During my last two years at high school the arts program started to get more recognized, music especially. The Minster of Arts on my school’s Student’s Council was a boy named Mac who was in a band and involved in several activist groups. When he became Minster of Arts he started working around the clock to combine his two loves in a fun way that would involve the school. He started “ARockalypse Now”, a night for the school’s musically gifted to show off and “rock out”. They were a hit from the start and each time we had one there would be more and more students watching and participating and more and more teachers coming to see it as well. It became a big thing to look forward to not just because we got to see our friends perform but because it gave us a big chance give something back to the world.
Teenagers are lazy, end of story. We’re too busy thinking about ourselves to go out and be activists. I am more than willing to admit that I was lazy before ARockalypse was started. I didn’t feel like going out and getting involved in something like this. I waited for these opportunities but once I had one I grabbed onto it. the group Mac usually donated money to was Green Peace Canada though there were times when he split it between two separate organizations. When Mac arranged ARockalypse Now all the money for tickets, all of it, went to Green Peace. He would buy bread, cheese and butter to sell grilled cheese sandwiches and pop and the bands often sold tee shirts with some of the profits going toward Green Peace as well. I loved this and I couldn’t help but want to help out.
For the first year I helped out by taking photos of the bands for the school’s newsletter and year book (the bands also got copies if they wanted some) but the second year they did ARockalypse Now I helped out with setting up the event. I bought food for the concession, donated all the pocket change I had while taking tickets, little things that don’t seem very important. This wasn’t enough though. I started looking further into what Green Peace did and how I could help.
Green Peace work with environmental campaigns around the globe. They have campaigns to defend the oceans, save the Boreal Forest and ending nuclear threats, among many other smaller campaigns. After ARockalypse Now I started looking our for chances to donate to them and became a “Cyberactivist”, signing petitions online and responding in forums that were read be the government. I started to follow their tips for green living, which I still try and do now. I still continue to donate when I have extra money to spare. I have embraced my freedom of speech and the free culture of the Internet to help support a cause I believe in.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: The Penguin Group, 1972. Book.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004.
Some Links to Visit
ARockalypse Now Fan-Video
Green Peace Canada
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
"What kind of dining set defines me as a person"
Fight Club Official Trailer
In a book called “Culture Jamming” Kalle Lasn claims we live in “global Capitalist culture”. He claims we eat too much healthy food, watch too much television and are the subject of manipulation on a regular basis. He hopes for less dependence on global corporations and more people leaving their couches and be activists. After reading a little bit of Culture Jamming and Pranking Rhetoric by Christine Harold, I couldn’t help but want to watch Fight Club. Which made me rent Fight Club.
For those of you who haven’t watched Fight Club (shame on you), it’s about an insomniac who seeks an escape from his mundane life style. He talks about being a slave to Ikea. In one scene he goes through a list of all the things in his house he had bought from Ikea, from dishes to furniture, he lists off the prices for each and how they define him as a person. He finds release from his “global Capitalist culture” with help from a soap salesmen and is introduced to underground fight clubs. Harmless pranks and boxing matches lead out of control and that’s where I’ll stop. I don’t want to ruin it. The Narrator subtly points out the consumer society he was built on. During his waves of insomnia he realizes this and searches for a cure. At the beginning of the movie he talks about his job, working for a recalls for a car company. He tells a lady on a plane about an accident he had to look at for work and in a panic she asks what car company he works for.
When The Narrator meets a soap salesman named Tyler he points out that they are consumers, owned by television and celebrities and advertisements. He wants to “evolve” so that “the things [he] owns doesn’t own [him]” (Fight Club). For me personally it was weird to think about fighting being an answer to global Capitalist culture. It seems animalistic to me, but it also makes sense. It gave them a new light; able to see what “true men” were rather than the “true man” the Calvin Klein said they should be. Fight Club was often compared to going to church by the Narrator. Tyler and The Narrator decide to lose fights against total strangers. The Narrator beats himself up to frame his boss, this giving them more money for Fight Club. They start “fighting the system” through pranks.
Beating cars with bats, causing pigeons to poop all over them, defiling fountains and office spaces, doing anything they could to fight back against corporate America. In Pranking Rhetoric Harold says “Media pranksters, an increasingly active type of consumer activist, prefer affirmation and appropriation to opposition and sabotage” (194). What Harold means by this is that media prankers, Tyler and The Narrator in Fight Club, are activist that use aggressive tactics to send their messages out. Tyler and The Narrator’s activism is most certainly aggressive; explosions, vandalism, violence.
The reason I had thought of Fight Club while reading about culture jamming wasn’t just the general plot of the movie, but was also the irony behind it. Fight Club is about fight against corporate America, yet the film is made by what Tyler and The Narrator fight against. Not only that but it is filled with advertisements like IBM and Starbucks. It just goes to show how corporate our world really is. Not even a movie about protesting against large corporations can avoid advertisements.
Works Cited
Fincher, David. _Fight Club_. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton. Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999.
Harold, Christine. “Pranking Rhetoric: ‘Culture Jamming’ as Media Activism” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21: 3, 189-211.
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: the Uncooling of America. New York: Quill Inc., 200.
In a book called “Culture Jamming” Kalle Lasn claims we live in “global Capitalist culture”. He claims we eat too much healthy food, watch too much television and are the subject of manipulation on a regular basis. He hopes for less dependence on global corporations and more people leaving their couches and be activists. After reading a little bit of Culture Jamming and Pranking Rhetoric by Christine Harold, I couldn’t help but want to watch Fight Club. Which made me rent Fight Club.
For those of you who haven’t watched Fight Club (shame on you), it’s about an insomniac who seeks an escape from his mundane life style. He talks about being a slave to Ikea. In one scene he goes through a list of all the things in his house he had bought from Ikea, from dishes to furniture, he lists off the prices for each and how they define him as a person. He finds release from his “global Capitalist culture” with help from a soap salesmen and is introduced to underground fight clubs. Harmless pranks and boxing matches lead out of control and that’s where I’ll stop. I don’t want to ruin it. The Narrator subtly points out the consumer society he was built on. During his waves of insomnia he realizes this and searches for a cure. At the beginning of the movie he talks about his job, working for a recalls for a car company. He tells a lady on a plane about an accident he had to look at for work and in a panic she asks what car company he works for.
When The Narrator meets a soap salesman named Tyler he points out that they are consumers, owned by television and celebrities and advertisements. He wants to “evolve” so that “the things [he] owns doesn’t own [him]” (Fight Club). For me personally it was weird to think about fighting being an answer to global Capitalist culture. It seems animalistic to me, but it also makes sense. It gave them a new light; able to see what “true men” were rather than the “true man” the Calvin Klein said they should be. Fight Club was often compared to going to church by the Narrator. Tyler and The Narrator decide to lose fights against total strangers. The Narrator beats himself up to frame his boss, this giving them more money for Fight Club. They start “fighting the system” through pranks.
Beating cars with bats, causing pigeons to poop all over them, defiling fountains and office spaces, doing anything they could to fight back against corporate America. In Pranking Rhetoric Harold says “Media pranksters, an increasingly active type of consumer activist, prefer affirmation and appropriation to opposition and sabotage” (194). What Harold means by this is that media prankers, Tyler and The Narrator in Fight Club, are activist that use aggressive tactics to send their messages out. Tyler and The Narrator’s activism is most certainly aggressive; explosions, vandalism, violence.
The reason I had thought of Fight Club while reading about culture jamming wasn’t just the general plot of the movie, but was also the irony behind it. Fight Club is about fight against corporate America, yet the film is made by what Tyler and The Narrator fight against. Not only that but it is filled with advertisements like IBM and Starbucks. It just goes to show how corporate our world really is. Not even a movie about protesting against large corporations can avoid advertisements.
Works Cited
Fincher, David. _Fight Club_. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton. Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999.
Harold, Christine. “Pranking Rhetoric: ‘Culture Jamming’ as Media Activism” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 21: 3, 189-211.
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: the Uncooling of America. New York: Quill Inc., 200.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Do Nothing to Become an InActivist!
It sounds pretty easy, go a whole day without making any sort of transaction, but when you think about it, about all the transactions you make in a day, it’s actually quite hard. Every time I swipe or show my metro card that’s a transaction, paying my bills and even sending a text, which is buying communication. Can I go an entire day without buying anything? I honestly don’t think I could. Not right now at least with so much going on. I can, however, respect Buy Nothing Day. Ted Dave had an amazing idea when he created Buy Nothing Day.
Ted Dave started Buy Nothing Day in 1992 but it has since been taken over by Adbusters (Canada’s largest export magazine). It has grown into a huge event filled with large and small scale actions, rallies, protests, performances, street parties, donations, fasts, workshops and much more in twenty nine countries. Ted Dave says Buy Nothing Day was “designed to remind the consumer and the retailer of the true power of buying public… It is an avenue of expression for people who feel that their lives and dreams have been marketed back to them, people who all to often feel frustrated with how much things cost, the way advertising panders to them.” (Dave) He wanted people to “participate by not participating”.
In Free Culture Lawrence Lessig explains “we come from a tradition of “free culture”—not “free” as in “free beer”…but “free” as in “free speech”, “free markets”, “free trade”, “free enterprise”, “free will”, and “free elections”…A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free” (Lessig XIV). If we can have “free speech” and “free will” why can’t we have a literal “free market”? We have so much “free culture”, freedom of speech and will, it makes sense to have free market. Personally, most of my stress is from budgeting; worrying about whether or not I’ll have enough money for this and that. It would lift a lot of stress from people.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: The Penguin Group, 1972. Book.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004.
Ted Dave started Buy Nothing Day in 1992 but it has since been taken over by Adbusters (Canada’s largest export magazine). It has grown into a huge event filled with large and small scale actions, rallies, protests, performances, street parties, donations, fasts, workshops and much more in twenty nine countries. Ted Dave says Buy Nothing Day was “designed to remind the consumer and the retailer of the true power of buying public… It is an avenue of expression for people who feel that their lives and dreams have been marketed back to them, people who all to often feel frustrated with how much things cost, the way advertising panders to them.” (Dave) He wanted people to “participate by not participating”.
In Free Culture Lawrence Lessig explains “we come from a tradition of “free culture”—not “free” as in “free beer”…but “free” as in “free speech”, “free markets”, “free trade”, “free enterprise”, “free will”, and “free elections”…A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free” (Lessig XIV). If we can have “free speech” and “free will” why can’t we have a literal “free market”? We have so much “free culture”, freedom of speech and will, it makes sense to have free market. Personally, most of my stress is from budgeting; worrying about whether or not I’ll have enough money for this and that. It would lift a lot of stress from people.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York: The Penguin Group, 1972. Book.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing
My friends and I used to always joke that if it existed there was a techno version and a porn version of it on the Internet. The Internet is, in a way, limitless and has the entire world on it. You can watch just about anything on Youtube and talk to people anywhere in the world. There is no end to what you can do on the Internet but there might be. In 2005 phone companies and the ISPs came up with “net neutrality”, a way of controlling what their customers could use the Internet for. They wanted to create some very harsh restrictions on an independent society. Phone companies and the ISPs planned on starting new neutrality by dividing economic classes, allowing only people of the same economic status to talk to one another on the Internet. So, in short, only the wealthy would be able to see all of the Internet and the poor are stuck using Google and that’s it. I hardly see that as fair.
Net neutrality creates a read-only culture shut out from the lower parts of society. A majority of citizens are unable to pay for the content they need or want. Online courses would only be allowed to the high classed because they are the only ones who can afford to look at the content. This shouldn’t be allowed. The world we currently live in is a world of freedom, is it not? We are in a world that thrives off of freedom if speech (with the exception of some countries that are still restricted). Net neutrality takes all of that freedom away from us when it comes to the Internet.
“But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would be very hard to see how photography could have flourished as it did if the requirement for permission had been built into the rules that govern it” (Lessig 25) Look at it this way; if restrictions had been set on scientists or engineers the medicine that saves millions of people would not exists. In my opinion this same concept applies to net neutrality and the Internet. The Internet is an amazing tool for artists and business owners working as a way to get themselves known. With net neutrality no one can see the digital art created or the online businesses. By placing limits on what is viewable on the Internet, society suffers.
People need to become more aware of net neutrality. We need to be able to fight it and keep the freedom of information we currently have. A change to the Internet like this would most likely cause a sort of mass hysteria among people. Information will be guarded, and our money lost trying to receive it again. We should be able to keep the free culture we have.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Henry. “Convergence? I Diverge.” June 2001. Technology Review. 18 Nov. 2009.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004.
Net neutrality creates a read-only culture shut out from the lower parts of society. A majority of citizens are unable to pay for the content they need or want. Online courses would only be allowed to the high classed because they are the only ones who can afford to look at the content. This shouldn’t be allowed. The world we currently live in is a world of freedom, is it not? We are in a world that thrives off of freedom if speech (with the exception of some countries that are still restricted). Net neutrality takes all of that freedom away from us when it comes to the Internet.
“But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would be very hard to see how photography could have flourished as it did if the requirement for permission had been built into the rules that govern it” (Lessig 25) Look at it this way; if restrictions had been set on scientists or engineers the medicine that saves millions of people would not exists. In my opinion this same concept applies to net neutrality and the Internet. The Internet is an amazing tool for artists and business owners working as a way to get themselves known. With net neutrality no one can see the digital art created or the online businesses. By placing limits on what is viewable on the Internet, society suffers.
People need to become more aware of net neutrality. We need to be able to fight it and keep the freedom of information we currently have. A change to the Internet like this would most likely cause a sort of mass hysteria among people. Information will be guarded, and our money lost trying to receive it again. We should be able to keep the free culture we have.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Henry. “Convergence? I Diverge.” June 2001. Technology Review. 18 Nov. 2009.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004.
We're being fed lies
It seems a new fad is going around: corporately funded news and propaganda. Right now it is so easy for public relations to promote their companies; there is a flood of public relations professionals and very little journalists. Journalism, a way for the public to get accurate and important information, is struggling in comparison to public relations. Corporations are influencing both journalism and public relations more and more, creating “fake news” and propaganda. It seems as if the journalists and PR professionals are having a hard time getting scientific facts straight.
A few years ago I read a book for one of my media classes on journalism and public relations, which I was reminded of when I was reading Toxic Sludge is Good For You. It Ain’t Necessarily So talked about what journalists and PR were leaving out of their stories, and how the statistics were false or, for lack of a better word, bent to create more news than there actually was. It mentioned various stories this had happened with, and gave the real statistics versus the ones published. It was a very surprising book with a lot of disturbing truths to the stories mentioned. While It Ain’t Necessarily So focused on journalists and public relations and their false statistics Toxic Sludge is Good For You was a little more specific, focusing on public relations and how they manipulate the public.
Public relations has started filming, editing and producing their own segments that are being called news that are anything but. PR is presenting us with advertisements not news, but we are fooled into thinking that this advertisement is filled with hard facts and scientific proof behind it. Every day the public is being fed news funded by corporations and are completely unaware of what news is real and what is fake. The news we’re receiving is manufactured so how can we know if it is really news or not? The public has started to focus more on what products to buy rather than world issues and actual news.
Works Cited
Murray, David. It Ain’t Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.
A few years ago I read a book for one of my media classes on journalism and public relations, which I was reminded of when I was reading Toxic Sludge is Good For You. It Ain’t Necessarily So talked about what journalists and PR were leaving out of their stories, and how the statistics were false or, for lack of a better word, bent to create more news than there actually was. It mentioned various stories this had happened with, and gave the real statistics versus the ones published. It was a very surprising book with a lot of disturbing truths to the stories mentioned. While It Ain’t Necessarily So focused on journalists and public relations and their false statistics Toxic Sludge is Good For You was a little more specific, focusing on public relations and how they manipulate the public.
Public relations has started filming, editing and producing their own segments that are being called news that are anything but. PR is presenting us with advertisements not news, but we are fooled into thinking that this advertisement is filled with hard facts and scientific proof behind it. Every day the public is being fed news funded by corporations and are completely unaware of what news is real and what is fake. The news we’re receiving is manufactured so how can we know if it is really news or not? The public has started to focus more on what products to buy rather than world issues and actual news.
Works Cited
Murray, David. It Ain’t Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.
World domination at it's finest?
When I heard that Disney had bought out Marvel I was beyond furious. Don’t get me wrong, I love Disney and lived off of their movies as a child but serious, Marvel? Why? What did they want with Marvel? What were they going to do to some of my favorite superheroes of all time? Over 5000 Marvel characters were turned over to Disney. They paid over $4 billion for Marvel. Disney now benefits from any movie or game based on Marvel characters like X-Men, Spiderman and Iron Man. Is their going to be Fantastic Four featuring Mickey Mouse rides at Disney World now? As much as I love Disney I was far from fond of the idea of them owning Marvel. This got me thinking though. What else does Disney own?
No wonder Miley Cyrus is so famous! Disney owns a lot more than I thought they did. It seriously feels like they own most of the world. I had no idea they owned ABC Network, ESPN, Lifetime Network, A&E and The History Channel. That last one nearly made me fall out of my chair. They also have a cruise line, several resorts and theme parks, hundreds of stores and theatre productions, Disney on Ice and clothing lines, food and beauty products, stationary, internet groups and Baby Einstein. It actually scared me to think about how much Disney has rule over. Disney owned my childhood with its cute movies about princesses, and now it owns me adult years with A&E and Marvel. Cross media ownership is terrifying.
By buying shares in all of these companies Disney has gradually come to own half of television, let alone the radio programming, magazines and other things they own. Whenever you listen to ABC Radio or buy a CD under Lyric Street records or buy a Marvel video game, comic or action figure, you are feeding money into Disney, allowing them the capabilities of owning more stock and further developing their cross ownership. While Disney still gets most of its revenue from the United States, it is working on global domination, so to say. Disney, like a lot of other of the world largest media firms own pieces of stock in interlocking boards, giving Disney more access to ownership and less competition. It also increases the chances of profit. World domination for Disney? I can see it.
Works Cited
McChesney, Robert W. “It’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates” The New Global Media 11 Nov. 1999: 1-3. Web.
Schroeder, Stan. “Disney to Buy Marvel for $4 Billion” Mashable. Word Press, 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
Unknown Author. “Who Owns What: Disney” Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review, 2008. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Better than reality by far
I will gladly be the first to tell you that I am, without a doubt, a “nerd”. I am into video games, anime/manga, comic books and fantasy and sci-fi. I listen to video game soundtracks while I read Alan Moore and have a vast collection of trinkets from my favorite comics and cartoons. I go to Anime North and Fan Expo every year and dress up for it to but what I think the “nerdiest” thing I do is role play online. Not Dungeons and Dragon’s or Amt Guard but text base role playing; very different from what most people assume it is.
Using forums that regular people set up from a given template sites are created and improved with HTML codes and eye catching graphics. The creators of the sites, the administrators, create a plot that is posted on the forum and design the site around that plot. Boards are created that are often parts of a city, school or other kind of setting and “Out of Character” sections are added so members can chat to one another. After hours of setting up the site and agonizing advertising on other role playing forums members take a look and join, creating characters that fit the site’s plot and setting. In most cases the characters are thought up entirely by the members though sometimes “canons” are available. (These are pre-made by either members or the site staff). The characters are given faces using celebrities and models and are given jobs, hobbies and personalities.
It’s a little deeper and more complicated than this though. I know for me and a lot of my friends who role play online as well the characters aren’t like one’s in a video game where you press buttons to control their actions. You get to design the character from scratch and put aspects of yourself into them. For me, and for my friends too, that’s the biggest thrill and attraction to online role playing. You connect with the characters you role play with as an author might connect with the characters in their novels because that’s that online role playing is. The best way I can describe it is like writing a novel with the help of other people. You get varying perspectives through on an event through the different types of characters you role play with and get to interact with people from all around the world. The varying writing styles and experience levels help you grow as a creative writer, especially when connecting with the person behind the character.
For my role playing isn’t just “knowledge community” but is also a form of social networking. Most forums have a “chat box” on it somewhere where members can talk to one another and chit-chat about their characters or their every day life. You become friends with the members and get to know them, often adding them on MSN or Yahoo or even Facebook. Heck, sometimes people even start dating through these forums. (I’m one of those people). Online role playing is gaming, social networking and knowledge community though some sites only focus on one of two of those three things. Either way it is what takes up most of my time on the internet and is something I love doing.
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