Lizy's Project Proposal about S.H.I.E.L.D.

Title: (Currently) Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." as an Emerging Fandom: A Study in Fan Culture.

Thesis: Marvel's new television series "Agents of SHIELD" will succeed based on how it is projected through online media by digital fan communities.  Digital fan communities help fans navigate their immersion in a fandom to find meanings within their entertainment through online discussion and remixed content.  Fandoms grow better when their fans share content with their friends.  Dr. Wickman suggested I look at the scholarship on immersion and see how it compares to what I am seeing in fan culture.

Relevance:  Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is only in its first season.  In terms of both its episodes and its relationship with the fans, it has been dynamic.  It is part of the larger Avengers and Marvel fandom and one of the show's main producers is cult favorite Joss Whedon.  If there was any time to examine a possible fandom in the act of forming, this is the moment.  There is a lot of potential for the show and a lot of tension in the fan community.

Format:  I am thinking a formal essay, except maybe with picture snapshots of twitter and facebook posts.  Maybe I could go multimedia--not for the formal paper but the final blog post or something.

Curation of Content:  I started snipping pictures of Facebook and Twitter posts over break.  It will keep up.  I am also accumulating reviews of the show and fandom articles on Zotero.

Curation of Secondary Sources: I have read/am reading books about the Star Trek and Dr. Who fandoms.  I also have a few scholarly articles which I have curated via Google Docs and Zotero (I got it for Dr. Burton's Shakespeare Class--it's awesome!)

Curation of Community: I am following SHIELD fan sites on Twitter, the Helicarrier podcast and Agent Coulson's Army, and they in return are following me.  I am being followed by PhantasticGeek on Twitter. I follow the official SHIELD sites on Twitter and Facebook and most of the show's actors on Twitter.

Social Proof:  I normally watch SHIELD with my roommates and one or two friends, so I can talk to them about it.  I also have a guy friend CJ in the medieval club who likes the show (I mean, a lot of clubbies like the show, but CJ especially).  And then I am in contact with Jason Hamilton who is an expert on fandoms in general.
People I don't know directly:  I exchanged emails with I also tweeted the author of a Buzzfeed article about the Marvel Cinematic Universe's big impact on Hollywood.

Venue:  
So I just found this huge blog page about scholarly blogs and journals devoted to fandom studies.  Here is the link if my classmates or other interested parties want it: http://fanstudies.wordpress.com/fan-studies-journals/

Of the ones listed above, I want to submit to Participations, which is a journal of audience reception studies. Their organization exists because (quote from website) "we recognise that these fields are not at present well-supported within the broad academic communities. There are few undergraduate courses and even fewer postgraduate courses which emphasise this work. Only a small number of research students work in this area, compared to other kinds of work on all the many forms of cultural and media expression. Yet we believe that the findings of audience and reception work are of crucial importance to all our fields – not least because claims about the audience are so frequently embedded within other kinds of work, and within public discourses about media and culture."  

So it sounds like mine is the kind of paper they are looking for.
I would also like to submit to Transformative Works and Cultures, since it deals more specifically with fandoms.
The real challenge I am setting for myself is The Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television, which is published by Liverpool University Press IN THE UK!!!!!!!  More likely than not, if I got accepted to a conference they put on I'd have to do a video conference, but hey, it would still be cool.  The guidelines say I have to use UK grammar and spelling and also use specific citations for TV shows and actors.  My response:

self-generated meme.

What I need to do next:

Go through the Dr. Who fandom book I read over the break and comb for quotes.
Create an orderly history of FB comments and twitter quotes (also block out names).
Listen to the Helicarrier podcast
Post link to this blog and "Tweethis" statement to social media sites.  Ask fans about their views of fandom and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Start writing out the paper
Curate fan art and memes specifically related to SHIELD.
FIND SCHOLARLY ARTICLES ABOUT:
humor
fandoms and immersion
FIND SCHOLARLY ARTICLES BY:
Henry Jenkins
Cheryl Harris
get fandom books renewed at library
Find more recent SHIELD reviews

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.

Curation Report--Fan Culture

I have been using multiple tools to curate.  My primary source has been Feedly.  Feedly provides links to news articles and web pages from specific sites.  I have grouped most of my sites into "Fan Culture."  My most useful news sites have been Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Moviefone, and Vulture.  Today was a particularly busy day on feedly because all of these news sites were posting links to the just-released trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, some with commentary.  For those of you who were just as anxious for this trailer as I:

And not to mention the guy they originally picked to write the new Star Wars movie has been replaced.  With J.J. Abrams and another guy who worked on The Empire Strikes Back.

What I generally do is tag the articles and also add them to Instapaper. After hearing Paul's recommendation in class, I also started using Storify.  This gives me a different perspective on fan culture since I mostly find tweets from the fans themselves.  I am using Storify specifically to monitor Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show. Twitter and other resources from Storify give me links to news articles and fan reviews.  I spent most of my Storify time today reading the comments to a negative review of S.H.I.E.L.D.--most of the comments were negative, too, but there were a few bold defenders.  Personally I support the show--I acknowledge, it has weaknesses, but I love it.  Mostly because I love Coulson. 

What I need to do with this data is start going to the next step and finding more fan comments about these news developments--especially this Star Wars writer change.  I am also thinking I want to get a Twitter account so I can have more access to tweets and the people tweeting. 

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. .

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.

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.

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.

Me and my Memes

Memes are a big part of my individual digital culture.  Memes are interesting because they combine visual imagery and text to communicate a point.  Some more complicated memes, for instance hipster memes, require Photoshop, which I don't have, but for simple memes there are tons of different online memebuilding services. What it takes to create a good meme is an eye for ideas that are witty or humorous.  (BTW, all the memes below are mine).

Memes can simply be entertaining, using captions and a funny picture to create a joke.

Others can be used to point out subtle ideas or connections about political or social situations:

Memes are also very popular in the mix culture. For instance, a mashup of a ridiculous song with a popular movie.

Memes can also be used for visual aids in classroom settings.  I created this meme for a lecture on falconry I gave to the Medieval Club last fall (OK, so maybe Medieval club DOES have something to do with this class).

Memes are easy to share and can create lots of laughter and discussion. If people make good memes about a particular pop culture topic, ie the Avengers or Star Wars, it helps me to like it even more than I already do.