SHARE THE LOUD HAILER: If It Doesn’t Spread Its Dead.

Or, similarly, “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.” Fans reject the idea of a definitive version produced, authorized, and regulated by some media conglomerate. Instead, fans envision a world where all of us can participate in the creation and circulation of central cultural myths.

Art Chantry:...however, i also see what i do as beautiful i hang it up on my walls, i obsessively collect some of it and i even share it with others (like you) as if it important to us (or something.) we're basically big naked monkeys and whomever is gibbering the loudest gets the attention. and the respect. and gets to be the leader. in a weird small sick way, that's what i'm doing here. i'm actually showing you garbage and telling you why this particular piece of rubbish is important to ... who? us? really? i've never collected art. when i somehow acquire a nice piece of 'art', i tend to give it to a new home. i don't value it. i've given away enormous numbers of dollars in art value over the decades. what i keep is the crap, the cultural detritus that i love. i am a garbage head. damn proud of it, too.

Henery Jenkins: As more and more amateur works have entered into circulation via the Web, the result has been a turn back toward a more folk-culture understanding of creativity. Historically, our culture evolved through a collective process of collaboration and elaboration. Folktales, legends, myths and ballads were built up over time as people added elements that made them more meaningful to their own contexts. The Industrial Revolution resulted in the privatization of culture and the emergence of a concept of intellectual property that assumes that cultural value originates from the original contributions of individual authors. In practice, of course, any act of cultural creation builds on what has come before, borrowing genre conventions and cultural archetypes, if nothing else.

The ability of corporations to control their “intellectual property” has had a devastating impact upon the production and circulation of cultural materials, meaning that the general population has come to see themselves primarily as consumers of — rather than participants within — their culture. The mass production of culture has largely displaced the old folk culture, but we have lost the possibility for cultural myths to accrue new meanings and associations over time, resulting in single authorized versions (or at best, corporately controlled efforts to rewrite and ‘update’ the myths of our popular heroes). Our emotional and social investments in culture have not shifted, but new structures of ownership diminish our ability to participate in the creation and interpretation of that culture. …

Kayne West. "Fan fiction repairs some of the damage caused by the privatization of culture, allowing these potentially rich cultural archetypes to speak to and for a much broader range of social and political visions. Fan fiction helps to broaden the potential interest in a series by pulling its content toward fantasies that are unlikely to gain widespread distribution, tailoring it to cultural niches under-represented within and under-served by the aired material. In theory, such efforts could increase the commercial value of media products by opening them to new audiences, though producers rarely understand them in those terms. "

…Fans respond to this situation of an increasingly privatized culture by applying the traditional practices of a folk culture to mass culture, treating film or television as if it offered them raw materials for telling their own stories and resources for forging their own communities. Just as the American folk songs of the nineteenth century were often related to issues of work, the American folk culture of the twentieth century speaks to issues of leisure and consumption. Fan culture, thus, represents a participatory culture through which fans explore and question the ideologies of mass culture, speaking from a position sometimes inside and sometimes outside the cultural logic of commercial entertainment. The key difference between fan culture and traditional folk culture doesn’t have to do with fan actions but with corporate reactions. Robin Hood, Pecos Bill, John Henry, Coyote, and Br’er Rabbit belonged to the folk. Kirk and Spock, Scully and Mulder, Hans and Chewbacca, or Xena and Gabrielle belong to corporations.


--the right to participate actively in the culture is assumed to be "the freedom we have allowed ourselves," not a privilege granted by a benevolent company. Fans also reject the studio's assumption that intellectual property is a "limited good," to be tightly controlled lest it dilute its value. Instead, they embrace an understanding of intellectual property as "shareware," something that accrues value as it moves across different contexts, gets retold in various ways, attracts multiple audiences, and opens itself up to a proliferation of alternative meanings.---

a”so, it’s always fun to see a familiar echo happening in pop magazines from 40 years earlier. there really is nothing new under the sun. it’s all been done before (and better), whether it’s in the pop psychology magazine biz in 1929 or in the baby boomer psychedelia revolution in the 1960′s. we really live in an age of blind post modern appropriation. we really aren’t capable of coming up with anything ‘new’ anymore. we simply copy and adapt to a new environment. the more i lean about this stuff, the more true it becomes.

Chantry: magazine cover of the month! Psychology Magazine ("the standard publication of practical, inspirational and applied psychology"). vol. XII, No. 2. February, 1929. official motto? "HEALTH! HAPPINESS! SUCCESS!" even though psychology was a science barely existing in name, having only arrived on the scene a couple decades earlier, it was already the most misunderstood and abused science imaginable. this strange magazine is already full of all that crap you see in 'pop psychology' magazines today - "how to lose weight", "how to be more powerful", "join christian scientists! scientology! rosicrucions!" "learn the secrets of success!" "improve your sight WITHOUT GLASSES!" "learn to not be ashamed in front of a live audience!" "learn to hypnotize!" on and on and on. some things never change, eh? and that's just the adverts!

but, most of you will fight to the death to defend your sovereign originality. i actually see people suing each other over ‘intellectual property theft!” but,


his point in my studies, i can point out pre-existing examples of whatever it is you think you created from wholly original thought. it cracks me up. usually those examples are a hundred years old, too.

we should spend a lot less time shouting “THEIF!” and “GIMMEE!”, and spend a lot more time just working.” ( Art Chantry )

Kevin Slavin:All three perspectives touch on a subject close to hart: First that advertising and marketing is to focused on tangible content. And secondly that content needs to be the result of understanding context and value, not a goal in itself.

Fans also reject the studio’s assumption that intellectual property is a “limited good,” to be tightly controlled lest it dilute its value. Instead, they embrace an understanding of intellectual property as “shareware,” something that accrues value as it moves across different contexts, gets retold in various ways, attracts multiple audiences, and opens itself up to a proliferation of alternative meanings. Giving up absolute control over intellectual property, they argue, increases its cultural value (if not its economic worth) by encouraging new, creative input and thus enabling us to see familiar characters and plots from fresh perspectives. Media conglomerates often respond to these new forms of participatory culture by seeking to shut them down or reigning in their free play with cultural material. If the media industries understand the new cultural and technological environment as demanding greater audience participation within what one media analyst calls the “experience economy,” they seek to tightly structure the terms by which we may interact with their intellectual property, preferring the pre-programmed activities offered by computer games or commercial Web sites, to the free-form participation represented by fan culture. The conflict between these two paradigms — the corporate-based concept of media convergence and the grassroots-based concept of participatory culture — will determine the long-term cultural consequences of our current moment of media in transition.( Henry Jenkins )

---Inspired by a question posed by @gabyrosario on Twitter I found myself thinking that if social media is not about individuals, users or consumer, but about the dynamics inside groups and networks. If we are mammals in a herd (Mark Earls) and brands are “a collective perception in the minds of consumers” (Faris Yakob). Then the whole notion of using individuals as references for building or designing stuff on participatory platforms is useless. If the goal of social media activities is to sow or game the dynamics of the collective, then we need to get better at understanding group dynamics rather than individual motivations. Why do we still talk about individuals when it comes to Social media?---

ADDENDUM:
THIS. IS. SPARTA!!! is a meme inspired by the brutal and overly dramatic movie “300″ where the Spartan king Leonidas shouts the line before killing a Persian messenger. The whole dialogue goes like this:
Messenger: Choose your next words carefully, Leonidas. They may be your last as king.
King Leonidas: [to himself] “Earth and water”?
[Leonidas unsheathes and points his sword at the Messenger's throat]
Messenger: Madman! You’re a madman!
King Leonidas: Earth and water? You’ll find plenty of both down there.
Messenger: No man, Persian or Greek, no man threatens a messenger!
King Leonidas: You bring the crowns and heads of conquered kings to my city steps. You insult my queen. You threaten my people with slavery and death! Oh, I’ve chosen my words carefully, Persian. Perhaps you should have done the same!
Messenger: This is blasphemy! This is madness!
King Leonidas: Madness…?
[shouting]
King Leonidas: This is Sparta!
[Kicks the messenger down the well]
The meme has been modified many times; you must have seen people posting things like THIS. IS. INTERNETS! and such. Basically anything can be (and has been) used to replace the last part of the line. This web fad has also inspired a number of silly images and videos. You can see one of the most famous creations below: a “This is Sparta” techno remix, which has gotten over 20 million views on YouTube (edit: the original video has been removed due to terms of use violation; you can still see one of the many other versions …

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