#smcs15

Super sad this class is over. In many ways I feel as though this class was building to the end that it did with Autonomous.  This last section of readings showed how much power the ordinary citizen has. The fact that the culminating powers of Anonymous came together to protest Scientology like stated in the reading by Gabriella Coleman. That solidified for me a least,that the only power we lack is the power we give away. These ddos attacks on Rutgers showed me in real time how much my school life revolved around computers. I see the ddos attack as someone protesting something they do not like about Rutgers but that doesn't really matter. The hacker made the Rutgers community stop, and took everyone out of their normal routine. Yes, it would have been easier with out the attack but I don't believe everything that is easy is good or helpful.  Anonymous is neither good nor bad it is not that simple. But the fact that Anonymous is not merely a online force or a picket line makes Anonymous poetic. Anonymous is a fluid force that seamlessly pulls the power of but online and offline atmospheres. 

After hearing about Anonymous in class, I was immediately curious about how they were so organized whiteout any official leadership. It didn’t make sense to me that Anonymous was able to successfully organize protests and allow people to become part of the community without any clear sense of leadership. However, after reading Coleman’s article it makes sense that the IRC is in control of kicking people out of the group. This method contrasts with society so sharply due to our culture in regard to celebrity worshiping. As a society, and as social media has become more prevalent, we focus heavily on celebrities’ lives. It is also worth nothing that their anti-leader perspective seems to stem from the way society is run and lead currently. Right now, it seems that the government and the upperclass (the 1-3%) run everything. Anonymous shakes up society by being against the hierarchy that we accept and often do not question.

        There was another group in history that attempted to divide power equally. They were known as “Communist” but unlike anonymous, they didn’t work out. In Communism, certain people rose to positions of power despite the fact that power was supposed to be divided among the masses. People were able to do this because there wasn’t a sense of anonymity. Because people could be well known, certain people were able to rise up to be a harsh leader. They kept this position of power because they were recognizable. People feared them. In anonymous, however, leaders are not easy to rise up because when one tries to rise up, everyone counters it very quickly.   The people are able to rise up because there is minimum consequence for doing such a thing online, which makes them more inclined to act. The people who were oppressed by a communist leader, however, had a much higher risk of failure that even could have resulted in death. The person in power already had an established name, and was able to get away with punishing the people revolting.   The fact of not knowing who people are makes people more inclined to fight injustice.

It’s interesting to see that 4chan was based off of a Japanese site, especially when you consider the type of culture that is predominate in most Asian countries (Dibbell, 2010). Japan is a very high context culture, what constitutes proper behavior changes, sometimes dramatically, from one situation to another. Things like who you are with, who else is around, the location you’re in, what part of the world you are from, all of these and probably a lot more are taken into account to decide what is ‘correct’ and what isn’t. This sort of environment can confuse the hell out of Westerners, we consider it two-faced or false to change how we act from situation to situation. The base for 4chan was built with that high context cultural influence, and I think you can see that in aspects of 4chan. Looking at high context, when a person shifts from one event to another, it’s like a reset, a clean slate. 4chan’s no pseudonym anonymous rule has the same effect. The ability to put an idea, opinion, or observation out in public, and have it exist only for a few minutes is a way for Westerners to have that new environment where they can completely change behavior without having their sense of self judged or questioned. Whether the 4chan universe is more valuable as a social steam valve, or a sub-culture creative forum is up for debate, but it’s not something the internet population can do without.

The use of social media to draw in what would usually be fringe groups, like the techno fans Wasik mentions in the #Riot article, is bringing a new method of communicating for idiocultures (Wasik, 2011). Small groups that identity through something fairly specific are usually confined to geographical location, but with the hashtag movement the way of sharing in-group symbols, language, and rituals lets these groups stay relatively small while spreading across the globe. In the past idiocultures haven’t had a huge impact on society at large, and in my opinion, that’s due to limited communication methods. Now that the reach for niche groups is widespread, the standard definition of idioculture may need to be reexamined.

Cote and Pybus used a term that struck me as particularly vibrant; cognitive capital. Discussions about the import and export of expertise and innovation, as opposed to physical products, have been used in the past, and this new phrase, to me at least, does a better job encompassing not only corporate innovations and scientific theories, but cultural creative products as well. Digital art, poetry, fan works, as well random repurposed items that show up in life hacks list, all fall outside of the old definitions of ‘labor’-- some sort of physical activity, and ‘product’-- some sort of tangible touchable item. The way that the capital is traded, tagging, sharing, re-blogging, etc., makes it much more cooperative than it has been in the past. The type of community effort to create is so widespread due to the connections we can make through social media is reminiscent of the commune movement from the Sixties. Adding corporate entities to the mix is where it gets messy, though. The interactivity that’s touted as something fun and unique is extremely appealing to our tendency towards self-branding, as well as giving us a way for our efforts to be recognized, and fuel that desire for acknowledgement. Advertising companies are taking the ‘fun’ part of being involved with creating, and the fulfilling part of creating with a community and coopting it. Doing that strips, at least some, the value away from the individual’s creative production. It’s very glossy and fun, and it’s doing a good job of turning the spending part of these interactions into a secondary component. Until people see that the business practice of ‘cutting through the clutter’ (Andrejevic, 2007) isn’t used to make a better product but to increase the bottom line the creations we are making won’t be truly ours.

It is down right horrific to know characters on an online social platform from anonymous profiles (not credible even by a name) would convince impressionable teenagers to endanger themselves. This gives 4chan a bad reputation, yet millions of users log onto this site daily creating havoc with no evident remorse. I presume that this continual damage has to do with the fact that their is no face to the case (as the saying goes, “no face no case”). I don't believe that this is one of the outcomes that Poole anticipated when he created this platform. Why don’t they just shut down 4chan? Yes, the site will lose a lot of possibly great interactions and creations, but the world will benefit greater from the shutting down of a toxic environment of 4chan. Or maybe some more rules and regulations can be created in order of regulating the material that circulate through 4chan.