blog 8

“Networked Era” CH 1

Reading about Mimi and danah’s experiences with participatory culture is really surreal, because, though I am significantly younger, I too can remember the beginnings of “widespread internet” use. I know older generations tend to make fun of the Millennials for being “obsessed” with technology, and I’m not trying to sound elitist or anything here, but I am so happy to have been born when I was. My generation—the 90’s babies—was the last generation to not be completely surrounded (not going to say “dependent”) by technology since birth. (Although, any kind of human / tool advancement could technically be considered “new technology”, so maybe we aren’t the last after all?) So when danah says “I can’t even remember what San Francisco was like a few years ago,” I relate perfectly. I remember (as I’m sure all of you do too) what it was like to have very little internet / digital networks, then some very limited/ buggy ones, and then suddenly we had all of it, finely tuned and ready to go. And it is a very strange feeling. But at the same time, learning about the emerging digital nuances is so engrained in my childhood, it just felt like any other milestone: the first day of school, losing a tooth, using the internet.

On Mimi’s point about “barriers of entry” for “in groups”—does having this “bar” not make the group more enriched? Perhaps, in cases of participation, a standard is helpful in making the participation more meaningful? I understand that the whole idea of participatory culture is that every contribution matters, however, I’m sure we all know someone on some digital setting whose keyboard should be taken away and should just never be allowed to log in ever again. Then again, maybe the lack of meaningful contribution makes the surrounding contributors stronger? Perhaps it is a sort of digital Darwinism, where we see the errors associated with certain thinking / behaviors, and we learn to overcome these, lest we be associated with the “problematic” users? Though danah touches on this when she says participation requires a set of skills (not simply posting any old thing), but perhaps this has more to do with Mimi’s point about participatory “status” and user “differentiation.”  

The idea that participatory culture is explicitly “capitalistic” is laughable to me, because literally anything could be capitalistic, if the right people realize money can be made from it. That’s just what capitalism does. The point isn’t to be so “against the man” that we stop what we’re doing once we gain traction. Although that’s something I see very often—a popular cause or group gets too much recognition, and suddenly the movement dies, and the people disperse to other, lower key, endeavors. 

I really like that Henry included the clarification that just because a community is participating, doesn’t automatically mean the community is positive/ beneficial. It has been a long while since I’ve seen or heard of anything “pro-ana,” but I understand exactly what he means when he says they’ve met the criteria for a participatory culture. All this time, I have been thinking of participatory cultures as inherently positive, associating them primarily with social current movements; it never occurred to me that a participatory culture could be negative, although I have seen it many, many times (especially in earlier years, like 2010/ 2011).

I don’t agree with idea that the network created by the individual is narcissistic. A narcissistic network, to me, would be something like Instagram. There, the primary goal is to post pictures of yourself or whatever you see fit, and get as many people to applaud you on it (aka, like the picture). Even though you choose who to follow, you still worry mostly about your own posts than someone else’s. That is narcissism to me (despite talking about selfie culture and self-representation, as I don’t believe the general public is thinking that deeply into their selfies. Honestly, selfies are just things most people do thoughtlessly/ because they’re expected to).  So when the authors (especially danah) say a self-determined feed/ network is narcissistic, I can’t help but disagree. I think it has way more to do with self-expression and self-identification than the authors think.