tunes, images, and catchphrases. 

One of the most popular catchphrase/image memes of the last year or so is the "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster.  Recently, I was wondering where exactly that poster came from, and thankfully a little while ago I found a video link floating around on Facebook.  The story is actually very inspiring.

As we know, the original poster has been turned into several spin-off memes that you have probably seen on Facebook or other sites.  For instance:

Donna Brown on flickr.

The idea that is mutating here is to create a poster with a reminder to give us a reminder and encourage a certain action that will help us to succeed. And aside from being very entertaining, some of these knock-offs are inspiring in their own right.

LeventKayin on Keep-Calm-O-Matic.uk

As some of you may or may not want to remember, one of last year's top songs, Carly Rae Jeppson's "Call Me Maybe" is an excellent example of a musical meme.  It has inspired spin-off songs as well as knock-off memes mocking the concept of you are telling something crazy to someone you just met, for instance that you would like them to contact you or do something else out of the ordinary.  And of course, some of your opening blogs were entitled "Call me [insert name here]".  the association with the song makes it catchy and attractive.

So what do memes have to say about my theme topic of immersion?  Memes are the substance of ideas that is shared between people.  The propagation of certain memes is a sign of engagement in the related topic.  Within a fandom, for instance, memes are bridge connections between a popular/very mocked song and a particular movie/film.  When this connection is shared, the meme is recognized, accepted, and propogated by members of the fandom who recognize the connect--especially if it's funny.  I think funny memes are particularly "viral" because we're always on the lookout for something funny.

So that's just one chapter of The Information--the memes we are familiar with are manifestations of memes that we share every day about school, work, and hobbies. Although, glancing through The Information for that one chapter on memes was a headache (it took me a minute to realize I ought to check the table of contents), it would be very informative to read what Gleick has to say about the structure of ideas and our connections to them. .

A Show for the Digital Age

In a previous post, you may seen a mention Marvel's new live-action show on ABC, "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."  I have seen three episodes of the show thus far, and not only do I like it but I am also noticing certain elements of the show that tie in nicely to our course.

The Marvel films produced in the past decade--especially the Iron Man films--have featured very tech-saavy characters who use amazing gadgets and can access unlimited information and communication at the push of a button.  But I draw your attention to S.H.I.E.L.D. specifically because it is currently ongoing.  ABC just approved the show for the duration of this fall season and who knows how many more seasons it will have.  As it comes out, king-of-all-things-nerdy Joss Whedon, who directed the pilot episode and will be contributing to other episodes, announced that it will have tie-ins to the other upcoming Marvel films as they are released.  It will be interesting to see whether or not he also ties in trends of modern digital culture as they come out, since he already has.

Disney ABC Television Group: Skye's interrogation in the pilot episode.

Don't get me wrong, I love Coulson (he's the only character I'm really attached to), but the character that digital media fans should pay attention to is Skye.  Skye is a self-proclaimed "hacktivist."  We have mentioned this term under digital subcultures but not in depth, so allow me to do an Ishmael and define briefly.

The word hacktivists, you English majors may have guessed, is a hybrid of the terms "hacker" and "activist."  A hacker is someone who hacks computers, an activist is someone who pursues a political cause. A hacktivist, then, seems like someone who is an activist who promotes his or her cause by hacking computers and digital accounts.  One website defines hacktivism as "act of hacking, or breaking into a computer system, for a politically or socially motivated purpose."  Mashable.com "the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends" and also features a grandiose infographic about the history of hacktivism.  To cite a couple of examples from this infographic, hactivists range from government-sponsored hackers (employed as recently as the war in Syria to keep tabs on certain parties) to underground hackers you may be more inclined to envision when the term comes to mind. Hactivists present a challenge to authority in a sphere--the digital--that governments and other agencies have only limited control over.

courtesy of marsmet tallahassee on flickr

Skye in Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" falls in the latter category of hacktivists. She is a member of a very sketchy organization called "The Rising Tide" that opposes S.H.I.E.L.D's and other organizations' attempts to hide the truth about top-secret and supernatural events in the world, and she is very vocal about these views in the show.  She is also extremely technologically-savvy, and as a character she is very careful about tying herself to certain sides of a conflict.

In the first episode, Skye is found working independently from a van rennovated to be a communication center, recording messages about how S.H.I.E.L.D. is covering up the truth and how the Rising Tide will thwart them.  S.H.I.E.L.D., inevitably, tracks her down and arrests her for information in a case they are working on, and during her interrogation she boasts that she hacked into their "billions of dollars of equipment" with a laptop she "won in a bet." The line is funny because it's ironic, but it's also true.  In our class as well as in Johnny Evers' lecture about creativity, we have seen examples where enthusiasts and fanatics have outperformed government and commercial research agencies in creating and deploying working technologies such as drones and space probes.  According to Evers' lecture, it was not Steve Jobs who changed the world by himself, but Steve Jobs and a bunch of other obsessed fanatics who worked with him who changed the world.

Disney/ABC Television on Flickr. Left to Right: Skye, Simmons, Fitz, Coulson, May, and Ward

Coulson is impressed by Skye's talents, and he sees her as an "asset" and invites her to join his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on their special missions to "protect the world from the weirder world"--an idea opposed to Skye's values, but Skye surprisingly accepts the offer.  None of my friends who are watching the show with me are sure she's entirely trustworthy, but from what I have seen she is using her digital skills to prove herself.  In the second episode, Skye lectures one of the other agents, Ward, about the value of collaboration, and this idea helps the team get out of a literally tight situation.  At the end of the episode, when Coulson asks who idea it was to do such-and-such to save the day, one of the agents says, "it was everyone's idea."  Skye values collaboration because as a hacktivist--someone who knows both computers and political causes--she knows it works in the digital world.  As we very well know, in a movement known as the "Arab Spring" that began a few years ago, several middle eastern governments were toppled by people who banded together through social media and staged successful protests. As Dr. Burton said in our collaboration lecture, it is "no small thing if you can overturn an entire nation with your thumbs."  To quote Skye, "1 person may not have 100% of the solution, but 100 people are more likely to have it."  When people come together through the internet and share their ideas, they learn and solve problems in ways they could not have on their own or in offline company. 

And then in this week's episode, Skye's help was needed in a break-in.  The S.H.I.E.L.D. team was going to Malta to rescue a S.H.I.E.L.D. "asset", but could not land a full break-in squad legally due to international law.  Skye, since she is not yet technically an agent, decides she will go into the manor of the villain billionaire on behalf of the team to help Coulson and Ward break in from the outside.  True to form, she garners an e-vite to a gala at the mansion being held the day of the break-in--and may I add that she did this on her phone while the team is arguing about whether or not she should go--and she introduces herself to the billionaire as a "hactivist."  So from what I have observed of Skye thus far, a hacktivist knows the ins and outs of private and organizational accounts and not only hacks but manipulates the system to get what she wants and make a statement.  Our technology may not be as up-to-speed as it is in the Marvel Universe--touchscreen computer tables, communication earbuds, and instant data access--but it is interesting to see crossovers between that world and ours.

Classmates: I am having friends come over to my apartment to watch the show on Tuesday nights, and if you want to come over let me know!  Marvels "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is on ABC Tuesday nights at 7 local time, or you can watch episodes here: Watch ABC

Conference Counsel

After reviewing my notes from the Sunday sessions, I came across the talk given by Elder Kevin S Hamilton of the Seventy from the afternoon session. He gave some specific counsel relevant to internet use and digital media.

• Good, Better, Best: Good activities are too often substitutes for better and best.  Satan can cheat us by having us focus too much on a good thing and ignoring the better and best. While he was specifically referring to online hobbies such as social media and games, I also see a way that his counsel can be applied not just to what we do on the internet but how we use the internet's resources.  Do we spend our time liking other people's statuses and entertainment posts without contributing material of our own--this is not just spiritual stuff, but also secular posts as well--that can uplift others and contribute to online discussions?  Do we use social networking to literally "network" in order to connect with other people and resources to find specific information and share ideas, as we would if we were doing a research project? In other words, are we optimizing the resources at our disposal for the benefit of others, or do we take these resources for granted? 
• Simple Decisions have Eternal Consequences:  This applies very much to decisions we make online as well as offline, including how we spend our time, what media we use and how, and what materials we share.  Why has the Church invested so much into online proselyting?  Because offline, it is often simple conversations or events that lead to people finding the Gospel and joining the Church, or in some cases becoming active again after a period of inactivity.  Likewise, with online proselyting, missionary work doesn't have to take a lengthy online chat session to convince someone to meet with the elders in person. It can be as simple as a tweet, text, status, or a shared link, video, or picture. You don't even have to be doing it intentionally!  As Dr. Burton mentioned in class today, sharing Gospel-oriented materials on social media sites can be as easy as sharing a post about watching conference in your pajamas to get the attention of someone outside the church--because it has your personal stamp on it and not the mark of the corporate Church. If the people who are seeing your status are your friends, they will recognize something you post easier than something blasted all over the net by a strange religious organization.  In the Saturday Session, Elder Arnulfo Valenzuela quoted Alma 37: 6-7. In the context of Elder Hamilton's address, this scripture has a double meaning: the simple things we do each day either draw us to Christ or pull us away from him.  Likewise, the small things we do to share our testimonies online--or to find answers to our own questions--can make a huge impact on the people who observe our example. 

 And here is a meme: conference is not complete without the memes, right?

Midterm #2

So, this will just be brainstorming. I will be using this blog post for my personal reference as well as your enjoyment.  If you have any ideas or suggestions be sure to comment.

My defining questions are: 1) How does one define immersion, especially in the context of both Moby-Dick and digital culture? 2) How does one become immersed in the digital world?
Immersion is about belief in what you really think is out there versus what is actually there.
The first instance in the book that comes to mind is on page 278: Ishmael's observation that a sinking whale corpse is regarded in logs of merchantmen as shoals and rocks that ought to be avoided.  He also observes that this is how people in general tend to think.

Being LDS, when we think of the word immersion, we think of baptism.  However, in Moby-Dick and in the digital world, rather than coming up from something, immersion in this means going into something and becoming part of it. For instance, on page 435- Ahab "baptizes" his harpoon in the blood of pagans, in the name of the devil. This may be equated to his assuming an avatar or identity--What identity do we immerse ourselves in in the digital world? Do we represent ourselves or adopt a "persona"?
This Smithsonian article  suggested by Dr. Burton leads me to a book about information technology, life,a nd ideas, called The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, by James Gleick. I will look for this at the library. The ideas in this article go back to  page 278 and the orthodoxy quote. And as a side note,
this is why the LDS Church has a centralized hierarchy, manuals, and web tools so that all of the members get the same message and to prevent the ideas about the gospel from being perpetuated incorrectly. 
So this is my working thesis statement and a rough outline of the ideas I want to write about: 

To Ishmael, there is an entire ocean of ideas and knowledge to follow and explore, but Ahab's downfall come from refusing to open himself to this diversity (better word?) and immersing himself in the narrow idea that he must take revenge on the White Whale. 

•  There is an entire ocean of ideas and knowledge to follow and explore
• the digital universe exposes us to this
•  creating online profiles and avatars
  • Ishmael signing the ship's articles? (62) 
  • by signing up for a service you allow messages and updates to be communicated to you--you join a larger world when joining the internet; but, in reverse, Ishmael was joining a smaller world.
• by interacting with others online
• by "going places" within the digital world
• Ishmael spends the course of Moby-Dick trying to comprehend the vastness of the ocean and the manifold aspects of whale science and whaling; 
• he immerses himself in the avatar of the Adventurous Sailor "Ishmael" the outcast, the one who wanders around and in wandering, explores and sees many things
• Immersion as place: he wants to go everywhere and see everything
• Immersion as belief:  he knows the danger of limiting ideas; he knows the benefits of knowing what's out there. (page 1--when he gets stuck in a rut on shore it's time to go to sea for a change of scenery)
• you can't stick yourself to one idea because that's the nature of ideas: they aren't always what they seem!  like genes, ideas (scientifically labeled memes) want to spread and change (this was in the Smithsonian article).  Ideas are never stable, they change as they are transmitted, so one idea shared by one person can be altered by someone else and completely misunderstood as it is continually shared.  What Ishmael knows to be a whale's corpse is a reef to a merchant ship that runs across it.

• There are dangers in becoming limited to a single idea
• there are multiple instances in the book where he is described as standing in a pivot-hole on his peg leg: the peg leg IS his monomania, it is his rut, it is his revenge
• Ahab immerses himself to the narrow idea of revenge, separating himself from the wonders of the ocean and the happiness he could have had in the world at large 
•  identifies/immerses himself only with his lust for revenge (monomaniac)
• not to make a living off the sea and all of its treasures, but to hunt for the one thing he wants and ignore the rest, including the danger (find book quotes about this)
• Immersion as place--Ahab is only ever in one place, in one perspective
• Immersion as belief: he wants to kill the whale, he thinks if he kills the white whale he will have revenge and revenge will bring him....? The satisfaction of getting even. This isn't even getting even, because whales don't have legs.

This is the research I want to do:

Comb Moby-Dick for more quotes. 

Check out the Gleick book: I might not read all of it but there might be an introduction or something similar to the Smithsonian article.

Check what other people have said about online avatars and immersion; start with my other crewmates on Moby Digital and then check elsewhere on the internet.

Find scholarly articles about immersion into certain aspects of reality or virtual reality and perhaps immersion into avatars; perhaps I may find an article or two from a psychology perspective, or maybe find a book about the psychology/sociology/anthropology of identity.

Post-Moby Stress Disorder

So I may definitely be having post-Moby Stress disorder (PMDSD).  I had a nightmare last night in which I was at this large resort on the west coast  that had piers going miles out to sea so people could watch whales up close, and they were very real-looking whales... but all of the sperm whales I saw were white and trying to kill the humans.  It's as if Moby-Dick had an enormous posterity, and somehow they all came out white. And I was scared.  And the people who owned the pier wanted to capture me and my family and turn us into animals to keep at a zoo.  I managed to stop it when I punched my mother in the back three times, and then I woke up.

So I didn't know liking Moby-Dick too much could do that to you.  Either that or I've been having too much fun playing the video game.

And my Western lit class today didn't help.  We were talking about Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and Dr. Snyder and one of my classmates kept comparing Abbey's writing to Melville's.  So asked them "Will you please STOP! I had a nightmare about white whales last night."

Dr. Snyder's response: "As you should."

What? Moby-Dick is supposed to haunt my dreams? 

But this invasion of my subconscious has me thinking. Cheri's post about the persistent popularity of Moby-Dick recounts how in popular culture, while not many people have read the book the story of a revenge-bent captain hunting a white whale is still well-known. I think I want to take her question to heart: what is it about Moby-Dick that has made it enduring?  And what about it makes it pervade the popular consciousness?

Allow me to explain myself: I am a fangirl of Moby-Dick not only because it is awesome but because it's Moby-Dick:  it's the 1000-page book that nobody reads.  But last weekend I finished reading it, and I consider it an accomplishment. There is definitely an aspect to Moby-Dick that, given its reputation, that makes it interesting to have a connection to.   I want to call it "quaint," but I think that would be too weak of a word.  Maybe "peculiar." No, it's "bizzare." It's out of the ordinary.  Perhaps there was something in the original story that would characterize it as bizzare: Captain Ahab with his obsession and his peg-leg; Queequeg, Stubb, the other random happenings aboard the Pequod.  And not to mention it's very nautical. What can I say? It's full of awesome. Why not celebrate! It's a big, loose fish in a sea of a culture that celebrates and values spontaneity.

But if one is so proud of having read such a ginormous book, then what else should be haunting about Moby-Dick? 

One question that bothers me is, why is the whale such a huge part of the pariphanelia if we know the whale is responsible for the deaths of multiple people in the book? It's like wearing a cross. Are we taunting Moby? Or does the whale stand for something in popular culture? Like an elusive dream?

Does it haunt us because we all have white whales we are chasing? I'm not chasing anything...ok if I said that I would totally be lying. But I'm not Ahab, seriously. I don't think the dream was an omen.

Ishmael, for one, definitely comes out of his experience with a deep reverence for the White Whale, as well as perhaps a fear of it. A whiteness that he equates with death and decay; the barbs and broken harpoons of sailors it has outswam and destroyed.

What was it in my dream last night that haunted me?  The whales were after me and my family, they were going to eat me, and they were HUGE, like, I could tell in the dream they were life-sized.  And  they were white like Moby-Dick, a whiteness that perhaps my subconscious equated with my own death.

Questions this makes me ask:
What is the influence of Moby-Dick in pop culture? What does this say about how pop culture works?
How does the way people summarize Moby-Dick work in real life? What is the connection between compressed perceptions and reality?  How does this type of thinking work?

Lizy's Affidavit

Dr. Burton's chapter in  "Writing about the Humanities in the Digital Age" is his manifesto.  I was kind of relieved to learn that even he had his misgivings when he began having his students write blogs.   I don't blame him in the slightest.  But his arguments, when he made them, were made with a lot of courage.

I have never seen myself as a tech-savvy person.  I never wanted to be one.  However, this is impossible because I live in an age when it is impossible to disconnect oneself entirely from the internet and computers.  Not only is technology more convenient, it has gotten to the point where disconnecting oneself from these technologies means disconnecting oneself from everyone else.

And I always thought this was tragic because I believed that texting, social media, and internet pastimes were bad because my parents didn't use them. Well, bad might be too strong a word, but unneccesary.

But, when I was in Dr. Burton's Shakespeare class this winter, I opened up not only because blogging and social media use was required for my class, but because by using these tools I learned that digital communications can BE a tool that can benefit an individual's academic studies.  Like a whaling ship's tackles and hooks can be used to open up a whale and harvest its valuable blubber and oil, the internet can be a tool to harness, pry open, and harvest information about a research topic.  It made the digital age not only easier to accept, but welcome.  I realized that the internet is not just advertizing and social forays--it's a TOOL.

The difficult part about Dr. Burton's Shakespeare class was gathering social proof.  Somehow I never got around to talking about my research paper with my Medieval Club friends, my coworkers didn't understand what I was talking about in the first place when I wanted to talk Shakespeare, and I was also extremely anti-social because I never saw anybody outside of work and club and school and my best friend had left on a mission and left a cold, drizzly November in my soul from January to March.  However, I did take Dr. Burton's advice about posting my thesis statement and paper outline on Facebook, and it paid off big when I went to my grandpa's funeral in March and I was able to talk in person about my paper with a cousin who had followed my paper updates on Facebook, and that turned into a good bonding experience for us (oh, and by the way, that cousin is expecting a baby now).  So what it amounted to in the end was the right communication tools, perseverance, and my grandfather's timely passing. And that's why crowdsourcing and social proof is important, because you just NEVER KNOW when someone has the right answer for you.

And moreover, tonight on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., this topic actually came up:  no one person has 100% of the solution, but 100 people do.

Postscript
Themes I am discovering: digital technology as a tool; long tail of crowdsourcing/social proof; changing opinions

Seeing the Good

Undoubtedly, I am one of the people that Dr. Burton saw at the guest lecture on Friday--because I saw him there. And the second half of the presentation totally validated my ambition to be a fantasy writer--creativity is one of my strengths, and I plan on putting it to good use.

However, the lecture also brought up the topic of video games and why they can be beneficial, even necessary. I never thought that being morally and individually opposed to video games would be considered a weakness. 

I think if I explained my background a little bit, then my perception on video games would make sense.  Both of my parents grew up before video games were invented, and when they first came out they were both too busy trying to take care of themselves--they were both single for a long time--to be bothered by them.  And my dad, especially, grew up in the mountains of north-central Arizona, where even access to television was very limited, so he has always tried to restrict my siblings' media use growing up, but to little avail. That being said, I understand my dad's initial aversion to video games. 

I played a handful of computer games and almost no video games growing up. When my younger siblings started taking music lessons, Dad had to give them incentive to practice their instruments, so he offered to let them play Y amount of minutes of any given computer game for X amount of practice time.  For the first few years it worked rather well.  But with every game interest would wane as they played through, then they would stop practicing, and then Mom and Dad would have to buy a new computer game to give them more incentive.  I would watch them playing for a few minutes but always told myself I had "more important" things to do.  I would also notice when Dad and my youngest brother got into a fight every time my brother lied about going over his computer time, and that only made me more averse to gaming. 

And the media wasn't very helpful at all, because I always heard stories about how people who played violent video games turned into criminals and how leading virtual second lives took away from enjoying reality and taking care of oneself.  I have spent my entire life looking down on people who play video games--including, I am ashamed to say, my closest friends.

Friday's lecture with Johnny Evers completely shook that image.  I had no idea that video games could teach you social skills and management skills and offer you a safe way to practice life.  Now I wish I'd known about games like "Civilization" that help you not only to build virtual worlds but teach you to manage them with money and decision-making.  Heck, if I want to be a fantasy writer, isn't that the sort of thing I'm supposed to be practicing?  Wouldn't that have been more useful than minoring in Anthropology?

And far from creating socially backward people, video games, Evers argued, improve social skills.  To think that if I had played social video games growing up that would have been a much better approach to navigating high school than curling up in the corner and reading when people started picking on me! And a year and a half ago I was struggling with depression--if only I had known about that game "Super Better" when I was trying to get through that! If there was any validity to Evers' claims, then I am really missing out.

I realize that a lot of these things are true only to a certain extent.  I am not blinding myself to the bad things about video games, they're still out there, but for the first time in my life I was opened up to the good.

So in that spirit, I decided to swallow my pride and try out the Moby Dick video game.  It was fun, but challenging. Does that game provide instruction in important life skills?  How about multi-tasking?

Another Success Story (A Response to Kelsey)

This post is sort of a response to Kelsey's post about online success stories.

The more I learn about how digital culture works the more I realize that my use of it is going to impact my endeavors. Dr. Burton's lecture two weeks ago about crowdsourcing opened up the possibilities for me. The Compose site sounds really interesting because I have one or two ideas for musical scores for fantasy stories, but I don't know the first thing about composition. More importantly, inviting an audience to critique something, like an excerpt from a potential story, is  a good way to edit a story before/without going through an editor. And, most importantly, using social media and free online excerpts is, I have it on good authority from other authors, a good way to build a fan base.  (Sigh) My only excuse for not working on my fan base right now is I'm trying to finish my education.  But I'm starting to see how it all fits together.

A fan base to an author that not only contributes to his/her work but helps promote it to the public is, because of the internet, capable of doing things that an individual writer could never do alone for himself/herself, for instance, preventing piracy of  copyrighted material.  Sometimes, there are incentives for their support such as free autographed book copies or other such trinkets.

However, for the fans of Stephanie Nielsen, the only incentive was wanting to do something good for someone who inspired them.

I used to see Stephanie Nielsen around BYU Campus sometimes my freshman year.  Then I recognized her in the following Mormon Message:

That was how I learned her story.  Then about a year ago, her book Heaven is Here came out.  I read it this summer, and I would be quoting from it directly had I not loaned it to my grandmother.  Yes, it is a memoir, and Stephanie might be considered an amateur, but it is one of the most intense books I have ever read, it is very well-written and has some mystefying spiritual and literary elements.  I have an aunt who read it who said she was crying every three pages.

So, to summarize: Stephanie is a Provo native who always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. When her family moved to New Jersey--at a time when the blogosphere was just emerging--she began a blog to keep up with her family back wes, the The Nie Nie Dialouges. Her blogs is quite interesting, really: the writing on  is more like loose free verse than prose. Her blog became a DIY/ homemaking/ mothering/Mormon living blog, and began to attract a fan base.

Then, in August 2008, she and her husband were in a plane crash outside of St. Johns, Arizona. Both were terribly burned, and Stephanie was in a coma for the next three months.  When she woke up, her family informed her that her blog fans--thousands of people from across the country--had banded together to raise money to finance her hospital stay: I don't recall the exact details but there were charity concerts and benefit dinners, at least.  (Please correct me if I'm wrong, please check the comments below if someone corrects me). It was pretty impressive. And it was all because they liked her blog, they were touched by her words and her expression of faith, and they wanted to do something for her.

So ever since, Stephanie's blog has documented her journey to recovery and her gradual return to a normal life. She also continues the DIY portion and posts frequently about her material interests, the causes that she supports, and her family life. She always posts links to other websites where her readers can get more information about other people's stories and products, her other projects, and the church website.

In a recent blog post calling out for support for children with cancer, she wrote the following:

"I know the amazing outreach the blogosphere and internet has!!

My family and I have been tremendously blessed by it.

I know we can do the same for this family and others who 

are in the same situation!"

... If you want to tie this in to Moby-Dick, then I will. Stephanie's blogging for support for other people in need reminds me of Ishmael's visit to the church in New Bedford where he sees all the memorials to missing sailors. And in another chapter, he makes the following dire statement on behalf of his fellow whalers:

"For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it." 

Moby-Dick could be called Melville's/Ishmael's "blog" or website for the awareness of the perils of whaling and the perils of life in general.  Unfortunately, Melville never found a fan base in his life time, and people didn't realize what he was saying until it was too late. So the key to a successful "blog", book, or anything, is making sure that other people can connect with it.

The Two-edged Sword

I was idling through my Facebook feed--literally JUST NOW--when I came across this article.  It was advertized as an inspirational article, but when I read it I found out it had a lot to do with our class.  The use of social media has very much a two-edged sword dimension about it, as this article illustrates: it can condemn as well as be a useful tool.

The article goes into full detail about the incident, but to summarize, three hundred teenagers broke into ex-NFL player Brian Holloway's house in New York and partied.  They might have gotten away with it, except they started posting pictures and status updates on social media.  Brian Holloway, all the way from Florida, saw the events unfolding over the internet, started a website to identify the culprits, and then he invited them to come over to his house to help clean up.

Now, the next part of this story is really stupid: the parents of these teenagers decided to sue Holloway for "ruining their kids lives" and making them take responsibility for their actions.  Someone smarter-than-your-average-bear wrote a letter to these parents. This line is the killer:

"Instead of dragging your kids back to apologize and clean up the mess, you lashed out at Brian Holloway, threatened to firebomb his house, and are now planning to sue him. For what? For identifying your kids online. Well guess what? Your little Johnny did that himself the minute he tweeted that iPhone photo standing on the dining room table, holding a red solo cup filled with beer."

One of the writer's accusations toward these parents is that among other luxuries we have given the younger generation, we have given them smartphones--implying that parents did so without telling them how to use them responsibly.  Not only do stupid teenagers think they can get away with irresponsible behavior, they think they can STILL get away with it AND brag about their exploits on the internet. In their defense, they were all drunk and they were posting for the benefit of their friends. It's sickening to think that their parents would have seen those posts and not done anything about it except try to cover the sins of their offspring.

But on the other hand, thanks to social media, the owner of the house was able to identify the culprits.  And, putting the internet to use for good, he reached out to those teens and offered them a chance at forgiveness--which, the letter also says, only one grateful leper accepted.  As the author of the letter points out, Holloway had every right to have them arrested and charged for their vandalism, but he did not.

So the internet can be used both for constructive and destructive purposes.  I think it goes to demonstrate the point that I commented about on Shelley's post:  adolescents, prone to risk-taking and impulsive behavior, won't know how to use the internet responsibly and can very easily get in trouble.  However, people who are mature and know how to use the internet properly will do so in ways that can build others.

Random tangent: my thoughts on social media on this vein remind me of Iron Man's suit.  In the second Iron Man film we see it constantly being labeled as a WEAPON.  The Iron Man suit is indeed a weapon, but in The Avengers we see that it's advanced technology can also be used for constructive purposes: it is also a TOOL.

Likewise, social media can be used to damage an individual's reputation--including one's own--and it can also be used to build people spiritually and emotionally.  The Church makes such good use of the internet because it recognizes both sides of social media and wants to be an influence for good in counterbalance to the evil which is so easily found online.

Worth Whaling About?

I think I would make this post an answer to  Dr. Burton's call for explorers. In reading Moby-Dick you get a lot of descriptions and ideas that you can't quite visualize. So in going beyond the text to sources online and in print, I am exploring the world of the novel--not only the hard science behind it, but how the different knowledge between then and now represents the changes in technology and culture. This is a long post, but I am going to put in pictures for your amusement.

So today I went to the library.  I found the section on whales on the second floor.  Their most recent books are from 2011.  I thought about checking out one or two or them, but I was pressed for time and didn't know how to make up my mind. And there's also the myth/idea that any knowledge that can be found in a book can also be found online. I want to compare Melville's knowledge of whales with stuff about whales you can find in books versus information online. But I'm not sure how that would work out.  Mostly, I want to be able to illustrate whaling and whales in general to for the book, both visual and textual.

I decided to try a bookshelf since I like books with big, color, captioned images that I can put my hands on.  It's the good old-fashioned way. There weren't very many of those kinds of books at the library, though.  So in lieu of an actual book, I will use online sources for this post and perhaps try and come back later to see what the books say in comparison.

I would like to start with the Cetology chapter, since we don't know exactly what kinds of whales he is referring to. Since Melville's original readers would not have had as much access to books and television to tell them about the sea, he gave a lot of description so his readers could have that experience.

 However, cetology today is competely different from cetology in the mid-19th century. My object of exploration is to see what has changed, and how. For my online sources, my two main sources are Wikipedia articles on the chapter (Chapter 32) and on ceteans.

For one thing, whale classification. Ishmael organizes whales completely by size (remember, this is about printing, not whaling). Whales today are classified by physical characteristics and (theorized) evolutionary relationships--Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which would revolutionize the biological sciences, was not published until eight years after Moby-Dick. Ishmael takes "the good old-fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me" (Mellville 118). Without scientific inquiry about the whale, Ishmael relies on the sacred reputation of the Bible.  As for the whales themselves, according to the Wikipedia article the "Razor-Backed" and "Fin-backed" whales are the same, and the "grampus," "Killer whale," and "thrasher whale" are all the same species, the killer whale or orca. The "black fish whale" is the pilot whale and the "huzzah porpise" is the bottle-nosed dolphin (no surprises there).

And for anyone who wants it, here is a link to a plaything that an animation major friend of mine showed me: I wish it did more tricks.

The "Sulphur-bottomed whale" is the Blue whale.  One of the more surprising things about 19th-century whaling is that there is no mention of the Blue whale at all, and the sperm whale is regarded as the largest whale. (Quick Rant: I hate that I have to go back to Wikipedia, but it's the only source that's coming up with the information I want. However, I was able to find another source on the origin of the name "Sulphur-bottom") The Blue Whale was not better known until 1874 when the name was coined, ironically, by a whaler (but Ishmael says whalers make the best explorers). As for when the blue whale was officially recognized as the world's largest creature (and not the Sperm whale), I am having a hard time finding that information.  Ishmael's cetology guide is incomplete, and he himself acknowledges that not all of the whales he knows about, even the ones he has classified for us, are known completely. 

Secondly, the sperm whale itself.

I have always considered sperm whales to be very ugly.  A big head, a long narrow snout, narrow jaw, usually gray or brown in color, small eyes, and bad reputation (which Melville probably did anything but help in writing Moby-Dick.) But they are pretty cool.

(whaleindex. com)


Their brains, which Ishmael describes as an edible delicacy (Melville 270),  are the largest brains of any creature on earth, according to multiple sources. According to the National Geographic, their heads are also filled with a substance called spermaceti, which Ishmael cites often as one of the whale's most valuable products, but scientists do not really know what it is for. The sperm whale at mature size is from 49 to 59 feet in length--longer than a school bus--and weighs 35 to 45 tons. Their tail fluke is 16 feet across. As popularized in the media and known to the whalers in the text, the sperm whale's diet consists of the giant squid (254). The sperm whale hunts for the giant squid in the deep zones of the oceans up to 3, 280 feet below--Ishmael perhaps may not have known about that depth.

Thirdly, our approach to nature. A lot of Ishmael's emphasis in his whaling chapters dwell on the commercial aspects of the whale, what products its  body parts can be turned into, including oil and bone. Back in Ishmael's day, of course, "whalebone" or baleen from baleen whales was used in women's corsets.  Oil was used for candles and lamps. The commercial side of whales was very important to the crew of the Pequod because collecting this oil supplied their livelihood. It was the basis for the livelihood of the entire whaling industry of Nantucket and New Bedford and the other places where whale ships came from. 

However, during the twentieth century, corsets went out of fashion and oil lamps were replaced by electric bulbs. Yet as whaling technology improved whales were hunted ruthlessly, some species almost towards extinction, and environmental activists demanded that whaling be banned.  As I consider this fact, I can imagine that the reader of today would be appalled at Ishmael's apparent carelessness towards whales (in a later chapter he claims that the sperm whale is incapable of being extinguished) and consider the primitive whaling scenes depicted in Moby-Dick to be barbarism.

This semester I am taking a Joseph Smith and the Restoration course from Brother Andrew Hedges.  In his lecture on Wednesday, Brother Hedges cautioned us that as we study the Restoration we need to be aware that people's cultural frameworks were very different then from what they are today. Questions about Church History arise often because we do not understand this.

  The same is very true about our approach to nature.  Back in the 19th century, nature was a source of resources.  But over time, we began to realize that nature is not inexhaustible and that natural resources must be managed wisely if we want them to last.  We have also become conscious of the notion that whaling can involve practices that are cruel to the animals.  Today, we appreciate nature for nature's sake.  Back then, nature was appreciated for the sake of its resources.

However, Ishmael seems to find a balanced view.  Back in 1851, there were no whale-watching cruises: whaling was the only exposure that people had to these animals, so their notions about whales were shaped by what resources the whale could provide.  Ishmael, however, is also exposed to stories of Moby-Dick's reign of terror on the high seas and Captain Ahab's obsession with the White Whale.  This perspective on a whale in all of its wild, destructive, unconquerable glory raises in him a "wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling" (159).  Ishmael respects the mystical whale for its secrets and its power. He uses the term "whale," "leviathan," and "monster" interchangably, and though "monster" may be the cruder of the three terms perhaps he does not always mean it in a negative way.  Although the whale is his foe and his source of income, he respects it for the life within it. During the first whale hunt, he observes:

"Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish" (258).

Ishmael sees that there is value in the life of a wild creature.

So as far as this exploration is concerned, this post, although lengthy, is a head start. I would like to look further into how much information about whales can be found online versus in printed books: there is a discrepancy between what I'm looking for and what comes up on a google search.  Perhaps it's a matter of looking in the right place.

I'd Like an Excuse to post More Memes

I'm not exactly sure what else to post about at the moment, so I think I will respond to Dr. Burton's response to my first post on memes, specifically these two questions:

"Behind their apparent silliness, what aspect of digital culture do memes reflect? Are they an efficient authentic mode of communication?"

Question 1,  (I feel rather like Ishmael the way I'm categorizing this). What aspect of digital culture do memes reflect? Referring to Dr. Burton's previous Wednesday lecture, digital culture, loosely re-defined from Charles Geer's definition, includes "visual simulacra, instant communication, ubiquitous media, global connectivity, and applications such as business and cultural and artistic responses." I think memes best reflect global connectivity and cultural/artistic response.

Memes are primarily a form of cultural/artistic response.  Memes are responses, period.  One of my odd quirks is that I like to know how people react to surprising situations, or how they have surprising responses.
I guess memes appeal to me because I'm a very visual person.  I have a great imagination, sure, but knowing what something looks like--a facial expression, a reaction,  an animal--helps me to have a better idea of what kinds of images attach to text or ideas--surprise, sarcasm, etc. And yes, if you want to get meta about it, sometimes people make memes responding to other memes. 

For instance, someone (not me) made this meme:

I made this meme in response:

and just to point out that I think Darth Vader would NOT find that amusing in light of how valuable those particular droids were.  Memes are about sharing ideas about shared interests, which is why they can so easily be "shared".

And with responses, I get a better idea of what to think of the thing being responded to.  For instance, if anyone remembers the classic LDS short film Johnny Lingo, when Johnny makes his uber-surpising offer to Moki (Mahana's Father), Moki's face is...well, blank.  Tulo, the comical narrator, tells Mr. Harris that "he looked as though a coconut had fallen on him."  Ever since watching this film as an adolescent, I have looked for that response in characters in other films, because the "coconut look" is definitely a sign of a humorous surprise.  For instance, here's an example about 24 seconds into this clip from a recent popular movie. : precious (PS I'm not sure what language the subtitles are in).

Also, for better or worse, the meme-making culture is very globally connected, in the english-speaking world at least.  Not only does this culture share a lot of history and stories, but it is also entwined with a lot of fandoms in which inside jokes will be recognized. Fandom memes can simply be fans helping each other recognize something interesting about their interest they never noticed before.

For instance, I used to work in the Student Athlete Building.  I would pass a picture of Jimmer Ferdette every single day, and after a while I realized this picture of Jimmer made me think of the Hulk.

And yes, memes are also a very integral part of mix culture: comparing different stories can be insightful, often in an amusing way.

There's also the hangup that memes cannot be created entirely anonymously:  most meme-generator sites require users to make an account.

Question 2: Are memes an efficient mode of authentic communication?  I would argue in the affirmative, but with limitations.  Memes often represent ideas from heavily entwined cultures and fandoms.  Sometimes you have to be a part of that culture/subculture to get the joke.

This is a meme I made:

You won't get it unless you have seen both Revenge of the Sith and Funny Girl.  It doesn't work if you have to go back and explain the joke. Memes are supposed to be quick.

BYU has an entire facebook site devoted to BYU and Mormon-related memes. It works well as long as you get the references.  Efficient? In some ways, when sharing ideas is enhanced by the illustration and people comprehend the meaning of (A) the picture, (B) the caption, and (C) how they are connected.  But efficient in the sense that they compart useful knowledge to us?  Well, perhaps in the sense that connecting useless knowledge can help us relate useful knowledge.
Authentic? Debatable.  Memes that float around freely online, on Google search and on Facebook, are usually anonymous.  It is an easy way to get anonymous popularity.

So memes are a reflection of the fast-paced, interconnected culture we live in.  It is fitting that they are both textual and visual.  And I would argue that they are effective as well as entertaining.