3.8 Breaking the First 2 Rules of the Internet

Urban Dictionary describes it best:

	4chan
	you have just entered the very heart, soul, and life force of the internet. this is a place beyond sanity, wild and untamed. there is nothing new here. "new" content on 4chan is not found; it is created from old material. every interesting, offensive, shocking, or debate inspiring topic youve seen elsewhere has been posted here ad infinitum. we are the reason for "not safe ". we are the anonymous army. cross us and you will fail. anonymous is everywhere. you depend on us every day. we bag your groceries, we fix your computers. anonymous sees you before you see him. sitting at desks around the world right now is a nameless, faceless, unforgiving mafia composed of the best of the best.  Though the end is a little extreme thats the basic gist.  This is where the content of the viral Internet culture is created.   It can be refreshed time after time a reveal new content in seconds.  Besides being extremely addictive it is a fascinating form of communication and creation.

3.7 MEMES

A good follow up to the internet being a creative place is describing memes.  Memes are the Internet phenomena of viral videos, images, catchphrases, ect.  Basically inside jokes within certain online communities some of which go viral. Everyone hopes that their creation will be accepted even though the author is almost always anonymous or hidden by a username.  This is a curious concept, very few create with no intentions of being credited. I believe this to be the purest most honest sense of creation.  This is a venue where you are unattached and create for the joy of creating and seeing others enjoy the work. This venue also provides the freedom of not being responsible for the content and the ramifications of creating questionable or risky work.  The memes are chosen from this mass of content by the internet's open judgment system that allows for the best to rise to the top through up-voting and down-voting.  This system puts the user/viewer in the seat of power.  I will be using this system of critique to evaluate my work through out my exploration.  Who knows I might even create a meme.

Some classic memes:
Hamster Dance

Dancing Baby

Some Recent Memes:
Advice Animals

Friday Rebecca Black

3.6 The Internet is a Creative Place

The Internet is already a creative place.  This project is not claiming to manipulate this underground culture into making or creating.  They inherently want to create on there own.  This project is merely guiding my exploration of my own exchange within the culture.  They possess there own tools and outlets for creation.  Things such as Photoshop, Youtube, rage comic creators (pictured above), meme generators, computer programs, autotune (pictured below), Miku Miku dance, ect.  I will only allow myself to tools such as these when I create my gift to be placed back onto the Internet. 

 

Auto-Tune the News uses real video clips like news broadcasts, viral videos and other talking head content to create funny music videos. Interviewers, celebrities, and politicians alike break into song in these innovative comedy mash-ups.

"YTMND, an acronym for You're The Man Now, Dog!', is a website community that centers around the creation of YTMNDs, which are pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file. YTMND is also the general term used to describe any such site." - Wikipedia

QuickMeme meme generator provides an easy way to add text to pictures and provides images of popular characters such as Philosoraptor to make it easy to create OC (original content).

click on the images to be redirected to a creative outlet.

3.8 Rules of the Internet

These are the "rules" of the internet.  I have been browsing these underground forums for over a year and the rules have proven to be accurate.  In fact by doing this project I am breaking the first rule of the internet.  In addition to these rules I have learned proper etiquette and language.  There is a barter system.  If you want something you must provide something otherwise the response is "not your personal army".  There is a wide range of accepted currency from posting tits to dumping your "fap folder" (fap being the sound produced by masturbation)

You may however receive help without providing if your cause is deemed worthy or vile enough or involves preventing cruelty to animals i.e. cats.  The internet holds a soft spot for dogs and especially cats.  You may command an anonymous attack on someone by accusing them of harming a feline.  And those that in fact do harm cats or dogs are hunted down and reported to the police in addition to having all forms of social media they possess hacked.  It is curious however that the rage that arises from harming animals is not present when applied to humans.  Although most do not agree with the posting of "gore threads" (pics of dead or injured people) or "cp" (child pornography) no one seems entirely outraged.  There are monitors on the sites that delete cp as it is illegal but some does slip through.  However ruthless this culture may seem the comradeship and teamwork they achieve is unmatched considering everyone is anonymous.  The team will work together to achieve a goal (good or bad) and almost always succeed.

3.4 Talking to Strangers

Browsing Reddit I discovered Omegle.com.  Often screen shots are taken of funny conversations that occur on this site that allows you to anonymously talk to strangers.  I have chosen to use these anonymous chats to conduct research for my future work to be placed back into the internet.  I will be hereafter referring to this project as "the gift".  I have chosen a broad topic on which to base "the gift".  The topic is beauty.  I have chosen this topic as it is a good metaphor for art. Yet this is much easier for people to talk about without pre-existing knowledge as we all hold our own opinions on this subject. (click on images to expand)

My hopes are the more I chat with people the more I can refine my questions and retorts.  These first chats are trial and error to find what it is people respond to.

 Here I test the waters on questions directly relating to art. As I counted on there is not much knowledge on the subject.  I will not stick to questions pertaining to beauty a more universal topic.

Here I leak information on my project and myself.  I have decided now that I will avoid this from now on.  I will however explain that it is for research purposes but keep anonymous for the most part.  I have chosen to ask questions on personal beauty practices in order to start learning about my audience.

I will also ask questions such as "What lead you to this site?", "Why do you use this site?", and "Can you recommend another site?" In order to learn the driving force of the internet and expand my internet "toolbox".

3.4 Answers and Throw Away Accounts

Browsing Reddit I stumble upon many screen shots of funny YahooAnswers. (answers.yahoo.com)  I chose to start asking my questions here.  Under the topic of Beauty i found that a lot of girls/women post there pics asking if they are beautiful. (click on images to expand)

I question if sharing this information is moral.  I conclude that i am only reposting what is already accessible.

I begin by asking questions about the beauty practice.

I am forced to end my research on YahooAnswers because I must earn more points before posting more questions.  I will eventually return when i have more accurate questions to ask.

3.4 Art out of context

I started my search with my reddit.com addiction.  A forum with many subcategories to suit the interests of the individual user.  While browsing i came across this image that was being posted as WTF.

I recognized it as art but could not remember the name of the artist.  Using yet another tool of the internet i "tineyed" it (tineye.com) and the results led me to a blog that confirmed it was the work of Paticia Piccinni. 

Since starting the project this was my first incounter with art out of context.  I have chosen to document these incounters to use as a reference for when my work will be placed in this context.  (as this is one of the goal of the project)  I will use this information to know when I have created a work of art.

/b/ is Not Your Personal Army or is it?

While surfing popular forums I came across a well know performance art video by a famous artist.  The video was posted under the topic of WTF. The comments made by the confused viewers interested me because the art was completely taken out of context.  These comments posted were the purest form of critique on the video as the viewers had no knowledge of what they were looking at and had no gallery or museum cues that this was in fact art. I became interested in the idea of using the internet as not only a means of creating art but as sharing it using its vast populous as my own personal research team.  I will in short learn the ways of the internet culture and allow it to guide me through my artistic process. The work produced will be placed back into this culture using its own venues to then be interpreted by those who aided in its creation.