Comments for Research Notes

Comment on Beyond Emoticons: The Emergence of a New Networked Language? by Jak

Jak — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:41:45 +0000

Nice post. Glad to see some documentation of the rage comics and internet culture. Thanks! ^^

Comment on Góogle is not Google by Bonjour Tristesse

Bonjour Tristesse — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:50:47 +0000

Very interesting, I’m surprised those names weren’t already taken by spammers. It’s also encouraging to see Google’s polite response to you. It’s also ironic that it looks like someone has indirectly IDN homograph attacked you.

Comment on Obscurity, Miscellaneous and the Internet’s Testosterone by andresmh

andresmh — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:36:03 +0000

I think that even things like rickrolling and anonymous are not necessarily mainstream. I had heard of two of three of the stories you mentioned, but I am not sure how big they were compared to, say, celebrity news. It’s hard to know what an average person would know. Perhaps an proxy to measure influence could be amount of coverage on mainstream media. Now, there’s also this thing where some events might be influential among influentials but not among the general population. Those might not get a lot of coverage on the mainstream news but they might have important implications for policy and business decisions.

Comment on Obscurity, Miscellaneous and the Internet’s Testosterone by Shauna

Shauna — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:53:13 +0000

My thoughts are not very coherent, but here they are: It's an interesting question to me, because I tend to hang out in very female-centric areas online. As a teen, I spent a lot of time in fandom, and now pretty much every day I take the time to participate in the feminist blogosphere. And so when I see those groups having an influence offline (to choose some random examples, Jezebel's fight with the Daily Show or bloggers getting a sexist t-shirt pulled from JC Penney or a writer famous for fanfic becoming an original bestseller, which to be fair are not really the scale or kind of influence you're talking about) I wonder, is this actually something a large portion of people know/care about it, or do I only see it because I'm paying attention? Despite the wide adoption of the Internet by a large percentage population, it seems like gender-based clustering continues to exist. I don't know why we'd lose our biases and privileges just by hopping online. It's interesting to me that the communities you're highlighting are not just male dominated (like, say, Wikipedia or the open source communities) but very explicitly masculine in culture.

Comment on Obscurity, Miscellaneous and the Internet’s Testosterone by andresmh

andresmh — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:19:25 +0000

I struggle with that question, but here is one take on it. I think the influence of those websites could be assessed by the presence or absence of cultural references derived from them onto mainstream websites and traditional media. Here are a few examples:

* Rickrolling went from being an in-joke on 4chan to a “thing” you see on TV and even the Macy’s parade did a rendition of it.
* The Anonymous movement and its presence on the Wikileaks scandal and more recently on the Occupy Wall Street movement (i.e. explicit references to Anonymous or the use of Guy Fawkes masks).
* Harassment case of Jessi Slaughter that led to a segment in Good Morning America and shows like that.
* YouTube skinning their Flash player to show a mini Nyan Cat on the status bar and many other similar subtle references to cultural practices derived from 4chan and other sites onto mainstream websites (i.e. Google, Flickr, etc).

Thoughts?

Comment on Obscurity, Miscellaneous and the Internet’s Testosterone by Shauna

Shauna — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:58:35 +0000

Is Internet culture disproportionately influenced by male-centric online spaces? What female online spaces have the most influence?

How would you define “influence” here?

Comment on In Defense of Friction by In Defense of Friction « Social Media Collective

In Defense of Friction « Social Media Collective — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:14:00 +0000

[...] a harmful effect on the social bonds established through friction itself. In other cases, as Shauna points out, ”social networking sites are good for relationships so tenuous they couldn’t really [...]

Comment on In Defense of Friction by andresmh

andresmh — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:14:50 +0000

Thanks for the comment Shauna. I hadn’t thought of how SNS are good for “relationships so tenuous they couldn’t really bear any friction at all.” I’ll use that line at some point

Comment on Terminology Discussions as Probes by andresmh

andresmh — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:31:04 +0000

Thanks for all your comments.

Comment on In Defense of Friction by Shauna

Shauna — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:09:39 +0000

This reminds me a bit of the overjustification effect, in that it attempts to make doing something pro-social “easier” but actually makes those pro-social instincts less valuable. There’s a reason why I’ve still got the paintings my cousins drew for me when they were toddlers, and it’s not ’cause they’re fine works of art — it’s because the effort of communication, of creation, and of consideration are signs of love. The effort to overcome friction is a sign of love.

(That said, facebook and google+ have been great for “meeting people”. It’s a little like mingling at a party and joining in on the random interesting conversations you hear. Social networking sites are good for relationships so tenuous they couldn’t really bear any friction at all.)