Robert Gehl discusses the ways in which the online technologies with which we interface on a daily basis are in fact investing a great deal in insuring that our actions are being archived. The “new media compa­nies and entrepreneurs […] assume a curatorial role” (1229) and thus have the power to determine what types of…

A few weeks ago I saw this video circulating on various self-proclaimed liberal micro-blogs and Facebook groups, where it was touted as the long-awaited, incontrovertible proof we needed to finally be able to challenge New York’s “stop and frisk” policy. A young man had recorded his experienced being interpellated and violently harassed by a group…

Prior to the great push to monetize YouTube, the site had the trappings of a seemingly “anonymous” community — at least according to Michael Wesch. Anonymity extended to the fact that users’ “real” identities were unknown, and, therefore, they could share their personal videos or make offensive comments without real-world repercussions. Perhaps a more interesting…

In late June of 2008, professor of Anthropology Michael Wesch uploaded a video of himself giving a presentation at the Library of Congress entitled “An anthropological introduction to YouTube”. Wesch recounts the history of YouTube, largely framed as interactions between individuals in a community that rapidly began to form norms and cultural practices. At this point,…

Few franchises have managed to maintain their cultural relevance in the same way that Star Wars has, from the release of the first installment of the series in 1977 (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) to today’s new content (such as the various Clone Wars TV shows) – re-imagined for new audiences, and satirical…

Robot Chicken is a show featured on Adult Swim, that consists of satirical vignettes of action figures of everything from current pop stars to vintage ’70s and ’80s TV show characters. The show’s aesthetic is couched in a larger historical frame of fan-driven cultural production. This form’s re-absorption into the mainstream is particularly telling, as it speaks…

It’s hard for me to remember the context in which I first (or, really, ever) heard the phrase “Leeeerrroy Jeeenkiiinnss!” – one that can never exist but for some reason it was familiar to me when I encountered it in Tanner Higgin’s “Blackless Fantasy: The Disappearance of Race in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games”. This…

The popular overuse of the phrase “social network” has aligned the concept more with its modern signifiers (Facebook, Twitter) than with its significance. The social network refers to a series of ritualized interactions and actions that reinforce social ties, therefore, a larger cohesion is dependent on a series of smaller, individual actions. If Vincent Miller…

In the study of culture, we must frequently rely on the translations of others to access knowledge — whether that translation is simply the relating of an experience through the subject and into writing, or the actual labor of explaining cultural practices through one’s own cultural practices. Translation labors to appear untranslated, just as media…