Apparently HappyCat and I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER have combined forces and entered new mediums.
Announcing the I Can Has Cheezburger? LOLcat Colleckshun!
To be released in time for Xmas, this seems like the perfect gift to further confuse my parents about my higher education track.
Ready for something amazing? This last Friday I got to see what other people think about craigslist for a change.
Civilian Art Projects held an opening reception for a show titled “craigslist” featuring work inspired by the site and its occupants (Read on Civilian’s website here, and Steve’s coverage, and awesome photos, here, and then my Flickr photos here).
The curatorial write up captured exactly what I have been arguing over the past year:
A curious outcome of our global internet society is that while we are more hyper-connected than ever, our identities have become increasingly malleable to the point of anonymity… Anonymity can bring out the adventurous side of people, particularly when it comes to exploring socially transgressive situations. In this exhibition, the artists take full advantage of this growing social identity phenomenon and investigate how anonymity generates a new kind of portraiture.
This was readily apparent in Jason Zimmerman’s pieces. (more…)
(This is the fourth post of a multi-post series on the relationship between the real and digital world. To read them all, start here, and continue here and here.)
“Does anyone know when the new ‘primetime’ is?” Dr. Tinkcom posed this question one day during a critical theory seminar. We had been discussing advertising and the impact of the Internet on traditional television viewership. Several students hypothesized that busy schedules had shifted prime-time back a couple hours. Others, myself included, wondered if it had been obliterated all together.
“Its between 8 and 9 in the morning, and 5 and 7 at night,” he answered, but then asked: “Does anyone know why?” Considering my own penchant for anything in syndication, I figured it was due to shows like The Simpsons and King of the Hill that show across the nation during the 5-7 time block. It was one of my quieter peers who answered his question correctly. “Commuters,” she said simply. (more…)
A little bit of humor is needed for this Friday. Remember those LOL Theorists? (here and here) I thought I would try my hand.
These two theorists are the perfect signifiers of my week. Critical theory and economics. Same theory, completely different outcomes, leaving you with no where to go. Yep, that kind of sums up this week. What’s one to do? Sit back and LOL, I guess.
(Thanks Patrick for loosing sleep for the sake of the lulz.)
I usually keep my posts about craigslist to the Missed Connections section, but when Steve sent me this ad, it made me laugh - so I am sharing it with you!
RE: Cannondale R600c Compact Frame -
NEW - $900 Stop posting! - $1Reply to: sale-562997321@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-02-04, 6:32PM ESTI think I am not alone in saying I am sick and tired of seeing this post!!
Look buddy new or not your bike has the lowest level of components there is.
People can buy a new bike at the bike store that is a current model with current components for half of what you are asking. Give up!!
I have never flagged your ad but I see others have. They are sick of looking at it too.
A BLACK and White TV was once a thousand dollars too!! New or not you cant give it away unless it was to a museum
* Location: NoVa
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interestsPostingID: 562997321
(Academic note: Isn’t it interesting how a post about an item — the bike — can be posted multiple times, but if someone were to follow suite in a missed connection it would be disastrous? Instead the entire online dating genre is plagued with “I don’t normally do this kind of thing…” disclaimers. Something to think about.)
Just to put us all at ease, here is some more typical craigslist based regulation:
I am gay but,I have to stop reading these CL listings. I am getting sick of what people are writing it makes me sick to my stomach sometimes. It shames me to be gay ,how did gay come to be basically all about sex. I am good looking and enjoy my sexually but some of you are just sick and perverts.If half of you that hang out in the suana and showers actually spent sometime on the floor working out you would not have to lower or degrade yourself. My gym has placed a camera in the showers and locker room, theirs a small notice at the desk to cover them for any law sui.t I will not tell you what gym. (The bold is all me.)
A bit of vindication today.
It was two weeks ago that Trish saw a picture of a cat on my laptop and exclaimed “No more LOLCats!” She is so annoyed with the cats (or rather the frequency with which I will make a cultural reference to one) that even an analysis of the visual rhetoric involved won’t warm her up to the topic.
Well, apparently there is a reason, and Yale researchers have provided it: Evolution Explains Why Lolcats Control Your Mind
Perhaps that is why Rae Maor predicted (shouting “LOLCATS will not die”, I might add) that 2008 will not see the end of our anthropomorphized friends.
Ahh, now that is nice. So Trish, this one is for you. I R B lulzin thrus the O-8s.
While I tend to blog along the more social and theoretical sides of technology, I thought I would share a post that Phil Windley just threw up on his blog, featuring the top downloaded content on IT Conversations for 2007.
IT Conversations provides some of the most insightful interviews and programs, including a long time favorite, Tech Nation. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. Phil, in an executive director role, has definitely poured his heart and soul into it.
I actually met Phil several years ago while I was doing the Dot.Com thing in “Little Silicon” (a.k.a. Utah Valley, just south of Salt Lake City). He would host (and I hope he still does) a monthly CTO forum that brought some wonderfully intelligent people together to talk about geeky, but always fun, topics. While Phil might not know this, it was here that I first began to consider the connections between culture and digital life on the internet. (more…)
The title kind of says it all.
I am in NYC for the weekend, and while waiting for the arrival of a friend I sat down on a convenient pair of benches in SoHo (here featured by our own Steve Frost). Apparently TimeOut magazine has deemed these benches as one of the gay hipster hot spots for the year. My being there, however, was a complete accident - I can only hope some of that big appley hipster-ish-ness rubbed off.
That said, these benches are in front of an American Apparel. Go figure. This last semester amid queer theory and authors including Butler and Halberstam, we began saying “Even queers aren’t queer anymore.”
I kind of thought that hipsters might have become the new queers. Maybe that’s only true if you are straight.
The semester is wrapping up, which means the last few weeks have produced an insane amount of academic product. I hope that some of it will end up here, but first I have to add some spit and polish. But here is one that seems ready.
For my Gender, Sexuality and the Body seminar, I created what Dr. Coventry calls a “Digital Storytelling Project.” I call it “One of the hardest finals I have ever had.” A Storytelling Project is basically a theoretical argument made in video format. In one vein of my semester’s worth of research on anonymous online behavior, I was looking at peer-to-peer regulation across digital and real world spaces, and in particular, public responses in the Missed Connections section of craigslist (A follow up of sort to some previous research).
Video after the jump. (more…)
Those who have been around me as of late, enduring my alternating states of exhaustion and over-caffeination, have probably also endured some conversation about LOLcats and their relationship to online communities. Imagine my surprise when Michael sent me this bizarrely accurate cross over.
Drop the cat and replace it with… Foucault? Or how about my personal favorite, Althusser!
Enjoy the best of them here.
