I would like to apologize to anyone who clicked that link, (and promise that the rest of the hyperlinks will be legitimate!) but also suggest that what you experienced was actually one of the oldest and most recognizable ceremony of digital culture. You were trolled, or in Chamberlin\u2019s terms, tricked: the Rick Roll is an example of \u201clanguage that gives [to the world]\u201d (Chamberlin, 161) as you discover there is a disparity between what I have written, and the reality of the code which makes up the \u201cdigital world.\u201d Digital culture seems impenetrable to outsiders; they speak in code, have an infinite number of in-jokes, get obsessed with cats and fundraisers for potato salad.<\/a> But as I was considering writing about this topic with Chamberlin still circulating in my brain, I was struck by how many similarities internet culture shares with the disenfranchised cultures Chamberlin writes about.<\/p>\n When discussing the Internet, the \u201cWild West\u201d metaphor is a common one. When an agreement was made in 2008<\/a> to limit user\u2019s abilities to upload copyrighted content online, it was described by NBC Universal president Jeff Zucker as \u201ca significant step in transforming the Internet from a Wild West to a popular medium that respects the word of law.\u201d President Obama claimed<\/a> \u201cthe cyberworld is the Wild Wild West \u2013 to some degree we\u2019re asked to be the sheriff,\u201d in a recent speech calling for greater online regulation. Their rhetoric is obvious, I think: the Wild West is meant to evoke a lawlessness and lack of civility, which follows Chamberlin\u2019s description of our \u201chabit [of] dividing the whole world into the civilized and the barbaric, Us and Them.\u201d (Chamberlin, 10) Paraphrasing Matthew Arnold, Chamberlin talks about the colonial belief that the \u201c\u2018coarsely tempered natures\u2019 of the \u2018barbarians and philistines\u2019 would be imbued with the \u2018sweetness and light\u2019 of a truly cultivated, civilized society.\u2019\u201d (Chamberlin, 23) The attempts by these powerful figures to control the Internet echoes this passage, promising to bring \u201ccivilization\u201d to fix what is identified as barbarism in order to justify their takeover.<\/p>\n We can take the internet-takeover as colonial-narrative argument further: corporation\u2019s attempts to regulate the control of copyrighted material online is, for netizens, \u201cdiscounting their livelihoods and destroying their languages.\u201d (Chamberlin, 78) Writing about the participatory nature of the Internet\u2013 everyone has a voice, and a chance to add to a discussion \u2013 Limor Shifman mentions the importance of remixing artifacts of digital culture. Remixing is the practice of manipulating images or videos, \u201cfor instance by Photoshopping an image or adding a new soundtrack,\u201d (Shifman, 22) and these works often \u201creappropriate the news or popular culture.\u201d (Shifman, 118) Clamping down on the distribution of unlicensed copyrighted material places great restrictions on the ability of netizens to express themselves in this manner.<\/p>\n I would like to end this blog with a contradiction I think Chamberlin would enjoy. According to Chamberlin, our cultures are all looking for a homeland \u2013 a contradiction between the metaphoric \u201chome\u201d and the concrete \u201cland.\u201d For netizens, however, the \u201cland\u201d is a metaphor as well \u2013 it is based in every country on Earth, but takes place on a separate plane altogether. It is nonexistent, but it is also infinite, \u201ca place where things happen that don\u2019t.\u201d These circumstances make this a unique culture-clash, and I am very interested to see how it turns out.<\/p>\n Works Cited:<\/p>\n Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?<\/em> Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.<\/p>\n Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture.<\/em> Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2014. Print.<\/p>\n Wuerker, Matt (2011 Nov 16). “Shootout at the digital corral.” POLITICO<\/em>. <http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1111\/68448.html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like my previous blog, I feel like I\u2019m touching on a topic that is too big to properly explore in this format, so again I leave this blog as a jumping-off point for discussion instead of any kind of definitive statement on my part. I greatly enjoyed your comments on my last blog, even if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27639,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-15","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/maxm470\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Illustration](\"http:\/\/images.politico.com\/global\/news\/111115_wuerker_shootout_hollywood_328.jpg\" "\\"Illustration")
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