Writing about reading about writing about reading

My name is MacKenzie, I study English at Northeastern, and I'm learning about the Internet on the Internet.

[operation-critique-blog]

The Changing Face of the Literary Conversation

Over the past three months, I've attempted to bring to light the exciting literary activity I've observed on tumblr through a series of posts that generally fall into two categories. Some are response posts to what others in the field have written about the Internet and how it's shaping literary interaction and understanding where I parse through my own observations and opinions. Others are topical posts about particular aspects of tumblr's culture that focus specifically on how activity within fandoms contributes to a larger literary conversation. 

Throughout this project, I've kept several questions in mind as the focus of my study:

What is the cultural value of casual discourse and analysis? 

What is the payoff of engaging in casual online critique or discussion? 

Do these posts and analyses within fandoms (and the medium in which they're presented) contribute to a new understanding of the text or texts with which they are concerned? 

Do we have the impulse to respond to texts simply because we learned to do so in an educational capacity, or is it a matter of passion and interest?

To precisely define fandom, I'm going to borrow from Ann Steiner's explanation of the Pro-Am (from "professional amateur") that I work with in my purpose-statement post: the fandom networks on tumblr are vast and worldwide, and they are used for communication and socialization through text and multimedia posts by people who range from "professionals" (scholars with degrees) to true amateurs who aim to express their appreciation for a certain text in a public community. On tumblr, fandom culture grows around affection and passion for a particular text or set of texts. Users participate in fandom activity by posting relevant text, photos, gifs, and videos to demonstrate what exactly it is they love so much about this text and why. Participation in a fandom means that one's discourse will undoubtedly be considered valuable by others within the fandom and sometimes by those outside of it. My Sherlock post touches on the degree to which social connection is made possible on the Internet: the Sherlock fandom gained attention from the show's creators, who responded directly to tumblr users through Twitter and in interviews. This is a perfect demonstration of the participatory culture of social media that Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant describe in their essay "Is there a space for critical literacy in the context of social media?": the members of tumblr's Sherlock fandom know that their contributions to their fandom matter because their community has caught the attention of the show's creators themselves, who have responded in kind to the fandom's activity.

The "payoff" of engaging in this Internet culture of response and analysis is a new or deeper understanding of the text at hand. Both my Sherlock post and my Twilight post highlight examples of users thinking critically about what they're seeing and reading in texts today—making use of the "cognitive surplus" that Clay Shirky describes and that I expand on in my Does the Internet Make Us? posts. Rather than thinking of literary criticism and response as a solely scholarly practice, Internet users on tumblr are taking advantage of the flexible medium at their fingertips and utilizing it in ways that best fit their needs: a textual response to a television show comes along with a gifset of a scene to better illustrate an argument, a discussion about a theory pertaining to a certain character or plot point is accompanied by screenshots and photographic evidence as well as textual evidence. Such posts contribute to the public mode of serial concentration described by Mark Sample that I touch on in my Fandom post, and the notes feature on tumblr indicates the high levels of attention being paid to fandom posts—a post with thousands of notes is a post that has been seen, reblogged, or liked by thousands of tumblr users. The new understandings of texts made possible by tumblr's medium are spreading widely throughout the fandoms, making it possible for this literary criticism, analysis, and response to permeate and influence other users' interpretations. It's sharing and participation on a huge scale, and tumblr's fandoms are just one example of the personal reading experience becoming public. Fandoms exist and their activity continues simply because these users are interested in texts and looking to share and expand upon that interest. This participation and discussion does not come about because it is compulsory; it is instead the result of passion gone public, of consumers taking to the Internet to spread their love for a text or texts. Though the discourse found within the tumblr fandoms often leans toward the casual rather than the professional, its presence is valuable and indicative of critical thinking (though some, like Carr, would disagree). Some fandom posts, such as the Reichenbach theory post by eva-christine that I examine, resemble professional or academic discourse in their tone and use of support; other entire tumblr blogs, like reasoningwithvampires, are devoted to close reading and literary analysis. It is this mix of levels of discourse, this blend of users and their interests, that is encouraging and exciting about the fandoms on tumblr: people are converging into large communities based around a text in order to express and engage their passion for said text, and these communities exist in a medium to which relatively little attention is paid by the greater literary community. Despite this lack of attention, tumblr empowers users and their ideas and promotes equality: each user has the opportunity to put forth their opinions, ideas, and reactions, and within fandom this potential is expressed in relation to texts, which results in a range of manifestations of literary analysis, criticism, and discussion.

As the Internet becomes a larger part of everyday life, we must think critically about how its presence is shifting our culture: fandom communities and their particular brand of discourse are an example of how the Internet is affecting and contributing to literary conversation. As explained in my Fandom post, the majority of these communities revolve around widely popular texts, and they provide a welcoming channel for discussion and analysis of these texts without the pressures of a professional or scholarly environment: tumblr users don't hesitate to express their opinions and feelings on fandom-related topics, and the high volume of material that these users produce ensures that at least some of it is recognizable as critical discourse with arguments that contribute to a larger literary dialogue. 

Professional discourse around literature (and its relationship to the Internet) should consider fandom culture on sites like tumblr to be part of the literary community—fandom posts on tumblr are a new form of literary response, and the communities that produce them are too large and widespread to be ignored. The advent of the Internet and the ability to participate in a global conversation means a change in attitude is necessary: rather than seeing the Internet as the bane of critical thinking and contemplation, it must be recognized that some are using the Internet and social media sites like tumblr as a means to convey ideas and engage in discussion in a public sphere. Literary discourse is changing as contributing conversations emerge in new forms, and Internet fandom is just one example of this development. Literary studies should concern all aspects of literary discussion and response, from the casual to the scholarly, and paying attention to the Internet as a new channel for communication that is changing how we think about literature and texts is essential to a true understanding of the present and future of the literary community.

[operation-critique-blog]

Fandom

Tumblr is a beautiful breeding ground for fandom activity. The users of tumblr commit themselves to crafting an environment that is the most positive for the most people as it is possible to be, and this encourages a high volume of candid posts and responses. On tumblr, there are some significant fandoms who identify themselves as such: Sherlockians (BBC's Sherlock), Whovians (Doctor Who), Game of Thrones (the books by George R. R. Martin and the HBO television adaptation), Potterheads (Harry Potter, both books and films), The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (which I'm going to refer to as the Tolkien fandom—some users consider them separate, but their texts are from the same source and there's enough crossover activity and comparison among the texts to lump these sectors of fandom together—the Tolkien fandom is similarly concerned with both the films and their print source material), and Supernatural (a plot-driven program on the CW) are some of the texts with the most populous fandoms. These fandoms are centered around wildly popular texts, and they have so many members because, more often than not, a fan belongs to more than one fandom. 

thatgirlmadeline's post is a plea to populate her dashboard (the homepage of a tumblr user, where posts from each tumblr one follows scroll past in chronological order) with more of her favorite fandoms: she appreciates all of the texts she listed, and she wants to find other people who appreciate similar things. Her extensive use of tags guarantees that her post will be seen by other users with similar interests, and the 177 notes she has gained as of today demonstrates that her post was helpful to other users who share her interests and want for more content related to their particular interests in fandom. This is a superficial example of the great range of sharing and interaction that goes on on tumblr: fans usually agree on which texts they enjoy, and so a lot of crossover in and among various fandoms is generally inevitable.  Interestingly, some of the crossovers have engendered fandoms of their own. "Superwholock" is a term invented by members of the Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock fandoms: Superwholock is the fandom for fans of all three television shows, and most of the posts in tagged/superwholock are graphic conglomerations from all three shows that incorporate elements of each. Posts like the following, despairing the breaks between the series of each show, are numerous:

Some of the content in the Superwholock fandom is concerned with character role crossover; usually, plot crossover and interconnection reigns supreme. In general, and as demonstrated by the above screencap, Superwholock is a supportive community for those intensely passionate about the plots and characters put forth in these texts—the fact that there are nearly 16,000 notes on this post about Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Supernatural all being on hiatus points to the fact that not only is the Superwholock fandom enormous, but its three member fandoms have so many members and fans in general that even users outside of these three fandoms can relate to the despair that comes with a favorite television show being on hiatus, and thus like or reblog this post. Elsewhere, fan communities that center around just one text or canon take pleasure in philosophizing about a particular character, plot point, or trend. The following three images are captures of a post about Doctor Who:

This post and the series of responses that follow is a perfect example of fan response culture on tumblr: the gifset was posted with tags "doctor who" and "saaaaaddddd" because the scene depicted is pretty upsetting in the context of the show. User metatheta opens up the discussion by writing in a comment about his or her interpretation of the scene and then expanding upon that comment. User theparadoxsurvivor then reblogs the post and adds his or her lengthy analysis of the Doctor and his past incarnations—the emotional turmoil each incarnation experiences is written about in detail, and the ultimate conclusion theparadoxsurvivor reaches falls in line with the show's accepted canon, which is why user themanwithadashingsmile adds the parenthetical comment that "(Everyone should take time and read this)."  This post and the ensuing discourse is exemplar of the sort of discussion and analysis taking place on tumblr: fans write long posts, interpreting the texts with which they're in contact, and other fans within the fandom lend support and interpretation to the original posts. And such posts garner wide attention—the post above has over 47,000 notes, and those notes come from likes and reblogs from both inside and out of the Whovian fandom. Doctor Who is a globally popular television program, and the fans who take part in this sort of discourse online are spreading their passion and interest on an equally global scale; the level of response in terms of number of notes is staggering, and it demonstrates that other fans of the show wholeheartedly approve of theparadoxsurvivor's explanation and analysis. The main thing about fandoms on tumblr is that they're generally inclusive, accepting communities—something that can sometimes feel rare on the Internet. One of the oldest-existing fandoms on the Internet and of all time, the Tolkien fandom concerned with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in both book and film form, demonstrates this inclusiveness directly:

User kiransingh wants everyone to know that it's all right to enjoy the film adaptations of Tolkien's books without having actually read the books themselves, that the fandom is happy to have Tolkien fans of all levels of knowledge and depth of interest take part in the fun and discussion that goes on within the fandom. The only requirement to be part of a fandom is to be a fan, to be passionate about the subject of the fandom (a text, for example) and to care about the passion others have for that thing, too.  The images posted here are all examples of activity within fandoms on tumblr: users reaching out to others, discussing with others, and generally using tumblr as a channel or outlet for their fondness for a particular text or several texts. As a blogging site aimed at a young adult demographic, tumblr could easily be and sometimes is considered something frivolous—fandoms are often seen in a similar light. In truth, however, fandoms are communities for casual discourse on the Internet. Mark Sample, in a February 2012 post on his blog Sample Reality, put forth his opinion on scholarly blogging: "Writing on a blog—or building other digital projects for that matter—can easily accommodate and even facilitate deep concentration. Let’s call it serial concentration: intense moments of speculation, inquiry, and explanation distributed over a period of time. This kind of serial concentration is particularly powerful because it happens in public. We are not huddled over a manuscript in private, waiting until the gatekeepers have approved our ideas before we share them, in a limited, almost circumspect way. We share our ideas before they’re ready. Because hand-in-hand with serial concentration comes serial revision. We write in public because we are willing to rewrite in public." Again, he is here talking about scholarly blogs, but I think this a nicely fitting description for the fandoms that populate tumblr: fans of various texts are taking to their tumblrs to connect and communicate with other fans through likes, reblogs, and comments—the discourse might take the form of gifsets, bulleted lists, and long text posts with reply after reply delving into the finer points of how a character's hand movements are indicative of his motivations, but that doesn't make it any less valuable. The point here is that people are spending time in these fandoms, growing more connected to the texts they're already passionate about, and contributing to the discussion and discourse that inevitably grows out of any fandom. That people, particularly young adults, are using tumblr beyond its capacity for reblogging and sharing visual content and instead utilizing this unique platform as a haven for fans of various texts and the widespread fandoms they come together to create is exciting. Ideas don't have to come in the form of essays or scholarly articles to be considered important and cared about by others. The users of tumblr thoroughly understand this fact, and even if they didn't they would still do what they do because they are passionate about their posts and the texts to which they pertain. The Internet provides a public channel for sharing and discussion, and the fandoms of tumblr have taken great advantage of this capability by using the Internet to form worldwide communities centered around texts that they care about. They could just as easily have not—the fandoms of tumblr don't exist because any one person said they have to. They're there because people want them to exist, people want a community where they can log in and scroll through their dashboard and read and respond to post after post about the characters and plot of their favorite text or texts. This is wildly encouraging: we are now in the full-blown midst of the digital age, and there are some (like Carr) who assert that the Internet is changing our brains for the worse. As I said in my response post, the Internet is changing our brains, but I'm not sure that this change is necessarily negative, or positive. We are simply different because of the Internet, and this means our discourse is different, or can be, and the fandoms of tumblr and how their discourse comes about is one particular demonstration of this difference. Discussion might be casual and sometimes frivolous within the tumblr fandoms, but it is still mightily present, and users are paying attention to what their fellow fans have to say. This attention, this discussion—this is the crux of the importance of tumblr fandoms to modern casual discourse. It is evidence, in my mind, that discourse and discussion come from a place of passion rather than from a learned impulse, that this expression, this posting of opinions on the Internet, is a direct result of caring about a particular thing or topic or text. 

[operation-critique-blog]

Reasoning With Vampires: a Moment of Appreciation

In the autumn semester of 2012, I was in Professor Ryan Cordell's Literary Criticism: Technology of Text course at Northeastern University. It was a digital humanities introductory course pretending to be a literary criticism course, and I enjoyed every second of my time learning about how the Internet and literature have a closer relationship than I previously considered. The final project for this class included an essay about a particular aspect of digital humanities, and I chose to focus on critical response on the Internet. My project was titled "Twilight, Pleasure Fiction, and Criticism: A Troubling Text, a Developing Genre, and an Internet Community" and it focused on Twilight as a catalyst for critical response on the Internet. I chose this topic because I have a personal, passionate dislike for the Twilight series, and I've noticed that other people on the Internet do as well. One particular user, a girl who goes by Dana, runs a tumblr called reasoningwithvampires that is dedicated to deconstructing Stephenie Meyer's novels through intensely close readings of the texts. A great gripe amongst anti-fans of Meyer's work is how poorly-written her books are, and Dana uses direct scans of the books themselves to demonstrate this aspect:

Dana also uses sentence tree diagrams and syntactical analysis to further show the poor quality of Meyer's popular books:

Dana's discourse on the 104-and-counting pages of her tumblr could be dismissed as semantic and overly critical, but I personally agree wholeheartedly with Dana and the rationale behind reasoningwithvampires. Poor characterization, bad plotting, and a general lack of care for the use of English are major features of Meyer's texts, and as someone who has grudgingly read all of her work I take great issue with the popularity of Twilight—something deep in my prescriptivist heart riles at the butchery that is Meyer's body of work, and it raises my hackles even further to know that these books are extremely popular all over the world and spawning spinoffs that gain an equal amount of popularity (I am glaring directly at Fifty Shades of Grey here). This is my opinion, of course, and I cling to it tightly, but I was relieved and thoroughly excited when I found Dana's tumblr. reasoningwithvampires is one perfect example of tumblr being utilized as a channel for critical response and discussion. Dana takes an often-humorous and sarcastic angle in her discourse, but the facts are nonetheless evident in her posts and it's difficult to argue with her analysis because she does use direct scans of the book pages.  Dana's tumblr is also wonderfully exemplar of people using tumblr for things that they think are important:

reasoningwithvampires exists because at least one person thinks that this work is important, and the 528 notes on the above post denote that at least several others agree. Dana spends so much time with these texts that she and I both hate because she finds it important and necessary to demonstrate exactly why they are so bad and how they can affect our perception of language, and she has the ability to do so in a public space. It's not fandom so much as it is anti-fan discourse, but the critical response that Dana puts forth is important on the Internet simply because it is important to her.  This is what is so exciting to me about the Internet: it is a direct and public way of expanding upon and exploring human interest and passion. The discussion and analysis that Dana posts on reasoningwithvampires is an example of passion for language and good usage made material and public, archived and organized for easy browsing and learning. I learn something new about language, usage, grammar, or syntax every time I check out reasoningwithvampires, and that's part of what I love about tumblr: for the hundreds of thousands of image-centric scroll-through blogs, there exist corners of the site like Dana's that are great examples of passionate discourse and participation, sites where learning can take place in a casual setting. Tumblr also changes the medium in which such discussion and learning happen. Dana's posts are a mix of textual image and textual commentary, and her juxtaposition of the book pages with her colorful analysis would not be nearly as smooth or effective in another medium. It would seem that tumblr is an ideal outlet for passion like Dana's: it provides freedom of formatting that leads to creativity from users and thus to such collections of critical response on the Internet. 

[operation-critique-blog]

Does the Internet Make Us? episode II

Following the publication of Clay Shirky's "Does the Internet Make You Smarter?" in the summer of 2010, The Wall Street Journal published "Does the Internet Make You Dumber?" by Nicholas Carr. In his article, Carr takes a decidedly scientific angle in order to present his theory that use of the Internet is making us dumber: "People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read traditional linear text. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time." This is apparent and understandable: the Internet makes a lot of information available all at once, and that information is considered useful simply by existing and being related to the topic at hand. However, I disagree with Carr on a fundmental level, because I don't necessarily consider this shift in behavior and thinking to be a bad thing.

Carr and I disagree because we approach "thinking" differently: he approaches from a measurable, scientific standpoint, and I approach from a human-centric point of view that deals more in observations of trends in Internet usage and less in traceable data. Nonetheless, Carr puts forth that "when we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking. We become mere signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short-term memory." The speed and vastness of the Internet means a lot of different information is available at any one moment, but this does not necessarily mean that users are "constantly distracted and interrupted" or less capable of critical thinking—I have observed evidence to suggest the contrary. My Sherlock post is an example of users demonstrating depth and distinctiveness in thinking by crafting lengthy, involved responses and theories having to do with the text at hand; tumblr user eva-christine, mentioned in that post, wrote her Reichenbach/Rumpelstiltskin theory as a follow-up to an earlier, equally in-depth theory post about the Grimm's Fairy Tales storyline. Clearly, not all time spent online is devoted to short-term signal processing. 

Carr appears to be discounting the human capacity for passion and interest—the "doing things they care about" that Shirky describes—when he states "what we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection, and introspection." The Internet is a channel for communication, a means to an end, and Carr is only paying attention to the means. People are contemplating and reflecting on the Internet every day by posting on their blogs and social media sites about things that they experience, and sometimes that includes texts in the form of books, television shows, and films.

The Internet provides a platform for multimedia in articles and other informative posts: demonstrative images, charts and diagrams, tables, and other accompanying media. This makes sharing about visual media, television shows and movies in particular, easy and relevant, particularly on tumblr where visual presentation is the name of the game. Visual representation and accompaniment is generally considered to enhance and enrich the conveyance of an idea; in fact, there are images, links, and a poll included alongside an article that claims such information is more distracting than helpful.

Certainly The Wall Street Journal website is responsible for the layout and media presented in its articles, but it is nonetheless interesting to see Carr's point neatly and ironically demonstrated by the presentation of his article itself: that image on the left is pretty unhelpful to the overall gist of Carr's argument, and the pointless poll above it (which reads, in full, "Is the Internet making us smarter or dumber?" and then gives fill-in bubble options for "smarter" and "dumber") only complicates the already-crowded page. It's clutter, but Carr's article is still undoubtedly present, and his point is still conveyed despite the distraction-ridden medium. For an article with a different subject and aim, those placeholder spaces could serve a better purpose: a public opinion poll on the outcome of a political decision, a graphic representation of the breakdown of the spread of stances across the nation, and links to videos of debates or discussions on the issue would all be helpful media to include alongside an article detailing a political issue and its effects.

People are using the Internet as a channel, a medium through which they can communicate ideas in exciting new ways. Many websites have ads and links that are sometimes distracting, it's true, but a lot of the time, and even in this post, links within the text can serve as a useful way to connect one idea with another idea expressed elsewhere on the Internet. It's information integration on a huge scale, and the Internet is in constant flux: trends rise and fall quickly, and things that don't work get phased out rapidly in favor of things that do work. Sites like tumblr and other social media platforms are modes of conveying ideas on a broad scale—nearly any subject can be researched in detail on the Internet, and it's easy to share an interesting discovery with others who might also find it interesting or enlightening. Carr holds, however, that "whereas the Internet scatters our attention, the book focuses it. Unlike the screen, the page promotes contemplativeness." I think that he's being purposefully exclusive in his consideration of Internet usage—what about taking to the screen to contemplate the pages one has read or the scenes one has seen in an online community that shares similar, if not identical, interests and concerns? The screen also promotes contemplativeness, just in a different way: rather than promoting inner contemplation and individual thought, the Internet promotes contemplation in the public sphere through self-publishing on blogs and social networking sites. Users come together and form cohesive groups to make it easier to identify one another's interests and to find other users with similar interests. Mutual enjoyment and appreciation of the text at hand is the goal of Internet fan communities, and such communities offer opportunity for reflection, interaction, and contemplation that Carr seems to miss completely in his analysis of the Internet's effect on our intelligence. 

It would seem that the Internet isn't making us smarter or dumber—it's making us different: different in the ways we think about what we read, watch, and see, and different in the ways we interact and share with others. 

Carr, Nicholas. "Does the Internet Make You Dumber?" The Saturday Essay. The Wall Street Journal, n.d. Web. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284981644790098.html>

[operation-critique-blog]

Does the Internet Make Us? episode I

Since the advent of the Internet, people have been concerned with how it affects our health, our brain function, and our intelligence. In June of 2010, The Wall Street Journal published two articles entitled "Does the Internet Make You Smarter?" and "Does the Internet Make You Dumber?" The former was published on June 4, and the latter a day later. The order in which these articles was published is intriguing: does The WSJ agree that the Internet makes us dumber? Why not publish them in reverse order? 

In "Does the Internet Make You Smarter?", Clay Shirky introduces the problem that some people have with the sharing capabilities of the Internet: "the bulk of publicly available media is now created by people who understand little of the professional standards and practices for media. Instead, these amateurs produce endless streams of mediocrity, eroding cultural norms about quality and acceptability, and leading to increasingly alarmed predictions of incipient chaos and intellectual collapse." This seems like a lot of responsibility to put on the shoulders of people who use the Internet for "silly" things like memes, and Shirky agrees that the people who are apparently really worried about "intellectual collapse" need to relax a little. These amateurs (or pro-ams, as discussed in an earlier post) do produce a large amount of mediocre material, but they also produce a considerable amount of valuable discourse within their communities, and the combination of these two levels of media interaction (in this case, tumblr and the texts around which various communities center themselves) contributes to intellectual development rather than collapse.

Truly, fandom activity on the Internet encourages participation by providing a like-minded community for discourse and discussion. Too much like-mindedness in any community is problematic, but in general the global audience that uses tumblr tends to voice many different points of view, opinions, and ideas. Internet fandom is a new literary norm made possible by the Internet itself, and on tumblr especially fandoms have become specific to a text or even a character. It is a new way of engaging with a text, brought about by technology, and Shirky explains this general literary phenomenon as it has appeared throughout history: "we built new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature. Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society." Shirky's concept of "building new norms" based on technological innovations that can be utilized for literary purposes is effective and applicable: the Internet offers social media, discussion forums, fansites, blogging platforms and communities where people can gather to discuss and interpret texts they appreciate or to create new texts with fanfiction and fanart. This online interaction and capability "increases the range and output of society," and while much of the activity within fandoms on tumblr could not precisely be labelled "intellectual," some of it certainly could.

What is most important, to me at least, about fandoms on tumblr is that users interact because they want to. Nobody is part of a fandom for a text they don't like, because in order to be part of a fandom one needs to be a fan of the particular thing around which the fandom is centered. For as long as widely published literature has existed, there have been fans of literature; the Internet allows these fans to come together and contact one another and commiserate and converse about this or that text in a public space. Shirky comments on this development, as well: "digital media link over a billion people into the same network. This linking together in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus, the trillion hours a year of free time the educated population of the planet has to spend doing things they care about. In the 20th century, the bulk of that time was spent watching television, but our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects." I think that one of these "enormous positive effects" is the materialization of fandom communities on tumblr and the Internet in general. The word "fandom" is derived from "fanatic" and "kingdom," where the fans are the subjects and the text is the ruling figure to whom all the subjects answer. Fans are participating in huge numbers to contribute their love of a text or subject to the larger community, and each community's discourse holds potential for critical discussion of the subject matter simply because the participants are passionate about the texts to which they are responding. This "cognitive surplus" that is dedicated to doing things we care about is well-exercised on the Internet: for example, after watching a television show that one likes, he or she will take to the Web to see what others are saying, and to post and comment for themselves (my previous post about Sherlock and Reichenbach theories is a great example of this direct response). Elsewhere, other users liveblog (livetumbl?) and livetweet events like the Oscars or the much-anticipated season premiere of a well-loved show in order to respond as directly as possible.

Later in his article, Shirky directly addresses those critics who assert that the Internet is making us dumb: "the case for digitally-driven stupidity assumes we'll fail to integrate digital freedoms into society as well as we integrated literacy. This assumption in turn rests on three beliefs: that the recent past was a glorious and irreplaceable high-water mark of intellectual attainment; that the present is only characterized by the silly stuff and not by the noble experiments; and that this generation of young people will fail to invent cultural norms that do for the Internet's abundance what the intellectuals of the 17th century did for print culture." These three beliefs seem to be based on broad generalizations and hunches rather than actual observation, and I take most issue with the third one: that this generation of young people will fail to invent cultural norms that do for the Internet's abundance what the intellectuals of the 17th century did for print culture. The apparent lack of faith in the younger generations that this assumption showcases smarts, and I want to point to such things as leetspeak/online jargon, Facebook, tumblr, and a great a varied range of websites founded by young people and powered by the Internet that are forging an entirely new digital culture centered around equality and empowerment for people and their ideas: if everyone can publish themselves, everyone can have a voice, and everyone has an equal opportunity to show or not show a talent or passion. 

Furthermore, Shirky bolsters my confidence in the Internet's incredible potential for information production and sharing when he says that "increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible." This is a direct response to that ugly assumption that "the present is characterized only by the silly stuff and not by noble experiments"—history documents a large number of noble experiments of the past, but the accompanying silly stuff has been conveniently omitted. Silly stuff has always been around, and will always be around because it's a way of coming to terms with more significant or "greater" knowledge; on tumblr and in fandoms, this sort of comparison manifests itself in the difference between a gifset post about how silly a particular character is and a gifset with an accompanying explanation of how this particular scene lends depth and development to the characters and their story.

This is a gifset from the Game of Thrones fandom, where the images are scenes from the HBO television series Game of Thrones and the text is from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, upon which the television show is based. This post serves as a sort of tumblr Venn diagram, comparing and contrasting representations of the same scene in two textual interpretations. The 6,270 likers or rebloggers of this post probably agree that the television-text did a wonderful job of portraying this horrifying scene from the book-text: it combines and demonstrates the brutality, weakness, and determination of various characters in a way that advances the plot and strengthens the narrative. Tumblr fandoms are teeming with posts like this: seemingly silly or pointless at first glance, but ponderous with significance after more observation and thought—in this particular case, this post is a celebration of the television-text's faithfulness to the book-text source material. 

Tumblr is a great example of this experimentation through throwaway material that eventually leads to "good new stuff" that Shirky discusses: a lot of the material produced by fans and their activity within fandoms on the Internet is goofy and silly and throwaway, an outlet for in-jokes and text-based nerd humor, but quite a bit of said material (or the interest in that material) is valuable to the literary community because it is produced by people who are passionate about a particular text. Fandoms on tumblr, as an outlet for our "cognitive surplus," are one great example of where and how the Internet is giving us tools to communicate and share information—essentially helping us help ourselves to become smarter about how we process and think about information and texts in a context that is most pleasing to the highest number of people or fans. 

Stay tuned—episode II, where I respond to Nicholas Carr's "Does the Internet Make You Dumber?", is coming soon.

Shirky, Clay. "Does the Internet Make You Smarter?" The Saturday Essay. The Wall Street Journal, n.d. Web. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334.html>.

[operation-critique-blog]

Tumblr is a Technology that Restructures Thought

In studying and thinking about how digital developments and technology shape and affect the literary community, questions of literacy and the history of literary technology inevitably come into focus. Why do we write? Where does the impulse come from? Why do we talk and write about what we read? These questions can be answered superficially because humans crave the ability to communicate and share ideas—the impulse to write comes from the impulse to share. We can communicate and share verbally, but such interaction isn't lasting and cannot usually be recorded for future reference. Writing, on the other hand, is more permanent and less flighty; to put a thought down on paper is to somehow lend that thought more weight than it would have otherwise had if spoken. 

According to Walter J. Ong in his essay Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought, "the fact that we do not commonly feel the influence of writing on our thoughts shows that we have interiorized the technology of writing so deeply that without tremendous effort we cannot separate it from ourselves or even recognize its presence and influence" (24). For modern humans, the ability to read and write seems as natural as the ability to walk and talk—Ong reminds us that, though verbal communication may be natural for humans, literacy as we think of it certainly is not. Instead, literacy is learned and must be trained into human beings. Once it is learned, however, it becomes ingrained as part of our daily functioning. We cannot separate our thought processes from writing—it, as a learned process, becomes an essential part of society, and this is why illiteracy comes as such a surprise in modern contexts. Writing has an undeniable presence in our lives and influence upon our thoughts and how we process them, and as an artificial creation of humans it has become nonetheless essential to our culture and history. 

I say "artificial," and so does Ong in his essay: "like other artificial creations and indeed more than any other, writing is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials. Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more than when they affect the word...Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it" (32). Perhaps the most significant "transformation of consciousness" through technology of the past several decades is the invention of the computer and the development of the Internet. The Internet does indeed enhance human life, making information easier to access and more relevant to one's individual interests. Here I do not mean Facebook ads and Google data that track which sites are visited by a particular user—I mean that, if one is interested in a thing, there is probably a fan community for that thing on the Internet. Sites like Pinterest make it easy to organize and explore various aesthetic tastes; communities like Etsy make sharing and selling crafts and ideas simple; social media like Facebook and Twitter make self-interest and display more easy and public than ever before. If one is interested in a thing that happens to be a text, there is probably extensive fandom activity going on over that text on tumblr as I write this. Users on the Internet have taken control of the great capabilities of the technology in front of them, have grabbed hold and molded the Internet into an ever-expanding community of information- and interest-sharers, and the vast realm of human interest that the Internet contains is a testament to the great potential of human thought when it is shared.

In my own experience as a student, I generally tend to think of writing and thought as being synonymous: one might write to come to terms with his or her thoughts, and a writing process is really just a thought process. The act of writing is the act of giving an idea life through putting it on the page so that other people with other ideas might read and share and write thoughts and ideas of their own; the process of working through an idea enough to confidently express it in writing is a process of thought, and there is no separating the two. Ong agrees, and expands on this idea in his essay with discussion of exploratory thinking in writing: "exploratory thinking is not unknown, but it is relatively rare, a luxury orality can little afford, for energies must be husbanded to keep on constant call the evanescent knowledge that the ages have so laboriously accumulated" (25). The Internet (and tumblr especially, in my thinking) is a playground for this sort of exploratory thinking: whatever evanescent thoughts one may have about this or that text are easily immortalized in a blog post that can then be reblogged and commented upon by other users, or deleted in the future. Writing and the Internet are vehicles for exploratory thinking, and with exploration comes sharing of experience. The ability to reblog a post and add one's own comments is a development of the 21st century; the only way to publicly respond to a text before the advent of the Internet was to write a letter to the editor or a letter to the author, or to pen a scathing book review that would probably never see publication. Now that the Internet has arrived and tumblr has been created, this conversational response is more easily had than ever before—if someone disagrees with what I've said in this post, for example, all they need do is reblog it and respond with their own discussion on their blog. 

Later in his essay, Ong draws a distinction between mathēma and sophia: "writing separates academic learning from wisdom, making possible the conveyance of highly organized abstract thought structures independently of their actual use or of their integration into the human lifeworld" (41). In a sense, he is here stating that writing provides for an ability to communicate one's abstract thoughts or ideas separate from any wisdom or basis: if you have an idea, you can write it down and worry later if it is actually literally of use to others. This is what members of fandoms on tumblr (and the Internet in general) do: they record their responses to whatever text they're observing and they aren't particularly concerned with whether anyone will read or care about their statements—what matters to me is that they have the impulse and ability to respond in the first place. It is one thing to have the thought; it is quite another to write it down and flesh it out and self-publish it out into the public sphere of the Internet, and this kind of idea-sharing is extremely valuable to the literary community.

Tumblr and the fan activity running rampant within its user community is a technology that is restructuring thought: the new culture of sharing that the Internet has helped to cultivate has great potential for discussion and discourse. Users on tumblr who identify as part of fandoms take this potential into their own hands: they respond to various texts with photo posts and gifsets, with long reblog trails expressing passion or hate for a particular aspect or character of a text. Usually, this sharing and communication is very casual and would not be considered "academic discourse;" in some cases, however, like the Sherlock conspiracy theories I posted about previously, users put a lot of time and effort into well-researched posts supported by factual evidence. Passion for a text is the impulse that drives such in-depth responses, and tumblr is an ideal outlet for those passions to run wild and express themselves in a casual context. Such a casual context does not make the discourse any less valuable—it is simply different, because it is in a medium that is relatively new and unexplored by the greater literary community. I hope to illustrate this difference, the value of fandom-related discourse, and how such discourse is changing how we think about texts in coming posts.

Ong, Walter J., SJ. "Writing Is a Technology That Restructures Thought." The Written Word: Literacy in Transition. By Gerd Baumann. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986. 23-50. Print.

[operation-critique-blog]

Sherlock Holmes and Voluntary Participation in Critical Discourse

[This post contains Sherlock spoilers. If you haven't seen the show, or you have but haven't finished it, or you just don't want to hear any Reichenbach theories, tread extremely carefully.]

Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous characters in fiction. Celebrated around the world for his appearance in 56 stories and 4 novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes' process of discovery and explanation is fascinating to audiences because he seems to have a reason for everything: with the character comes a comforting sense that everything, even apparently-unsolvable mysteries, can be deduced and explained if one pays attention to the details.  This unique brand of deductive reasoning makes for a wildly popular character, one whose reputation has stood the test of time. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, in the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual. By 1891, however, Doyle felt that Sherlock was standing in the way of "better things," and so killed him off in an heroic scene at Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem, published in 1893 in Strand Magazine. Public reception of Sherlock's death was less than warm: "The Strand's reading public was outraged by what they considered the premature death of a beloved character. Over 20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions, and the magazine nearly went under" (Starrett). The staff of the Strand felt the death of Sherlock Holmes to be a "dreadful event" for the reputation of the magazine, and fans of the detective mourned the loss of a favored character. In response to this public outcry against Sherlock's death, Doyle resurrected his protagonist in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901 (though, canonically, the story takes place before the Reichenbach encounter with villain Moriarty).  Doyle paid attention to his audience, and, as the creator of such a beloved character, took the responsibility upon himself to heed their dissatisfaction with The Final Problem and continue to write Sherlock Holmes stories—and Sherlock's popularity has not waned, even in the 86 years that have passed since the publication of the last Holmes story. In 2010, BBC One introduced a new crime drama entitled Sherlock. A contemporary interpretation of the original characters and stories, Sherlock is widely lauded as a clever television-text that engages its viewers in much the same gripping manner that Doyle's stories engaged his readers, and the advent of social media in the years between Doyle's death and Sherlock's birth means that audiences can engage with the text of Sherlock and its relation to Doyle in new ways.  Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant, in their essay "Is there a space for critical literacy in the context of social media?," argue that "the potential for social media to support new or extended forms of participation and collaboration that could promote learning is attractive to those who embrace student-centered ideologies, and those who believe that traditional structures of knowledge and power are loosening" (Burnett). This potential, brought about by the creation and widespread use of social media, is termed to be a "participatory culture...one in which members 'believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another' (Jenkins et al., 2006, p. 3)" (Burnett).  In this participatory culture, brought about by social media and the Internet, there is infinite potential for communication among and between audiences, the texts with which they are engaging, and the creators of those texts.  In the case of BBC's Sherlock, created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, participation is emphasized and capitalized upon by both creators and audiences alike. The third and final episode of the second series, The Reichenbach Fall, ends with Sherlock's apparent suicide and Watson's resulting devastation. The twist at the end, however, is that Sherlock is very definitely alive: he appears on screen for a few seconds at the end of the episode, hawkishly watching Watson visit his "grave." This episode, like Doyle's Reichenbach Falls incident in The Final Problem, caused a wild fan and audience response. Hundreds of thousands of users flocked to social networking sites, most notably tumblr.com, to create Sherlock-centric blogs and wax poetic on their Reichenbach theories. Entire tumblr communities are devoted to working out Sherlock and Moriarty's "final problem," and the theories surrounding the events of The Reichenbach Fall undoubtedly number in the thousands.  In a truly remarkable demonstration of the power of modern critical response and participatory culture, show co-creator Steven Moffat revealed his connection to Sherlock's fan response culture in an interview with Radio Times: "'I’ve been online and looked at all the theories,' Moffat told us, 'and there’s one clue that everyone’s missed. It’s something that Sherlock did that was very out of character, but which nobody has picked up on'" (Seale).  Certainly Moffat and Doyle are men in parallel nearly a century apart: both are responsible for presenting the Sherlock Holmes character (thought Doyle's claim is obviously stronger, being the creator of the character in the first place) in a widely popular format, and both paid or pay attention to their audience's response to their handling of characters and events. However, there is one marked difference: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read or heard negative reception of his killing of Holmes and revisited the character, but this sort of response is fundamentally different from the response in which Moffat is taking part due simply to the nature of the discourse community or culture in which each text (Doyle's literal texts and Moffat/Gatiss' television-text) was received. Moffat and Gatiss are able to log in to Twitter or open up tumblr and read for themselves what their audience is thinking, and they are obviously paying attention. Where Doyle responded to widespread opinion and emotion, Moffat and Gatiss are able to engage with the audience's theories and explanations as well as their opinions. This is the ideal manifestation of Burnett and Merchant's participatory culture: the audience responds to the text, the creators observe and take note of these responses and respond in kind with hints, and this prompts further audience response and further creator attention to said response. This participatory culture is possible on such a large scale because of the Internet: it provides an arena for discourse, discussion, and participation in a new and different way. The responses and theories themselves are fascinating in their commitment to detail and fact. eva-christine.tumblr.com is one user who has crafted several in-depth and detailed Reichenbach theories. An early theory of hers received 13,324 (and counting) notes—that's 13,324 instances of tumblr users reading and either liking or re-blogging this theory, causing it to spread rapidly and come to the attention of lurkers like Moffat. However, after Moffat's Radio Times statement, eva-christine took to her tumblr once again to denounce her former theory as "crackpot" and introduce a new and thoroughly sophisticated Reichenbach/Rumpelstiltskin theory (which is lengthy but very worth the read if you're a fan of the show). In this theory, eva-christine pulls evidence directly from the text of Grimm's Fairy Tales, makes use of the potential for multiple meanings (the discussion of Janus and the shades of his significance is particularly relevant here), and uses screencaps and quotes directly from the show to demonstrate her well-thought-out points. 

As eva-christine's explanation of her theory continues, it grows more interesting in its style. Sherlock fans and audience members appear to be a sophisticated bunch, capable of replicating and putting to use Sherlock's particular style of deductive reasoning, and eva-christine is no exception: her tone is respectful and patient, relishing the details without getting distracted or appearing pretentious. 

Here, eva-christine nicely applies a sort of deductive reasoning to Sherlock and Moriarty (or Richard Brook, according to the theory)'s "final problem." "If the premises are true and all rules of logic are followed, the conclusions must necessarily also be true" is the concept at the heart of deductive reasoning, and eva-christine is able to arrive at "the obvious solution" she does because she utilizes the Sherlock Holmes style of deductive reasoning to explain an adaptation of the character's story.  eva-christine's post is lengthy and involved, and her use of evidence in the form of text, screenshots, and quotes is directly reminiscent of an academic essay. All told, this Reichenbach theory is just shy of 5,500 words long—a respectable length for a piece of writing neither assigned nor required. eva-christine presents her argument or thesis (that Richard Brook was real and Moriarty was indeed a fake character, and that Sherlock was playing dumb for the entirety of The Reichenbach Fall) and methodically works through these ideas with ample support before drawing her conclusions. This is where my excitement and interest lie: eva-christine and the thousands of audience members like her are participating and engaging with the text of Sherlock voluntarily. Use of tumblr to deeply analyze a television-text is not compulsory; eva-christine wrote five and a half thousand words on her Reichenbach theory because she is passionately interested in the depth and detail inherent in Moffat and Gatiss' Sherlock series. She takes part in the discourse community surrounding Sherlock because she wants to better understand the characters, their actions, and the plot of the text. Such involved theorizing helps to stave off the impending madness of the entire Sherlock fandom—we've been waiting far too long for series 3 to premiere, and seriously in-depth theories like eva-christine's are an intelligent way to engage with the text of the television show.  Participation and response like this is possible on such a large scale because of the Internet. Certainly Doyle paid attention and eventually heed to the public opinion that killing Sherlock Holmes was a bad idea; such cultural response has evolved and refined itself into the participatory culture of the Internet that Burnett and Merchant examine. Such widespread participation and the wild attention it receives (any one Reichenbach theory inevitably prompts tweaks and responses from a number of interested and capable users, including the creators of the television show themselves) are indicators of a rapidly-evolving casual discourse community online whose output, though decidedly informal and unlikely to end up in any academic publication of our time, is nevertheless important to consider in the context of the Internet and how it affects both what we read (or watch), and how we read or watch it.  References Burnett, Cathy, and Guy Merchant. "Is There a Space for Critical Literacy in the Context of Social Media?" English Teaching: Practice and Critique 10.1 (2011): 41-57. Print. Miller, Ron. "Doyle vs. Holmes." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013. Seale, David. "Steven Moffat: Nobody's Spotted Crucial Sherlock Clue." Radio Times. Immediate Media, 18 Jan. 2012. Web. 25 Feb. 2013. Starrett, Vincent. "Issue 12: The Final Problem." Discovering Sherlock Holmes - A Community Reading Project From Stanford University. Stanford, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

  More Reichenbach Theories (if you're into that sort of thing) sherlock-theories.tumblr heckyesreichenbachtheories.tumblr finalproblem.tumblr sherlockiantheories.tumblr reichenbach-theories.tumblr thescienceofreichenbach.tumblr

[operation-critique-blog]

What am I doing here?

I’m more than halfway through my senior year in college, and tumblr is a godsend: there is no better tool for rapid-fire procrastination, and I’ve carefully curated the dashboard of my main blog into a collection of art, photography, comics, news, and discussion to satisfy my interest in literature, film, television, and fandom. My personal tumblr has been running for more than five years, and over the course of my membership I’ve observed exciting growth, change, and development on this social networking site. These observations and my recent awareness of and interest in the emerging arena of Digital Humanities study have led me to a possibly-prohibited practice: thinking critically about what I see scrolling past me on tumblr and the Internet in general. As such, I've embarked on a study project as part of my senior curriculum in an attempt to bring this important sector of critical response culture to academic attention, and that project is manifesting itself as this tumblr.

In her 2010 essay "Personal Readings and Public Texts: Book Blogs and Online Writing about Literature," Ann Steiner explains the concept of "the Pro-Ams," a professional amateur defined by Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller: “A new kind of amateur has appeared that operates in a more professional manner than previous individuals or groups have done. They are knowledgeable, educated, committed, and have large networks…the pro-ams do not regard themselves as professionals, rather they use their amateurism as a tool for networking, writing, and creating new structures…They may lack a certain degree, or the right job title, but they can often work in new and experimental ways. There are also examples of how the pro-ams have influenced and inspired professionals, and this is also the case within the book trade." I found this definition of a pro-am to readily apply to fandoms on the Internet, and particularly on tumblr: tumblr fandoms are huge networks that connect people around the world, people who are passionate about and committed to the text or texts of their fandom and whose discussion is valuable despite its casual setting. Once I recognized that tumblr fandoms are discourse communities, I started to pay closer attention to their activity.

Steiner writes about "book blogs," websites where one or several writers post reviews and commentary on various texts they're reading. While reading Steiner's argument, I was eager to draw a distinction between these book blogs and the sort of valuable discourse I see on personal blogs. According to what I’ve seen on tumblr, the distinction definitely exists and should be recognized—personal tumblrs include reviews in posts about reading, some tumblrs identify as “fandom-specific” and post or comment on the various texts (books, television, films) related to that fandom. It’s very casual, but it happens and I’m not sure there was a channel previously available that provided a similar sort of connection among and between audiences who love the same texts (besides formal book clubs, but the people writing on these tumblrs are usually between 15 and 28 and post from around the world, which makes it more exciting in my mind). I’m sure that the casual environment of tumblr fosters this sort of community feeling in a way that a “book blog” writer and his or her commenters do not, and this is where my interest lies. These bloggers write because they want to, not because they need to—they don’t have any sort of obligation to contribute, and I feel like the title “book blog” places that obligation upon the blogger, which fundamentally changes the discourse that results.

Elsewhere in her essay, Steiner claims that "the critics at large daily papers are influential, but the young, globally oriented, and ideologically aware groups of readers that blog and comment on different online communities may be equally important." Steiner says "may be," and I insist that her wording change to "are definitely." Ideologically aware groups of readers that blog and comment on different online communities are definitely equally important, and that is what I hope to demonstrate through exploration of fandom and casual critical response on the Internet—discourse that doesn't directly call itself discourse is still significant.

Tumblr is a unique community where literary and social reading collide to incite discussion. Participation in a fandom demands actual authentic affection for the topic or central work of that fandom; otherwise, you are not a fan, and you do not belong in that fandom. The importance of the personal reading experience is emphasized on tumblr: emotional response is important, and identification with others' responses engenders discussion. In another essay, "Private Criticism in the Public Space: Personal writing on literature in readers' reviews on Amazon," Steiner helpfully defines "text" for my purposes: "reading is not seen as an activity different from watching films or TV; they are all acts of consumption for pleasure, escape, or the understanding of one's own situation in life, and all social practices." When I say "text," I do not mean literal ink on a page or words on a screen; I mean anything that can be viewed and interpreted by an audience, including television and films as well as books in all their manifestations.

With this blog, I hope to explore in an attempt to explain the development, participation, and importance of critical response on the Internet through various and sundry "themed" posts on a weekly basis. Some questions I'll be focusing on to guide my thinking are as follows:

Where is the line between professional discourse and casual discourse, and does it matter?

Does the presence of some degree or sense of professionalism increase or affect one's relation to the texts he or she is consuming?

What is the cultural value or function of casual discourse and analysis? What is the payoff of engaging in this sort of critique or discussion?

Do these analyses contribute to an understanding of the text in a new way?

Does this culture grow out of literacy instruction or is it running on its own? Do we have the impulse to respond publicly to texts because we learned it, or is it simply a matter of passion? Is it both? 

To borrow from Steiner once more, "the main issue is positioning the self in relation to culture, society, and other readers." I believe that casual response culture on the Internet (and specifically on tumblr) is one very real way of coming to grips with this issue of positioning, and its widespread and rapid growth lends to the evolving profile of academic literary study in an important way.