Griefzilla
Decomposing Monstre again made another fantabulous machinima. I had posted his previous machinima in The Virtual Utopia of the Future last month. It was a parodic promotional video of Second Life. Now he, and some other goons, created Oh No, It’s Griefzilla for the Fox Atomic and Millions of Us machinima contest. This one is a parody of Godzilla using the appearance that Deco created that now defines the griefer, namely Daffy Duck. I say, way you go goons. I recognized most of the names in the credits as I have hung out in Baku a lot lately. I guess Moo Money is involved in its creation too. You can read Moo’s story in the Second Life Insider. I am posting it here for your pleasure, enjoy…
Masakazu Kojima: Outtakes
I am afraid I have to pull out the section on Masakazu Kojima from the first chapter on Second Life and not sure if I will have a suitable place for it in the second chapter either. It is a very short section. Soooo, I am posting it here. This section came right after Deco’s creation of the Daffy Duck image for the so-called Plastic Duck and how goons use Daffy Duck to propagate the narrative of the griefer (that is the juice of my section and unfortunately this one had to be deleted for the sake of unity):
Goons’ use of culturally familiar Disney-like images as a means to offend and shock residents extends to some goons adopting innocent looking avatars that cannot be suspected of any evildoing. Embracing an avatar that looks like a little girl with pigtails wearing a pink outfit,
which curiously resembles a Japanese anime character, Masakazu Kojima, the
leader of the infamous goon group W-Hat, writes in the interests section of her profile that drawing is one of her strongest suits. When asked about it, she playfully explains that
she has a “degree from the most respected colorogy institute in space.” Accordingly, she has a pink-colored heart in the first-life section of her profile claiming that crayons are best in life, partly because, I assume, they encourage creativity in children.
Masa’s colorings suggest an innocence that can only be present in the mind of a child. “Arbel’s flower,” for example, which became the logo for a charity group named Help for Kids, is a flower she drew to cheer up a lady named Arbel who happened to be sad, and, according to her profile, Masa did not want
her to be sad anymore. Her second coloring, entitled “Saved,” is a picture
drawn by a friend of hers and colored by Masa, depicting Masa’s resurrection by
John Linden. This picture relates the story of how John Linden removed the
hardware bans that were placed on her account, thus allowing her to continue playing Second Life. The exchange that took place at the time of the incident, recorded as a chat log, clearly
reveals the gratitude of the goons, perceiving John to be a savior. In addition
to depicting the incident as a drawing, goons also wrote this story in the form
of a biblical poem, parodying those found in genesis:
The book of John (Linden)
And, so it was prophesyed [sic], there shall be a child.
Lo, the child shall be sweet of tounge [sic], but venom
in her heart!
Verily, for she is the re-incarnation of the Evil One.
She shall bring the great down low, the secrets revealed.
The poor and weak shall be reviled, for they were taken
by the child’s voice.
THe [sic] great leader of the poor downtrodden, shall
unveil the Evil to the Ones On High
And Lo, she will be punished!
The weak ones will be without guidance, and there will be
mourning.
Prayers will be unanswered, there will be great wailing
and gnasing [sic] of teeth
But, all is not lost, poor ones. For [sic], from the heavens, shall come a
great messenger
Clad in the skin of a mortal, but ye shall know him by
his radiance.
Verily, the weak will tremble before him, and be afraid.
"Fear not" The great one will say, "For I
am John Linden. SHare [sic] with me your
plight"
And the weak will speak up, and verily, John was moved.
"Alas, my poor, downtrodden souls. It is not for us on high to decide who is
here"
"Your leader shall be returned."
And, with that, the great leader of the poor, downtrodden
souls was freed from her torment!
There was great rejoicing and love.
Thus, John spake [sic] "There is much
room in the Second life for all."
With that, The most benevolent John Linden left the poor,
and a statue was risen in his honor!
In this poem, Masa is characterized as “the
reincarnation of the Evil one,” clearly suggesting her dark side that possibly
caused her to get banned in the first place. But more importantly, this image and its biblical parody provides a
good example of how multi-platform narratives work. Different versions of the
story and its different parts are captured on slightly different but integrated
platforms, thus resulting in a dispersed story that could only be complete once
all parts of it are taken into account.
Nonetheless, the subversive attitude towards culture latent
underneath this girlish image becomes apparent in her selection of favorite
places to hang out. Almost as if to suggest the dark side of childhood, she
lists Baku’s headquarters as her first choice and characterizes it as “a cool place to take
it easy.” But the image that represents Baku implies a warning. Instead of displaying the actual sim, the image is that of a cute little anime girl in pink (similar to Masa herself) that has the subtitle
“There is something dreadful waiting there for you,” suggesting that things could go horribly wrong any time in Baku.
4chan
As I was at work today I got a sudden IM from Baba telling me that he got banned from Second Life. To me this came as no surprise as, after having read a blog post about a goo attack conducted under his name, I got suspicious and searched his name and wasn’t able to see his name in the search list. Sure sign of being banned. I saw him on AIM but didn’t want to IM him to ask him about anything. I try not to bother people that I interviewed needlessly so that they don’t feel uncomfortable with my presence on AIM (as that’s where I usually conduct my interviews). So when he told me that he got banned because of a birthday prank that his friend pulled and sent me the link to Bring Back Baba, I was a bit sad to see my prediction was indeed correct.
We chatted some and he mentioned that most people who conduct research about the Internet didn’t really know anything about it. While this statement is up for discussion, as the Internet is a big elephant whose intricacies are known only by sections to those who touch it, we started talking about 4chan. Though I was aware of this site, trenched with toilet humor, I was never sure what to make of it. I am not one who gets offended with "shocking" images but I am also not really fascinated with jokes that don’t mean anything but a penis, or a swastika, or naked fat women. Great, they are all Photoshoped and thus indicate a production of cultural images, but what is the big deal. To me, goons are producing much more interesting artifacts in-world even if they are offensive, racist, and sexist. He kept sending me some links to /b/ threads and I looked and told him that I wasn’t much amused and that goon builds were much more creative. He kept saying "Look at them." And whenever I said that I was, he repeatedly told me that I wasn’t. This reminded me of a lecture that I attended at the business school. I was a career counselor for a class and the students had to attend these lectures and I along with them. One such lecture was by this really cool guy, Dr. Pica, very inspirational… He kept telling this same story every year about one of his students. He told his student that he should read the Wall Street Journal every day if he wants to be a successful businessman. Anyone who remotely looked at this newspaper knows damn well how boring and incomprehensible it is. Every week, his student would come to him complaining that he couldn’t understand a single thing and Dr. Pica would send him back saying that he wasn’t looking. This went on for about three months at which point the student came back to him and told him that all of a sudden everything made sense. It was magical. Well my chat with Baba was something like that.
Don’t get me wrong, it is still toilet humor. But here is the catch: Baba not only was able to read these images and tell me the interaction that existed between users (who were identified only by numbers) and the images that are being posted, but also showed me that these images were being updated and added by the seconds. Each new post commented on the previous ones and since new posts were being added by the seconds, the text was in a constant state of evolution. Quite impressive I think. A text that is in a constant state of flux. What is even more impressive to me was that Baba (and goons) has the literacy to decode this text like its nobody’s business. It is kind of like learning how to read and write. As an outsider to these forums, they meant nothing to me, but the forum users are able to read it as a text. I won’t say that people in general don’t have Internet literacy, because there is more to the Internet than 4chan or SA, but this particular group is able to formulate their own literacy which is not easily understandable by others.
Grimmy
Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you my favorite character in Second Life: Grimmy Moonflower. And I don’t even know the dude! I found out about him during my interview with Baba. I am afraid I am getting emotionally invested in these griefers and the activity of griefing as time goes by. I think these people have a skewed outlook on things that I sympathize with. I always liked to be subversive: in class my ultimate goal is to shock my students into recognition, never am able to act properly in no sense of the term even when I am wearing my high heels, always fascinated with slang and inappropriate behavior… What gives? Society trying to mold me into something that I am not. And I am trying to be nice and politically correct, even when I am thinking that life should be more sincere, more true, less affectations.
Here is what I love about Grimmy: According to Baba, he is one of the first griefers and lasted in Second Life only for five days before getting banned. Five days… Even Plastic can’t compare to that. His Web site shows no recent activity. My guess is he moved on the bigger badder things. Apparently, after he got banned, couple of people lobbied for awhile to get him back in. Those were the days when SL population was 100. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to dig him up. It would have been super interesting to get a chance to talk to him.
Feb 21: Baba corrects on my guesstimate of the population to be around a 1000. Either way, it was nowhere a million as it is today. Thanks for the informative chat today about 4chan and I am so damn sorry to hear that you got banned on your 22nd birthday. Read the story of Bring Back Baba.
Introducing the book
When I began writing my dissertation my primary goal was to build a connection between print and new media, not that it hasn’t been done before, but I felt like I would be cheating on print (my first love) if I were to write exclusively on new media. Even when I started being interested and writing about new media, print was hard to let go. I mean, I read the best fiction ever in print, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Moll Flanders, Ulysses… It can’t get any better than that, and let’s face it, as much as I love new media, digital fiction can never be like a novel. I wrote a lot about the materiality of the medium of the book and how it differed to that of the electronic text. Yeah, I know, not very original, but I was learning the literature at the time and writing about it helped me sort it out. Anyway, my chair e-mailed me this super funny video clip on Introducing the Book. People must have had similar problems learning how to cope with the book technology as we do or did when computers popped up on our desktops. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Of course McLuhan followers, namely Mark Federman, immediately blogged about the video. Why am I not surprised? Media Ecology at its best.
To my amazement…
I love it when it all comes together. I still have another week to bring it together, but still… Last September (2006) I blogged about how my 40 pages of a chapter crumbled down to a piece of paper when my chair took the whole chapter down by noting (astutely I might add) that there was no argument. And she was right. If you read my blogs that month, you’ll see that I decided on a "new lover" (alluding to a new topic, Second Life, which was what I had intended on writing later in some distant future) and was quite depressed that my entire chapter got deleted. And my chair told me that it wasn’t, that I will come to a point where I can use all that I wrote (or sections at least). As I am plowing my way through my Second Life chapter (which incidentally exploded into two chapters). I realize that I have to use some of the stuff on textual criticism and materiality in my first Second Life chapter. Who knew. I will still have to condense the sections. What I really love about this situation is that when i was writing that first chapter I was too much under the influence of Kate Hayles and I was following her footstep way too closely. And now I am under the influence of Henry Jenkins. But i think I found a way to put these two critics together. Meaning, I am coming up with my own ideas. Shit!!! I hope this works, or I might have to join the circus.
Pan’s Labyrinth
What a beautifully done movie! I had no idea it was a Spanish movie either. Imagine my surprise. But knowing that Spain gave birth to Don Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes, it is not all that surprising, I guess. I have always been interested in the dark side of fairy tales, hell, I am always interested in the dark side of everything. Look at what I am researching in SL.
The interesting fact about fairy tales is that we always tend to think that they are sugarcoated stories that protect our children from the ugliness of real life. But in reality, most fairy tales are about murder, revenge, sex. They are about growing up, and it is a painful process for sure. For instance, it is always the littlest of the kids that is up against a challenge (that challenge being growing up), there are sexual objects like spindle, apple, comb, and such, stories always end in marriage, a sure sign of a maturity tale, the implication being that the kid finally has sex.
Well Pan’s Labyrinth was just as Freudian, but beautifully done. Similar themes/objects. But it also does a wonderful job in showing how rich a child’s imagination can be. As adults, we see the world in black and white, but children see the entire gamut of colors. I think I will buy it when it comes out on DVD.
The Machine is Us/ing Us
Who knew my class last fall on digital media and the theories we discussed in that class would leave something with my students! Imagine my surprise when Bud (his Wiki username) e-mailed me sheepishly asking me if I remembered him. He told me his username in the class Wiki to jog my memory… I don’t think I will forget that class or the students in that class. It was a far too memorable experience than that. He said that he discovered a movie in YouTube that related to the issues we have discussed in class: how digital media changed the way we read and write. I watched the movie, and sure enough, it summarizes our class exactly. Very witty too. I love it. Here is to Bud… Watch it for your self:
Tags of Narrative: A research project
Here is a research project that sounds really interesting. I am posting it to my site to give it some exposure. Whoever is using del.i.cious, flikr, or BlogHUD might be interested in participating on this project:
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
We are interested in the ways in which academic researchers studying
narratives might develop people-to-people models of knowledge-sharing
across
disciplines. To that end, we are seeking researchers working in any type
of
narrative in any discipline to include in our database of projects and
individuals. We would also welcome your suggestions for other
researchers
who might like to hear from us.
REQUEST FOR PARTICIPATION
We are especially interested in researchers who are willing to
participate
in our tagging experiments, due to take place Spring 2007. For more
information please contact Bruce Mason as soon as possible at bmason01
at
dmu dot ac uk
THE PROJECT
Tags Networks Narrative is a unique speculative project exploring the
potential for collaborative keyword tagging (folksonomy) in narrative
research. We want to know:
- What kinds of collaborative social network tools are available for the
gathering and classification of information?
- Which researchers are making online narratives the focus of study, and
how
are those projects categorised by discipline?
- How can these researchers make effective use of social network tools
to
share knowledge and develop interdisciplinary collaborations?
The project is based in the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) at
De
Montfort University and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board
from October 2006-September 2007. The Project Team comprises Professor
Sue
Thomas, Simon Mills and Bruce Mason. Website
http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/tnn/
If you’d like to be involved in the research, add your information to
our
database, or just be kept informed, please contact Bruce Mason at
bmason01
at dmu dot ac uk.
