Coolmercialization?

Comment on the commercialization of cool Rice discusses in Chapter 2? Why does this happen? What does it say about the nature of contemporary American culture? The nature of the web?

Overall, this boils down to the simple fact that there are certain things which are deemed "cool" or "trendy", and people want to have these things, because the majority of people want to be cool and hip in the eyes of others. Now, this isn't to say that everyone is a consumer-whore [and how!], but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that at least 65% + of the general population are. Companies know this, and therefore market products with this in mind.

There are a couple forms of "cool" which companies use in their advertising to attract consumers;

Celebrity Cool
We all know that in today's media-obsessed world, that certain people who catch the media's attention, are elevated to a status above the rest. With more money, faster cars, and bigger houses than the normal person, they become a focus for watever reason; starring in a hit movie, winning a sports tournament, etc. These people instantly attain the label of being "cool." Companies use this to their advantage by attaching their products to celebrities so that consumers will buy the product in hopes of becoming elevated much like the celebrity. For example, RadioSHAQ, Britney Spears and designer Jeans, the list goes on. Companies do this so that consumers are attracted more to the celebrity than to the product themselves, an ad with just an empty pair of jeans lying on the ground would certainly not get as much attention as an ad with a Pop-star dancing around in a pair of their jeans. The celebrity could have absolutely no link to the product whatsoever, but it doesn't matter, such is the essence of cool. The same goes for phrases which become cool, such as Paris Hilton's now-famous "that's hot."

Eye-Catching Cool
The second kind of cool is employed mainly by internet advertisements and print media. It's basically whatever will catch your attention first, wins. Usually it will be a unique and interesting graphic, or gigantic eye-catching text, anything which immediately draws your eye will be cool. It could be a giant billboard of a sexy woman in lingerie, with some text on the side saying "Victoria's Secret." Or it a animated flash ad on the side of a page asking you to interact with it somehow, often it will be flashy to draw your eye away from the body of the page.

What this says about contemporary American culture, is that the majority rules, and the majority is certainly "cool-obsessed." Always trying to keep up on the latest trends.

Because of the gigantic span of the internet, I have a feeling that overall it is much less concerned with being cool [save for the sites of those companies who advertise on TV and fit into the aforementioned] and more with finding and appealing to a certain crowd. Now, it could be said that they are trying to be what is "cool" to that certain crowd. But not "cool" in the sense of Rice's above definition. Although, most of the sites on the internet do fit alongside television these days; in an hour of television you get 20 minutes of ads and 40 of actual television, and on most websites, you get about 20% of ads taking up real estate on the page, and 80% of actual content. In this aspect, they are similiar.

Guerilla Tactics

Visit at least three of the websites discussed in this chapter. Then use de Certau's concept of tactics to talk about how these websites use images, words, and a combination of images and words to construct identity.

When I visited Fluffy Mules, the first thing which stood out to me was the use of only two colours; pink and black. The merging of the two creates the "grrl" mood to the site, pink being stereotypically a very feminine and girly colour, and black being a very powerful and dark colour. Essentially, this is exactly what "grrl" is. The second thing which stood out to me on the front page was the image of a t-shirt [which I assumed the site sells] which had the text "I Shagged Your Dad" across it. Immediately I thought of de Certau's words, and applied it to the fact that they were using obscenity and insult to achieve a sort of power. I was reminded of my mom's words, when my brother would tease me often, saying that he was just trying to make me feel lower and therefore giving him a higher power over me. I eventually learned to ignore him, but that's another story. The Fluffy Mules site has everything from fashion tips to rants from fellow feminists.

The Disgruntled Housewife site instantly had me thinking back to the 50's, and specifically had my mind running to Rosie the Riveter, the woman-power icon from World War II, albeit there was no actual image of her. As soon as I moused over the images to the right of the image of the "va-va-va-voom" lady in a blue dress, I saw the tactics employed. For each navigation link, there is an image, and for each image rolled over, there shows a contradiction to the original image, and essentially the original stereotypical housewife. For example; the what looks like a make-up kit which when moused over shows the insides is actually birth control pills, or the woman in underwear who when moused over removes the top half and shows the woman bearing all, or the girl with a halo overhead who when moused over reveals a woman in a devil suit complete with horns. The overall feel I got though, was that the author and contributors are just trying to help housewives just like them deal with day to day life, and squeeze a little more enjoyment out of life.

The Bitch Magazine site stood out to me as the most extreme feminist group of the three. Jumping straight to one of the most sensitive topics of all time, and bringing abortion up and front, they use radical tactics to achieve gain of power. The use of grungy-filtered images on the front, of the t-shirt stating "I had an abortion" goes along with the grrl motif. Their use of selling stuff such as t-shirts, post cards, and obviously the magazine, show their tactics in relation to de Certau's theory of employing the use of consumer products. Bitch Magazine, although the most extreme, seemed like the most organized both in site design, and tactics.

"It's a man's world"

FHM

The website of For Him Magazine is pretty much exactly that, it comes off as being very magazine-like. With tons of pictures [after all, men are very visually-oriented] and big text that catches the eye. "Useful" information is at a minimum, with the majority of the site being scantily-clad women, but they do have small sections with reviews of video-games, power-tools, and other "guy" stuff. This certainly isn't the kind of place to push men to be greater, but rather a place for men to have fun and relax [and hey, who doesn't want to have fun and relax?]

Manhood Online

This website is much more focused on inspiring men to become good role models. The quote underneath the main banner states "better men for a better world." Which immediately caught my eye and along with the "manhood online" banner, gives a very positive feel. After looking at links on the main page such as "good things dad did," I realized this is a place for compassionate men to come and share stories and be inspired by others stories.

Menstuff

Also along the lines of Manhood Online, and contains a wide base of information and helpful resources for any problems a man may encounter. They link to many outside resources which the webmasters find to be useful. They have everything from middle-age dating tips to fatherhood and yoga for men. Menstuff is a huge archive of tons of resources and helpful hints for all men. Overall a very good site creating a positive atmosphere!

Personal Signifiers

1. Africa
2. Anubis
3. David Belle / Sebastien Foucan
4. Technology
5. Cereal
6. MacGyver
7. Ninja Scroll
8. Brian Shima
9. An empty canvas
10. The Tao Symbol

The main thing I would like to include on my site, being a graphic artist and web designer, would be overall flow of the site and aesthetic appeal via nice graphics and rollover navigation and overall colour scheme to bring all the 10 signifiers together instead of appearing seperate.

"fans are not fringe extremists with an unhealthy and urealistic interest in a particular media text, but savy consumers who are able to use popular culture to fulfil their desires and needs, often explicitly rearticulating that culture in unique and empowering ways"

I agree with this quote, particularly in the case of the fan-base of the hit cartoon TV show, Futurama. Anybody who says creativity is "unhealthy and unrealistic" is a liar. Albeit, in the situation of fan fiction / scripts / art, they are using someone elses already established art as a first-step, but from there it's all their imagination. The fan fiction which I read on the Peelified Message Boards was witty, and stayed true in portraying the characters personalities well. This goes into the latter part of the quote above, in that they are rearticulating the culture of Futurama in their own unique ways, and this empowers them, as well as the Futurama fan-community and therefore Futurama itself.

Website Communities

As opposed to scratching the surface of a couple of the websites suggested by others in this class, I decided to write in-depth about a website / community which I am already familiar with.

Allow me to show you the way to DeviantART, an online art community which currently has just over 10 000 000 [that's ten MILLION] submitted works of art. Which are spread across traditional art, digital art, photography, poetry, prose, flash animations, and icons to name a few of the many categories.

The main focus of the community which is DeviantART is to showcase your art to other artists, as well as give and receive comments and critiques. Therefore the overall feeling of the community is a mutual respect and giving helpful hands alike, it's a very laid back place. As I said before, I'm a part of this online community; I upload some of my creations to the site along with the thousands of other artists. This by itself positions me about on par with the rest of the members, save for the administrators and moderators of the site who have a couple extra privelages.

However, your position in the DeviantART community can then be raised or dwindled depending on how "good" your submissions are, or rather how other members comment on them, or even "favourite" them. All members on DeviantART have a user page which lists their submissions, as well as their favourite submissions by other members. If a submission gets a whole bunch of favourites then it will be displayed on the main page under "Daily Top Favourites." It is by this way that a member can then become alleviated to somewhat of a celebrity status on DeviantART, as all communities are liable to have happen. As for what do I become when I contribute, the answer is just that, a contributor to one of the largest communities of artists in the world, I also become a better artist through the comments and critiques from others.

The DeviantART community is paralleled by art galleries which exist in the non-digital world. More specifically art galleries which often showcase amateur artists looking to show off their art, as well as possibly sell pieces and make some money. The sale of art is also done on DeviantART via the Prints Service that DeviantART has which allows anybody to purchase high-quality prints of artworks submitted to DeviantART. Part of the money goes to DeviantART, for the service of printing them and showcasing them, and the rest of the money goes to the artist.

Art communities are nothing new, but with the internet as the medium, DeviantART has just made it easier and more convenient. As well as encourage amateur budding artists and give them an easily accessible place to showcase their art.

'Bloggers are navel-gazers, and they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books. There's an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting' (Schachtman, 2002)

I find that there is some truth in this quote. I'm reminded of a saying I've heard often which states, "the internet has given everyone a voice, and unfortunately everyone has chosen to use it."

It's true that there's undoubtedly a plethora of shenanigans on the internet (b0g, gullible info, it's a trap), but for every "shenanariffic" site, there are some damn informative ones. Now this is only if you go through life with your television locked on CNN and shaking your fist at every teenaged in a Nirvana t-shirt you see. I know I certainly enjoy shenaningans every now and again. In-fact, I might say that I am a connoiseur of all things shenanigan.

Back to the point. Blogs, livejournals, and xangas are the same case; some are more informative than others. From my experience, the majority of blogs are emotional journals written by middle-school, high-school, and college students. Often touching on personal experiences from how enamoured they are with their significant other to how tipsy they were at a party and what ensued. My perception of what the majority of blogs cosist of may very well have to do with my age, location, and the right-click check friend's profile thing I do on occasion, but hey, it'd be weird if I went around reading the blogs of balding middle-aged car salesmen. It is with these that I agree with the quote most. The people who write the aforementioned things in their blogs, obviously know, as they link all their friends to it, that plenty of people are going to read what they write. In fact, anybody with an internet connection can read it. Obviously if you have a friend who links you to something, you'll go to check it out. So in a sense this is "making you look at their scrap books," and also delves into a fascination with self-expression and making sure people know about it.

The latter bit of the quote relates blogs to "opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting." I suppose that does apply to the more personal-journal kind of blogs, but blogs such as Gizmodo which exist as an incredible resource for finding out about unique gizmo's and whirlydigs. The author isn't a reknowned journalist, or have a job in journalism, he's a "normal" guy who's a big fan of gizmos and whirlydigs, and has decided to share his opinion with anyone who wants to read it. For every not-so-informative blog out there, there's at least three which are along the same lines as Gizmodo.

Bottom-line; it's the same guilty pleasure as reality television, getting a look into peoples lives and insights, but regardless an internet diary is somewhat of an oxymoron. The good, the bad, the ugly, it's all on the internet.

Random musings

A squid eating dough in a polystyrene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?