The virtual community of LambdaMOO has an intense reaction to the cyber-rape of several characters by Mr Bungle. Although this story seems to unfold in a world far from ours in the reading A Rape in Cyberspace by Julian Dibbell, I found the links to the real life or ‘RL’ eerie and disturbingly close to home. Although the rape only happened to two characters, the emotional and ethical repercussions begin to concern the majority of the cyber community of LambdaMOO. Amongst the outrage, there are also several groups willing to let the matter slide in order to preserve the freedom of cyber communities. A freedom which is censored within RL. Dibbell says the rape is “Ludicrously excessive by RL’s lights, woefully understated by VR’s.”(p203) which shows the exact reason for our hesitance towards such on-line crimes. This is where the gap between the real world and cyber clash within the undefined structure of technological existences and intermingling.
Dibbell highlights the effects that cyber culture has on its real life participants. Legba, a participant of LambdaMOO cried at her computer as she posted her reaction to her cyber rape, calling for “Virtual castration”(p203). When discussion arises as to what punishment should be handed down to Mr Bungle, it comes about due to the fact that cyberspace and real life cannot be separated. Without even realising it, our ideas about cultural ethics cross into our social environments on the web. The link between both is together a blessing and a curse. It allows us to perhaps use our cyber culture as a tool to enhance our real life experiences whilst simultaneously creating the same rules in cyberspace that hinder our ultimate freedom in the real world. The gap between the virtual and the real is the critical problem we face when blogging, facebooking or walking within these online communities. Do we resolve tensions through applying the same rules we have in the real world?
It is also important to note through Dibbell’s reading that although “LambdaMOO has never been the same since…nothing’s really changed”(p210). Many issues can be raised from ‘The Bungle Affair’ such as the intensity at which issues online are raised and then evaporate. It is also interesting to note that even though Mr Bungle was ‘toaded’, he was still able to return as another character, rendering the online judicial system somewhat of a farce really. The threat of the rape is still ultimately there, yet virtual time, and perhaps the virtual community, has healed and learnt so fast that blocks have been put in place to prevent it happening again. Viewing this from afar, we could say that perhaps the community system in cyberspace is more effective then a judicial system setup like in RL.
The cyber community of LambdaMOO, unlike the real world, is segregated over the rape. There are many justifications, approaches and arguments from groups such as the ‘technolibertarians’, royalists, parliamentarian legalists, anarchists and even a strong female participant response over how to deal with the rape whilst maintaining the freedoms of cyber space. Which group would you belong to and why? Do you think that actions performed online, such as the cyber-rape, should be punished or is it simply a consequence of the freedoms of cyber culture?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Week Nine: Pranking Rhetoric
Culture jamming, according to Harold, is ‘an artful proliferation of messages…which challenges the ability of corporate discourses to make meaning in predictable ways.’ However, Harold distinguishes between parody and pranking.
Pranking, Harold’s preferred method, can be viewed as the adornment and folding of texts. The goal is not to create a new meaning, but to challenge the idea of meaning itself. A good example of this is the Biotic Baking Brigade, which threw pies into faces of famous people it considered to be promoting questionable values (such as capitalism). The act in itself did little to challenge norms, other than that of authority.
In contrast, parody aims to change things in the name of a presupposed value. A successful example would be Adbusters' 2003 campaign to sell the ‘ethical’ Blackspot sneaker as an alternative to Nike. Here, Adbusters drew on the presupposed value of fair labour to challenge Nike’s use of sweatshops. Parody can also be successful in ‘rebranding’ products. Brands aim to associate themselves with concepts: for Nike, these may be freedom, or discipline. Instead, Adbusters attempted to associate the Nike brand with unfair labour.
Harold criticises parody because it fails to challenge the hierarchy of language and all its binaries. However, I believe that this is a positive thing. All texts and authors (including culture jammers) are socially, economically and politically situated and thus have their own biases. Trying to pretend otherwise would be counter-productive. Presenting parody against corporate advertising, I believe, allows the audience to arrive at their own ‘truth.’ This works in a manner similar to our adversarial court system. Hearing binary arguments does not prevent the reader from choosing a middle ground.
Like advertisements, subvertisements rely on existing norms and values. The fashion industry associated the norm of beauty with its models and clothes. Retaliating, subvertisements used commercial rhetoric to associate the industry with unhealthy choices. Adbusters featured a model vomiting into a toilet. Recently, Dove launched its Campaign for Real Beauty, appropriating the norm of natural beauty from subvertisements in order to sell its beauty products. Should the norms of the advertisement be celebrated, or is it even more dangerous than other commercial advertisements? Unlike pranking, parody is open to challenge.
Another example of parody moving into the mainstream was ABC TV’s Gruen Transfer, which dissected various advertisements. It aired subvertisements (such as anti-tourism) and encouraged critical engagement with culture and advertising. For example, in ‘Consumer’s Revenge,’ users are invited to mix their own advertisements.
Do you believe that parody or pranking is the more successful method?
Does the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty make you uncomfortable, in that it is ‘hijacking’ parody for commercial purposes?
Can culture jamming make a real difference?
Pranking, Harold’s preferred method, can be viewed as the adornment and folding of texts. The goal is not to create a new meaning, but to challenge the idea of meaning itself. A good example of this is the Biotic Baking Brigade, which threw pies into faces of famous people it considered to be promoting questionable values (such as capitalism). The act in itself did little to challenge norms, other than that of authority.
In contrast, parody aims to change things in the name of a presupposed value. A successful example would be Adbusters' 2003 campaign to sell the ‘ethical’ Blackspot sneaker as an alternative to Nike. Here, Adbusters drew on the presupposed value of fair labour to challenge Nike’s use of sweatshops. Parody can also be successful in ‘rebranding’ products. Brands aim to associate themselves with concepts: for Nike, these may be freedom, or discipline. Instead, Adbusters attempted to associate the Nike brand with unfair labour.
Harold criticises parody because it fails to challenge the hierarchy of language and all its binaries. However, I believe that this is a positive thing. All texts and authors (including culture jammers) are socially, economically and politically situated and thus have their own biases. Trying to pretend otherwise would be counter-productive. Presenting parody against corporate advertising, I believe, allows the audience to arrive at their own ‘truth.’ This works in a manner similar to our adversarial court system. Hearing binary arguments does not prevent the reader from choosing a middle ground.
Like advertisements, subvertisements rely on existing norms and values. The fashion industry associated the norm of beauty with its models and clothes. Retaliating, subvertisements used commercial rhetoric to associate the industry with unhealthy choices. Adbusters featured a model vomiting into a toilet. Recently, Dove launched its Campaign for Real Beauty, appropriating the norm of natural beauty from subvertisements in order to sell its beauty products. Should the norms of the advertisement be celebrated, or is it even more dangerous than other commercial advertisements? Unlike pranking, parody is open to challenge.
Another example of parody moving into the mainstream was ABC TV’s Gruen Transfer, which dissected various advertisements. It aired subvertisements (such as anti-tourism) and encouraged critical engagement with culture and advertising. For example, in ‘Consumer’s Revenge,’ users are invited to mix their own advertisements.
Do you believe that parody or pranking is the more successful method?
Does the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty make you uncomfortable, in that it is ‘hijacking’ parody for commercial purposes?
Can culture jamming make a real difference?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
WEEK 9: CONSUMPTION AND DIGITAL COMMODITIES IN THE EVERYDAY
Hi everyone. This is the discussion for next week but I have a triathlon training course this weekend that runs through to Monday so I will not be able to post on the Monday. This is why I am doing it today. Hope you all have a good weekend!!
WEEK 9: CONSUMPTION AND DIGITAL COMMODITIES IN THE EVERYDAY (MARK POSTER)
In this text Mark Poster discusses how consumers are the core of society but they are not individuals in this society but merely objects for media to target. “In the space of the city, the individual is labelled and branded into the category of the consumer with a consistency that would be admirable were it not so deplorable.”[1] Media is so instilled in culture that it programmes our minds to think about things in a certain way. Poster was surprised when he visited Ljubljana (a war torn country) and found it to be beautiful. The media had instilled in his mind “a depressing urban landscape dominated by a monotony of greys.”[2]
Poster describes how we cannot escape media not matter how much we attempt to do so. We are invaded in our own homes whether it is from television commercials or whether we get that 10pm phone call from telemarketers. When contemplating this idea I tried to imagine my world without media – it is impossible. I do believe though that a person can choose whether or not their life is dominated by media if not in the outside world, most certainly at home. We can choose to not buy that TV, radio and computer and to not have a phone line. Then again, in this day and age is that possible? Our lives have become so centralised around media that we may not be able to live without it. It is instilled in our culture.
Do you agree that we cannot escape media?
Without consumption there is no industry. “Consumption was considered necessary for the reproduction of labour and the satisfaction of needs.”[3] This point is very interesting. When thinking about the world we live in it consumption happens every minute of our day. I am consuming right now by just using this computer and listening to the radio in the background. If people were not ‘consumers’ how would people make a living?
As technology has improved the consumer has become less and less of a human being and more of an ‘actor’. The consumer has become predictable and the media know just how to exploit this predictability. Poster contrasts modern and postmodern consumption patterns. In modern society one had “a fixed idea of consumption for wealthy, middle class and poorer folk”[4] whereas the postmodern argues that consumption patterns can derive from the minorities and move up in society. In modern society the consumer is not connected to the product and that product is a big part of status whereas in postmodern society the product is an extension of that user’s self. It represents that person’s identity. When thinking about this I thought about the computer – we use this device hugely to communicate and therefore has become an extension of our own minds and speech – the postmodern argument I think rings true here. Do you agree?
In the last couple of years consumers have been able to choose whether or not they are exposed to advertising, particularly through television. Think of Foxtel IQ and the way we can record programmes and then fast-forward through advertisements. In a way we are starting to rebel against media. “Television finds itself fundamentally at risk simply because the cultural object has been digitized and the ‘consumer’ has chosen to deploy the new medium to ends other than those of capitalism.”[5] We are now in a world where we can log onto a programme such as Limewire and have access to millions and millions of free songs and movies with the click of a mouse. Media companies have put actions into place to try and combat this but all efforts have proved unsuccessful. Their last option is to make the “cultural object accessible to consumers only a pay per use basis. Consumers will have, in this view, no object at all, only access.”[6]
Do you think that this will work or do you think that consumers will still find a way to rebel against this type of media action?
What are your thoughts on the fact that we are no longer individual people in the media environment but targets to gain and exploit?
REFERENCES
Poster, Mark. “Consumption and Digital Commodities in the Everyday.” Cultural Studies 18.2/3 (2004): 409-23
REFERENCES
Poster, Mark. “Consumption and Digital Commodities in the Everyday.” Cultural Studies 18.2/3 (2004): 409-23
FOOTNOTES
[1] Mark Poster, “Consumption and Digital Commodities in the Everyday”, Cultural Studies, 18.2/3 (2004):p409
[2] Poster, p410
[3] Poster, p411
[4] Poster: p416
[5] Poster:p420-421
[6] Poster:p418-419
Monday, September 22, 2008
Week 8 "The Ethics of Porn on the Net"
Lumby’s article The Ethics of Porn on the Net examines how the Internet has changed many aspects of porn, namely its producers, performers and consumers, and how these changes may have altered the ethical status of pornography. With a particular focus on amateur porn, the author examines how amateur Internet porn challenges the stereotypes of mainstream porn, particularly the restricted representations of beauty, and how in doing so, it provides a forum for those with alternative sexual desires to not be excluded from sexual experimentation and enjoyment.
Lumby begins with an examination of the traditional opposition to porn. This includes religious/conservative objections which view pornography as immoral because of its representations of sex that extend beyond the acts of private, heterosexual married couples, and can be seen to incite masturbation. Marxist/feminist objections to pornography include the exploitation of sex and women’s bodies for money, as well as the perpetuation of stereotypical female and male forms, as represented in traditional porn.
The remainder of the article discusses such issues as the rise in amateur porn production on the Internet, and how and why individuals are producing their own. These reasons include the ease and relatively low cost of home made porn, and the dissatisfaction with existing traditional porn productions that do not encompass alternative forms of sex and sexuality. Lumby examines how these new forms of porn are challenging exiting stereotypes, particularly the restricted representations of female sexual beauty in porn. The author notes that much of the appeal of amateur porn lies in either the ‘ordinariness’ of its actors, or its gratification of fetishes, such as sites dedicated to hairy women or amputees.
Finally, the author examines whether Internet porn has “ethical sensibilities”, as it portrays a diverse range of sexuality and beauty that is not confined to mainstream stereotypes. Also, many of the websites have “internal guidelines, rules and etiquette” (p.207), which are open to debate and can be altered according to consensus of participants.
Do you agree that these new sorts of porn “relax some of our anxieties about the dangers of cybersex and cyberporn” (p.209)?
Does Internet porn really succeed in offering an alternative from of sexual beauty than the ones depicted in traditional porn, or is it still a form of objectification, just on different grounds?
In her article, Lumby includes part of her research interview with “Craig”, a webmaster who feels that Internet porn has enabled women to “feel safer and more confident in their experimentation with alternative sex practices” (p.200). At his parties Craig places webcams in certain rooms, and warns participants not to enter if they do not want to be filmed. He is quoted as saying “There’s something about having the ability to let your hair down and just for once in your life, you know, do some amateur porn on a camera or jump around pretend you’re a stripper or something like that” (p.200-201). Perhaps I’m being a little conservative here, but I don’t consider stripping on camera as an “alternative sex practice” for women; we’ve been doing it for decades.
I think the real question here is why these women would be doing these things (particularly stripping on camera) in the first place. If they are doing so because they get great sexual satisfaction from doing it, then by all means, but personally, I think many would be doing it from a post-feminist perspective of “sex is power”, and misinterpret this exploitation of their bodies as a means for power and equality.
What do you think?
Lumby begins with an examination of the traditional opposition to porn. This includes religious/conservative objections which view pornography as immoral because of its representations of sex that extend beyond the acts of private, heterosexual married couples, and can be seen to incite masturbation. Marxist/feminist objections to pornography include the exploitation of sex and women’s bodies for money, as well as the perpetuation of stereotypical female and male forms, as represented in traditional porn.
The remainder of the article discusses such issues as the rise in amateur porn production on the Internet, and how and why individuals are producing their own. These reasons include the ease and relatively low cost of home made porn, and the dissatisfaction with existing traditional porn productions that do not encompass alternative forms of sex and sexuality. Lumby examines how these new forms of porn are challenging exiting stereotypes, particularly the restricted representations of female sexual beauty in porn. The author notes that much of the appeal of amateur porn lies in either the ‘ordinariness’ of its actors, or its gratification of fetishes, such as sites dedicated to hairy women or amputees.
Finally, the author examines whether Internet porn has “ethical sensibilities”, as it portrays a diverse range of sexuality and beauty that is not confined to mainstream stereotypes. Also, many of the websites have “internal guidelines, rules and etiquette” (p.207), which are open to debate and can be altered according to consensus of participants.
Do you agree that these new sorts of porn “relax some of our anxieties about the dangers of cybersex and cyberporn” (p.209)?
Does Internet porn really succeed in offering an alternative from of sexual beauty than the ones depicted in traditional porn, or is it still a form of objectification, just on different grounds?
In her article, Lumby includes part of her research interview with “Craig”, a webmaster who feels that Internet porn has enabled women to “feel safer and more confident in their experimentation with alternative sex practices” (p.200). At his parties Craig places webcams in certain rooms, and warns participants not to enter if they do not want to be filmed. He is quoted as saying “There’s something about having the ability to let your hair down and just for once in your life, you know, do some amateur porn on a camera or jump around pretend you’re a stripper or something like that” (p.200-201). Perhaps I’m being a little conservative here, but I don’t consider stripping on camera as an “alternative sex practice” for women; we’ve been doing it for decades.
I think the real question here is why these women would be doing these things (particularly stripping on camera) in the first place. If they are doing so because they get great sexual satisfaction from doing it, then by all means, but personally, I think many would be doing it from a post-feminist perspective of “sex is power”, and misinterpret this exploitation of their bodies as a means for power and equality.
What do you think?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Week 8: “Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online” – Margo Kingston
This excerpt is from Lumby and Probyn’s 2003 text Remote Control: New Media, New Ethics, which examines the ethical challenges posed by new media formats, technologies and audiences. In this chapter,
The manner in which
However, there is a risk involved in creating a space that welcomes the public display of opinion without the discipline of censorship or editing. In minimizing harm, journalists are made to “treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect”[3]. This poses the question of if similar demands should be made on bloggers. Although there is no official weblog code of ethics, the news and resource site cyberjournalist.net created “A Bloggers Code of Ethics”, which references the Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics. When comparing the two, there is very little difference. This makes the assumption that any opinionated writing available to the masses is considered journalism. This is strongly contended by Rebecca Blood, who states that the greatest strength and weakness of a weblog is its status as being uncensored. She finds it unrealistic to expect bloggers to hold the responsibilities of professional journalists, and steps away from journalist’s code of ethics to create “Weblog’s Ethics”. Blood outlines six different points that should be considered, and goes into great detail concerning the use of multimedia, the method of making corrections in order to keep the corrected information visible, or typing out a URL of a website rather than linking it if the website could be of offence to someone. Although this list is very comprehensive, it is of interest to note that Blood took her inspiration from Dave Winer’s two criteria discussion of online ethics on his blog “Scripting News”, which merely emphasizes the importance of integrity when participating in ethical blogging practice.
It is the different characteristics, especially the instant nature and organic process of the weblog that does alter the moral and ethical dimensions of journalism on line. It is not only the censorship or adherence to the reliability of sources that separates journalism from blogging, but also the editing process undertaken by a paper publication that divides these two mediums. In general, the ethical dimensions of the weblog expand, where the reader is no longer powerless and is encouraged to critically analyse the information presented to them.
Questions
Is the growing skepticism pervading in today’s society going to increase the popularity of online journalism? Or will traditional media persevere to influence our perception of current affairs?
If the ethical system of blogging can be narrowed down to trust and integrity, can this also be applied to offline journalism in a democratic government like
[1] Margo Kingston, “Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online” in Remote Control (
[2]
[3] Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp [accessed 13/09/08]
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