Image 1: Arschgeweih.
Reddit is
predominantly an English speaking website; this could be however because my
settings state that I am an English speaking person therefore I only receiving
English written articles. That is not to say that non-English data is not
available to me, on numerous occasions I have come across videos, articles and
images that a certainly from non-English speaking places within the world. A
great example was an article from Wikipedia that was written in German about 'tramp stamps' better known
as 'lower-back
tattoos'.
Within Reddit the content is what I would call
‘real’; protest videos from Egypt show real people in conflict. A man, who
posted a picture of his shaved chest hair in the shape of a bikini, was real.
Many other available articles represent real places, people and stories;
narratives I found to be both amusing and disgusting were found in the
article ‘What’s
the worst thing a house guest has done in your home?’ This for me, clearly
showed the idea that the virtual network is 'new ways of thinking and creating
selves and stories' (McNeill, 2012, p.115). I have changed my perspective on
multiple things due to what I have been confronted with within my virtual
network.
Songline's too have changed within my own mind; ‘each totemic
ancestor, while travelling through the country, was thought to have scattered a
trail of words and musical notes along the line of his footprints, and how
these Dreaming-tracks lay over the land as ‘ways’ of communication between the
most far-flung tribes’(Chatwin, 1987, p.13). With this description the virtual
network became a songline for me. The best example to represent this is Ozell Williams YouTube video clip; as he
flips down the street I notice that his songline has brought together numerous
people from a variety of places around the world. As I post this clip, I am
merging his songline with my own - my university network. This modern day
songline is not sacred as the ones still used by Indigenous Australians, but it
is a form of connection and communication that links me to someone else on the
other side of the planet. As Dr Van Luyn said, ‘you are not the only one
constructing your identity in the virtual network’ (Van Luyn, 2013); Ozell
Williams clearly shows how others are changing how he is perceived and how
popular he becomes.
Image 2: Lower-back tattoo
References:
Arschgeweih. (2013). In Wikipedia. Retrieved
August 20, 2013 from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arschgeweih
Chatwin, B. (1987). Chapter 3, in Songlines (pp. 11-15). London, England: Jonathon Cape.
Lower-back tattoo. (2013). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 20, 2013 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_back_tattooChatwin, B. (1987). Chapter 3, in Songlines (pp. 11-15). London, England: Jonathon Cape.
McNeill, L. (2012). There is no “I” in network: Social
networking sites and posthuman auto-biography. In Biography, 35(1), 101-118.
Ozell
Williams. (2013). In YouTube. Retrieved August 20, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFU_4dVMvO4
the_Hallelucinator.
(2013). What's
the worst thing a house guest has done in your home? In Reddit. Retrieved
August 20, 2013 from http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1kock8/whats_the_worst_thing_a_house_guest_has_done_in/
Van Luyn, A. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks,
narratives and the making of place, Week 4, Part 3: Networked Narratives.
[Podcast]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Image 1: Marcela.
(2006). Arschgeweih.
Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jaegermeister-59.jpg
Image 2: Marcela. (2006). Lower-back tattoo. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jaegermeister-57.jpg
Good afternoon Storme, hope you're well.
ReplyDeleteReddit is a fascinating place that uses language in so many ways. Most of it is rather informal language, otherwise known as "internet speak". You have also proved this by confirming there are german posts on Reddit.
You are proving that "there...may be a tendency for grammar to direct attendtion more to the location and power (specifically, a capacity to move and act) of objects than to their colour or usefulness" (Tuan, 1991).
Great and interesting post to read. :)
Bibliography
Tuan, Y.-F. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative - Descriptive Approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol 81, No. 4, 692.
Hello Strome :)
ReplyDeleteA very interesting post, I have also found that within in my own online network, the language used by its members is similar to that of Reddit; informal, casual and relaxed.
'In modern literate societies, the written text has largely supplanted storytelling (Tuan, 1991). I like yourself have found a video that I think best represents this. Where the Hell is Matt is a great example of story telling through dance bring people of all different nationalities together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY
Great post :)
Tuan, Y.-F. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative - Descriptive Approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol 81, No. 4, 690.
Where the Hell is Matt (2008). In Youtube. Retrieved September 15, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY