Social Media and Games

Post your anthropological finds and analyses here.

The first artifact I thought of is a "remixed video." It is the Kingdom Hearts song Sanctuary played in reverse (there are several on youtube – you can find one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX8vnIEaDtQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcjsWni-V2c&feature=related – And the original, unreversed version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX8vnIEaDtQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX8vnIEaDtQ&feature=related). What makes this remix so fascinating is that people have attached real, coherent lyrics to the reversed versions of the song, whether because of pure imagination on the part of the community or because the composer of the song actually snuck in backwards lyrics.

And if the composer did sneak in backwards lyrics, that poses some interesting questions: Did the composer ever think that people would notice? Would anyone have ever "discovered" these "hidden" lyrics if we didn't have the technology we do today? And finally, was the composer aware of the technology available and hoped someone would stumble upon the "easter egg"? Whether intentional or not, the results show the creativity and imaginations of its creators and – more importantly – Kingdom Hearts fans. The video is an example of the kind of thinking that the video game inspired; a belief that meaning can be lurking in seemingly odd places and it's just waiting for us to discover it.

The other I would categorize as "Digital Folk Art," fitting with Shirky's definition, "contests to see who could best alter famous movie scenes." The artifact is a clip from the movie Downfall, about Hitler's final days, with subtitles edited in to fit a rant about the introduction of the Star Wars Galaxies New Game Enhancement (NGE). I won't attempt to explain the content of Hitler's "edited" rant (though you can find the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_aNUyYxhGA&feature=fvwrel) but it's safe to say that it voices some of the frustrations players felt when the NGE was introduced. The point isn't about Star Wars Galaxies or any other game's features, though. The point is that someone took a clip from a movie and synchronized the visuals of that clip with fitting subtitles to create something uniquely interesting and relevant to viewers.

I think the video is a great example of how "amateurs" can find creative ways to express their opinions. The fact that the creative creator of the video must have once played the MMO Star Wars Galaxies shows that creative people played the game – that the players who expressed frustrations may have deserved more respect for their opinions about the direction of the game than they received. And perhaps some of the frustrations shown have been effective; as I understand it, many designers are now taking steps to listen to players and ensure that their games are on par with the creative expectations of their players.

http://drawn.ca/archive/tombys-digital-folk-art/
                The first object that I looked at was a piece of digital folk art that was created for the purposes of showing off an image of modern person that with the usage of computer pixels that would not be relevant earlier than 30 years ago. The motivation of the art is to use a context that modern people can understand better than outdated styles, meaning that artists had a message of showing the average person and realizes that people might be likely to take a look if it was pixelated. The feedback to this folk art has been significant enough that independent people have promoted it and showed it off in the most appropriate place, an online gallery. The content of the folk art is a depiction of the modern era, where most picture and image are displayed in a digital format and it is more normal for something to be pixelated and seen, than in a physical domain.  The intertextuality seems to be simply that the artist wants to display how digital art has been the norm and now most of the time people are only shown in a digital context, rather than the physical world. Meaning that more and more interactions are virtual than in person.  This object exists because it shows in picture form what a modern person thinks of the world and how influence that the concept of “digital” has on the world. Basically it exists to be a symbol of what it means to be part of a digital world. The object says about its creator that the creator is able to see what it means to be piece of a growing digital world that everybody is accepting as part of the real world. The audience of the object would be members of the online world and people would understand the impact of computers on the world.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6697501/1/War_Fate_Love
                The second object that I look at is a fan fiction based on the video game, Sonic the Hedgehog, where the characters are used to tell a side story or a completely new story of its own. The motivation of the fan fiction is to create content that is based on characters and elements already created within the Sonic’s video game universe, which results due to fans’ support. The feedback to the object has been positive with regard to how fans of video game put their support behind content driven by that medium. The content of the object is a story containing the characters of the video game, Sonic the Hedgehog, where the story displays different adventures that the video gamers can think of. The intertextuality of the fan fiction is designed to promote the fact that video games have created their own line of content that goes beyond just the game, but now impacts creativity in writing and online, where others can see the work of the fans. This object exists because the online environment and video games exists that allow players to go off on their own to express their creative idea to the large world that is the internet. So basically it exists because video gamers can create content. The fan fiction says about its creator that the creator is an avid video game player that not likes the game, but feels that they have something to share that they feel adds to other players’ experience. The audience of the fan fiction is supposed to be fellow video game player that would understand who the characters and type of action expected in such stories involving the characters.

http://www.revdoug.com/sarsco.htm  Click on the link to view the example of Digital Folk Art
One of the objects I found for digital folk art is protection from SARS which shows a drawing of a woman who has a breathing tube on her mouth. She is drawn realistically and has a long ponytail. To me, this picture represents what  a person would do for getting a specific type of disease. It is quite interesting and I can see that it makes people feel excited about certain types of art. This type of art is important to the art industry because of its reflection of real life. People would be motivated by this picture by what they see and how they react to it. It can motivate them to actually create something similar to this picture. I think that this example clearly shows what people will do to protect themselves in public. It definitely motivates them to be safe and not give up in life. The picture is a great way to show motivation towards people. The content just goes beyond what people will do and it makes the future look better for all of us. We can conclude that most pictures will show what the future can look like if people had to be quarantined in some place. The feedback for the object is that people think that it is wierd to have a picture that resembles motivation and being safe. People also belief that this picture can make them think twice about other art fans because of what they can do in public to be vaccinated. The intertextuality comes in when the artist presents the public with a modern drawing of being safe and sound in the new world of today. He may invision that the public would have to do more to be safe. The picture clearly states what a woman would do to be safe in public. After looking at the picture, I would say that the creators wanted to find out about what woman would be doing in the future for SARS by making a big deal out of it. The picture of the woman makes the creators feel curious about the effects of different diseases out there. As far as the audience, people would be scared of what they would encounter only because of what the picture shows the public. Being healthy is good but, the public might find other ways to prevent diseases from killing them. It is also better to take precaution when dealing with stuff like that. So, this type of art shows what the future for a woman would be like if they had to protect themselves and be healthy. I predict that the creator would feel that it is necessary to do digital folk art of a woman like this to make people scared. This is because of what people have gotten over the years as far as having some type of disease.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6797566/1/Nothing_Left_To_Lose Click on the link to go to fan fiction for Twilight
This is a fan fiction of Twilight that I read on the internet. It is great for the creator because she wanted to show a romantic story that involves love with other people. Its about a person who wouldn't let go even though he messed up big time. The creator also want to show people what love can do to a person who makes big mistakes. Love can go a long way and it can have its ups and downs. It also motivates life and how a person would react to their own emotions. The woman would feel helpless at times and would think about taking back her own mistakes. The motivation for this article is to recreat Twilight with love, life, and mistakes with different characters. The story also is twisted to make it look like each character has something to lose. It's like the characters can't win in this situation. It would also motivate them to have a sence of moving forward without their love interest. The intertextuality is there to present people to think beyond the movie and come up with their own stories of sorrow and pain even thought the characters in the movie make up and move on from their mistakes. The object in hand is Edward who has to come to a final decision on if he wants to be Bella's girlfriend. The feedback from this character is positive even though it is different from the movie. The feedback is that people love to have a story that involves mixing love with mistakes. It makes sence to do this to create a fan fiction of confidence and decit when dealing with love. This fan fiction exists because it is there to show a twist to what would happen with the characters if they didn't love each other. It makes the characters in the story feel guilty about their decisions. They have to come up with ways to get over their own problems. The audience would be a person that has watched the movies and is a fan fiction of the franchize as well. The people who are fans would tolerate this and have a good time with this article because it would make them laugh and learn things at the same time. Fans would learn about the way the story could turn for the worst because of the mistakes each character made in the franchize. The content is very emotional because at the characters get back together and they want to live happy. It seems like the two characters would want to leave each other but, they hesitate to do things to make up for their own faults. Overall, this content is driven by legitimate ways of taking a main story and turning it into sarcasm for fans out there.

Below is an interesting take on Fan Fiction, representing the world of Dragon Ball Z, Sega's beloved franchise "Sonic the Hedgehog" and crew, and Nintendo's beloved franchise "Mario" and crew. The video series was found on newgrounds.com and was created using Flash. Here's the link and each episode is hilarious, jam packed with action, and very creative: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/308690

The name of the series is Super Mario Bros Z, and so far it consists of 9 episodes. The episodes are heavily influenced by Dragon Ball Z when Cell comes into the show. So far, the story is about Metal Sonic and his quest for all the Chaos Emeralds. In each episode, the story unfolds, eventually teaming up Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles (who is like Vegeta in the DBZ series). In every episode, there are many references to DBZ, Sonic, and Mario, and alot of the animations are influenced by each of these franchises.

The series was and is created by Mark Haynes aka Alvin-Earthworm, who took it upon himself to make a Super Mario/DBZ parody that stood out above the others in newgrounds.com. It's a fan-made series, influenced by professional works, and has a great story-line. Followed by many users of newgrounds, the artist is always asked to make new episodes to continue the creativity and fun.

In terms of motivation, Super Mario Bros Z exists because a very talented designer wanted to make something he enjoyed. In the words of the creator, the series was their "first full length sprite animation [and upon viewing other] Super mario/DBZ parodies on Newgrounds, [he states they] weren't very impressive. So [he] decided to make [his] own series with X number of parts." Essentially, the designer loves Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Dragon Ball Z. His desire was to include all these captivating games/shows into a creative and epic story so others could enjoy watching it on newgrounds.com.

Interesting enough, newgrounds.com is a site that excepts everything from everyone. The site promotes amateur games, movies, and music. With this series, newgrounds.com gave this designer an opportunity to bring what he loves, both videogames and movies, into a work to be enjoyed by others.

In reference to feedback, many newgrounds participants and creators love Super Mario Bros Z and demand more to be created because of its popularity. And much of the feedback is honest, whether good or bad. For with newgrounds.com, if someone's work isn't great, the audience will tell you. So the site is great for critique and honest opinion, although everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

The video's content speaks alot about Alvin-Earthworm. Since the video series has a sense of professionalism and polish about it, we can assume the creator spent vigorous hours working on something he loved (intrinsic value). The episode's humor is very creative and influenced by video game experiences (Mario Kart, Super Mario, Bowser's obvious plan to steal Princess Peach, the Chaos Emeralds, Knuckle's personality in the video game series, etc.) So the series references alot of real life games, which shows the creator has much background in video game and DBZ culture. 
 
With audience, this series speaks much about it. Super Mario Bros Z has great ratings, which speaks about the newgrounds.com audience in that the audience appreciates great works of art and bashes those that fall short. So the audience, at times, is very judgemental, critical, although very helpful in reviewing eachother's works.

Definitely check out the series and see for yourself. This fan fiction is deeply rooted in parodies about the games Mario and Sonic and the show, Dragon Ball Z. The link above is simply episode 1, but there are many links to the other episodes.

Super Mario Bros Z is a very interesting series of fan fiction.

Remixed Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocVGefMqQ5s 

This first video is a remix of a song that was originally coined by NintendoCaprisun, a somewhat famous Youtubian for those of you who've never heard of him.  The remix in question is of some lyrics that he made for a song in his Let's Play of Megaman 2.  Yes, the lyrics are somewhat gross, but that's just one of the reasons why people like NintendoCapriSun so much.

The motivation for making this video, from what I can tell, is purely for fun.  There are many more such remixes of things that NintendoCaprisun, or NCS for short, has done or said in a video that has warranted a remix.  As for desired feedback, 99.9 percent of people who've rated the video game all Liked the video, with only 3 people disliking it.  I believe that speaks for itself.  Content, as I said before, NCS does tend to make somewhat crude jokes, but that's what people love him for, that and he's a genuinely funny person.  As this is a video, the only real source is from the NCS videos that this particular video borrows from.  If I were to look back on this video from the future, I would still say that this video is made purely for fun.  It speaks to both it's creator and audience by signifying that anyone who watches the video and enjoys it would be a fan of NCS, and thus find the video hilarious.

Wiki:

http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Zeldapedia 

As the name of the link implies, this wiki is known as the Zeldapedia.  For those of you who don't frequent Wikia.com, Zeldapedia is a special Wiki dedicated entirely to The Legend of Zelda franchise.  Strewn throughout it's multiple web pages is everything you could possibly want to know about the series.

If I had to guess the motivation, I suppose it would be a means for the fans to get a truly full knowledge of the Zelda franchise at this one location.  The thing about this Wiki, as well as all Wiki's in general, is that they are entirely based on user input and feedback.  If you're a member of Wikia, you're able to edit and Wikia in whatever way you desire, though I believe there may be an approval system of some sort.  In short, Zeldapedia is built by the fans, for the fans.  Content, as I've already said, is everything about the Zelda franchise that you could possibly know, aside from working at Nintendo itself.  the intertextuality aspect probably came from many different places that the people who created the Wikia know about, as there are multiple Zelda fansites on the Internet.  This Wikia exists to be informative, and it shows that the creators and audience are fans of the Zelda series.

As an example of remixed video, I present this to you:

The creator of this video has a boatload of silly video mashups and scenarios created entirely from splicing things that have been said or done in popular shows and games. I can only imagine that this person started doing these things for fun, but he's become somewhat famous over the years for this sort of work. If I were an anthropologist from the future looking back at this . . . I think I'd be a bit dumbfounded. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but the popularity of this sort of work just shows how much our society values small homemade projects, even and often especially if they are absolutely ridiculous.

I'd also like to point out that it's arguable that remixed video is just a subtype of Digital Folk art, but anyway . . .

As an example of Digital Folk art:

This woman has an enormous collection of videos that she has created herself, most of which poke fun at some mundane activity or quirk of life. Using youtube as her medium, she has broadcast her work all over for anyone to see. Her initial motivation may have been a simple desire to try her hand at making youtube videos, but I imagine that today a large part of her motivation comes from the massive fan base she has acquired, especially since she reads all the comments posted up until the creation of her next video. Looking back as a future anthropologist, it would be easy to see why this exists: her videos are almost always about something people can relate to, and put in such a humorous light, it provides entertainment to a vast audience

There is also a wiki I use very often that I'd like to share:

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Wiki

It's actually very similar to what @mswd posted, except it's themed with the Final Fantasy series instead of the Zelda series. Wikis like these demonstrate how devoted people are to gaining and sharing information, as this wiki (and I assume the Zelda one too) is kept up to date as new games come out and old topics are updated as people discover new things about the games. This kind of artifact is a wonderful example of community shared between dedicated players and fans of games and is also a testement to the intrinsic motivations that drive people: these databases are created purely by the fans and there is no monetary reward for keeping them accurate and up to date.

http://yurbleyurble13.deviantart.com/gallery/

This is actually a link to my fiance's roomate's DeviantArt page of Pokemon fan fiction. I don't get half of the jokes she makes in her comics because I have never watched the cartoons, only played the games. The cartoons were always too directed towards kids, which is what makes me appreciate her fan fic. It creates an alternate reality of pokemon which is actually closer to our own reality. Her humor is 1: much more adult focused, unlike the real cartoon, and 2: requires previous knowledge of pokemon, so those jokes become even more special to the privilaged few who are pokemon fans, understand the joke, and can laugh harder. She also gives a lot more personality to the pokemon, making them more personafied, which some pokemon fans might appreciate more. Obviously, having knowledge of the artist allows me to understand her motivation. She seems to be self motivated, and on that "intrinsic" level. She amuses herself with her own creations, and, I would assume, seeks gratification knowing she amuses others as well.

I typed in Charlie Sheen Remix in YouTube hoping for some win….well, this was the most hit at 1.6 million views and the top voted reply says it all, "Am i the only 1 that doesn't understand the point of this?" The reason that this video has become so famous is because it was the first "remix" of the charlie sheen interview, and people assume that a "remix" will be good, so everyone visited this disappointment. Unfotunately, this is what happens sometimes when you give people that freedom to create, design, and share with others….disappointment.  I can't even tell if this person's motivation was in the same mindset as those that Shirky was talking about. Especially now that YouTube has this whole "partner" thing, which pays YouTubers who can get enough hits on their video, which changes the motivation, which in turn changes the performance and art of the artist. This person took a lame, simple, drum beat and pieced together Sheen's movements to have minimal correlation with the beat, then say a one-liner. The person in Luna's example of a remix has knowledge of musical composition regarding pitch and measure, providing an entertaining video.

This first video is a remix to the song "You are not alone" which was created for Final Fantasy IX by Nobuo Uematsu.
The song was remixed by youtube user Katethegreat19.

I believe that this song is a great example of a remixed video because in this remix to this song she not only added vocals but also used her own intstruments to create a beautiful remix of an already amazing piece. Whenever i hear the original, i can no longer listen to it without expecting to hear the lyrics. The feedback she recieved was enormous because she then went on to make a lot of similar remixes to music from the different number of Final Fantasies. Most of her videos have over 100-200 thousand views. I believe that the motivation for this would be simple; she is a huge fan of the work that Nobuo did on the old final fantasies and she wanted to create the ultimate fan service to what im guessing are her favorite songs from the game. I believe these remixes exist because there is an enormous fanbase out there, myself being a memeber, that grew up with this music and cherish it very greatly because it is music they might have grown up with playing and it leaves most people nostalgic.

http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/

This next piece is a fanfiction to the super nintendo classic JRPG : Chrono Trigger
The Chrono Resurrection project was supposed to be a continuation of the Chrono series after Chrono Cross came out on the PSX. Having witnessed this as it was live, i remember playing this fanfiction and i have to say i was really surprised by the quality that the team produced when trying to create the next point in the chrono series. Sadly, Square – Enix shut this project down in 2004 and ordered the team to cease and desist. The feedback this game recieved was great as well because there are still millions of fans around the world who are begging square enix to release a new game in the Chrono series. Square Enix hasnt released anything since Chrono Cross which was in the year 2000. The group's motivation came from square not wanting to go back to the Chrono series and  decided to take matters into their own hands and create a sequel the fans wanted from SE. If someone from the future would look at this game they would understand that the fans love for old Square classics existed for a very long time and some would go as far as creating their own game that was polished enough to look like the real thing with all of the characters returning as well as a new story to play through. It's sad that Square Enix didnt allow this game to get created and doesnt want to do anything with Chrono Trigger/Cross other than continously re-releasing ports.

My first example is The Elder Srolls Wiki.

Unlike other gaming wikis posted so far, this one is so comprehensive that more often than not the developers at Bethesda Softworks will refer to this when they're trying to avoid acidentally retconning something they had previously written.  Despite employing a handful of internal 'loremasters', when it comes to maintaining accuracy within their own fictional universe, they have to defer to the fanmade wiki.  There's quite a large amount of lore in the series (the writers for Oblivion famously penned over 400 in-game books that were anywhere between 2 and 30 pages each), and additionally, the wiki keeps track of items, characters, locations, dungeons, the stories surrounding all of those, the fictional mythology of the games, and tons of other details, all because of how deeply some players get into the universe of these games.  There are still threads discussing the possible fate of the Dwemer, a fictional race in the game that's disappeared out of thin air…it's like watching people discuss the fate of Atlantis on BBC.  You can't believe they're doing it, but…well, you're watching them do it.  Clearly there are a large niche of people who care a great deal about the fictional goings-on in these games.  So much so that they constructed this massive compendium, probably after going through every line of in-game text and piecing it all together.

The other example I'll use is a video for The Turtle Fence.

This is an auto-tuned video of a congressional hearing in which a senator from Michigan proposed that building a turtle fence was analogous to the pointlessness of Obama's health care plan.  At first glance, you have to wonder why anyone would go through the trouble of auto-tuning normal speech and turning it into a song.  Let alone one about turtle fences.  But it becomes clear pretty quickly that this isn't about turning something as boring as a congressional hearing into a dance single.  Why the hell are members of Congress talking about building turtle and rattlesnake fences?  The most important thing a newly elected senator has to say in his acceptance speech is that he drives a truck?  More than anything, this video appears to have been created to point out that Congress is reducing complicated ideas into the simplest abstracts in order to make it appear as if they know all the information there is to know on the subject in the hopes of gaining House votes on their bill, as well as trying to focus the public eye on the mundane 'everyman' details of their lives to avoid drawing attention to the fact that they're talking about building turtle fences in Congress.  At least, that's what I got out of it.  Catchy tune, though.

Remixed Video
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=665PiWDqXyc
 
Here is a video that uses star wars and clips from Charlie Sheens most recent interview.
 
The motiviation for someone to make this video I would say is purely for fun but it also has inspiration from a decent list of darth vader voice over videos and other similar things on the net.  So there could certainly be some motivation to gain popularity for creating something viral as well. Someone found it funny to use Charlie sheens obscene remarks over it and create some funny footage; most people seem to be responding positively to it.  It is also very well done, mixed rather well and all goes together pretty smoothly.
 
In all honesty if someone was looking back at this from the future they would probably think to themselves “what the hell was wrong with the people from this time that they would waste their time making voice over clips from interviews on old movies”.  I guess they could also view it as some fan inspiration that someone created out of wanting to make others laugh.

http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
 
This is a wiki page for the dead space series.  The entire site is packed full of information and resources on everything related to dead space.  The motivation for this site would be primarily fan based.  People update the information on these pages and everyone can contribute.  Their website claims “Dead Space wiki is an encyclopedia with definitive source for Dead Space information.”

If someone was looking back at this site from the future I think they would gain a lot of information about something that was important to a lot of people at the time.  They would be able to see that so many people were able to input and update the information on the wiki and shared within a community that is solely fan based. 

 

 
Here is a piece of Digital Folk Art called the Appalachian Blackberry Patch Farm.  The painting appears to be a mix of traditional oil on canvas but it is actually painted with a digital brush.  The artist is named Walt Curlee and he paints things like this out of passion simply for the sake of doing something that he loves.  He takes familiar scenes and tries to create his own personal vision of them digitally.  He does sell his work through his website and other sites such as etsy to generate income so there is some other motivation besides passion and painting for the sake of enjoying it.

The first artifact I found was a wiki page made for the browser game Tribal Wars. It is located at: 
http://wiki.tribalwars.net/wiki/Main_Page

This wiki was created by the players of tribal wars. Their motivations were to create something that would provide information to both new and experienced players. They probably also started this wiki so people would stop asking repetitive questions in forums. The intended audience is, as I said, the players of the game and could also reach out to potential players.

There has been a large amount of feedback for this wiki because many players have gone into the wiki and helped build it or participate actively in the community. The wiki also provides information about the company that created the game, innogames. From time to time, job listings are posted within the company so the wiki has both an informative aspect for the game and a real world aspect.

What this wiki says about its creators is that they are dedicated to the game. They have a passion for tribal wars and they want to share their passion and successes with other people. They do it for the love of the game.

The next artifact I would like to share is a mashup of music. I would consider this digital folk art as well as remixed video since it is done throgh youtube. Incase you don't know what a mashup is, it is when people take one artist's songs and try to find another artist's song that can fit well with it and still sound good.
The Mashup is of The Beatles song Come Together and Nine Inch Nails song Closer.
Disclaimer:This video does contain graphic language from time to time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBDuSa-4EN4

The motivation for this digital folk art is to provide a meaningful connection between two different artists. The creators wanted to share their skills of both video editing and music editing. Since created mashups are a popular thing, their is also the motivation of competition. Who can create the best mashup? The audience intended for this artifact would be fans of either artist as well as the growing group of fans for mashups. 

A third piece of Digital Folk Art/ Remixed Video is something that I created on my own time last year. I made a video that took the song Magic by B.O.B and added in a bunch of movie clips from the first 6 Harry Potter movies.

http://student-iat.ubalt.edu/students/mcdaniels_c/personal/BOBHP.mov

I made this movie because I thought it would be fun to combine a song about magic with movies about magic. I am a big Harry Potter fan and so is my best friend so I figured I would make this video for the both of us to enjoy. I was unable to get it on youtube because of the song, but I could host in on the UB server and share it with my friends. It took me a lot of time, but I made for the same reason that the Grobanites made their charity, I love Harry Potter. 

First I wanted to note how unclear the line between professional and amateur have become. Tools and results that would have been considered professional have moved into the realm of the dedicated hobbyist or amateur. Its amazing the number of times one finds something that you think of as being done by a professional, but turn out to be done by an amateur, or vice-versa and how gray the line between them has become. Take the video posted above by @phermeus . When I first learned video editing, you needed thousands of dollars of specialized equipment to get anything close to that number of edits, particularly edits timed to a beat. That video would have taken something well beyond "a long time". Now it is possible for someone to do a video as an act of fandom.

The first artifact I'm posting is another good example of graying of the line between professional and amature. I see this as an amateur effort, but the person who created it doesn't think of themselves as an amateur.

The first artifact I'm posting is the song and video "Zenga Zenga"

This video uses a speech by Muammar Gadafi made in response to protests against him. The speech  has been autotuned and mixed with a song by Pit Bull and T Pain. The video and song have become a viral hit in Arabic and North African countries. It is hugely popular with the movement that is deposing or unsettling governments across the region. The popularity of a video that is mocking someone who is still (within his country) a very powerful and dangerous man shows how a whole group of dictators are loosing the power that they gained through fear. The popularity of the video is at it reveling in the fact that "The Emperor has no clothes". A threatening speech has been turned into a silly, and somewhat meaningless dance song. One of the interesting things to do has been tracking the evolution of the song and video. There are now multiple videos of the song being played in dance clubs, and of people dancing to the song. There has even been a version of the video release without the dancing girl to make it cleaner. I personally believe that the dancing girl is an important part of the video. The image further undermines Gadafi's authority as a conservative tribal leader and points to how he has manifested his corruption with ultimate power (my impression turned out to match the creator's intent, more on that later).

After a little research it turned out that the video was created by an Israeli DJ. This is interesting in and of itself. The friction between the Arabic and Israeli populations would make you think that a video would not become popular if it was coming from what is considered by many to be the "enemy camp". But this hasn't been true. The creator did it on a lark. The fact that he may not have understood what was being said word for word may have helped him to focus on the sound of the words and the gestures. Allowing him to make the video more quickly. He did include the dancing girls "to mock Gaddafi’s female bodyguards".

(see http://easycomeseasygoes.blogspot.com/2010/08/muammar-gaddafi-and-his-200-sexy-and.html
for more about Gaddafi's bodyguards)

The short interview with Noy Alooshe is here

http://www.isrealli.org/exclusive-interview-with-noy-alooshe-creator-of-viral-qaddafi-video/

The other encounter with an artifact occured last week and relates in ways to web activism, Wikipedia, and somrhing that may be considered digital folkart.

On Wednesday of last week the game blog Rock Paper Shotgun posted that the entry for Old Man Murray had been deleted from Wikipedia for being "not notable".

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/02/old-man-murray-deleted-from-wikipedia/

from here you can read the blog post above, and the result here

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/04/the-remarkable-notability-of-old-man-murray/

Or you can read the rest of my random wordlings about it…(go ahead read their stuff)

My short version is that this revealed a (known) weakness of Wikipedia; showed how quickly people can be mobilized by the internet (even if the cause seems fairly trivial); and points back to something that was, at its height, one of the great acts of fandom verging on art (sort of folk art). That folk art was the website (blog, satire that reached the level of art?) Old Man Murray http://www.oldmanmurray.com/

The weakness of Wikipedia is also its strength; it is dependent on the work of amateur editors who act as gatekeepers to prevent vandalism and irrelevance. In this case an editor with some sort of an agenda decided to try an Orwellian effort to remove several websites from the recording of history that Wikipedia has become.

This effort was discovered and publicized. Word of the event (can removal really be an event?) quickly spread. From Portal of Evil, to Rock Paper Shotgun and out from there to other aggregators and influencers. In my case I saw the reference to the RPS posting on Warren Ellis's 24 hour loop recall. Rock Paper Shotgun did more than just post the news, they made a call to "Save Old Man Murray". In order to prove the notability of OMM they asked developers and journalists to send RPS stories about how OMM inspired them. And they got an amazing response. First, Wikipdia undeleted its OMM reference, second a huge number of developers who were working at the time OMM was being writen responded within a day. By Friday RSP posted the responses they got, and the list is really impressive. This was mobilized action triggered by a blog written in England,  within a virtual community that is distributed around the world, about a website defunct for 10 years ago, in response to an action by an editor in Maryland (yep, he lives somewhere nearby).

And finally a note about Old Man Murray for anyone who hasn't gone to read the other various links (if anyone has read this far)….
Old Man Murray is the ultimate story of fans becoming critics, becoming creators. The site is obviously, purposely amateurish in appearance. That appearance does reflect where the site's creators started out, but it hides the quality of their writing. The authors of OMM had brilliant, pointed commentary. As word of the site spread among developers and the game press they gained influence beyond what the appearance of the site would indicate. The writing was good enough that the websites creators were eventually lured over to the other side, from criticism to development. The two main authors were hired by developers and went on to write the scripts for Psychonauts, Portal, and Left for Dead.