But Tim's right, of course. The only thing bloggers love as much as a good old-fashioned pile-on is an inside joke. Ours is an influential and popular culture, but it's still full of memes that have never crossed over to traditional media such as television and print. (Star Wars Kid excepted.)
With things like Crying While Eating showing up on TV even more quickly in their life cycles, are we going to lose the chance to have web-geek-only inside jokes? Is everyone already going to know what we find amusing? And is getting our memes out there going to be as annoying as the radio show prank callers who get themeselves onto TV?
]]>Those memes are already godawful annoying enough just in the world of blogs.
We may as well spread them to the TV/radio/print worlds to annoy the maximum number of people possible.
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There are as many people using technology to create truly wonderful uplifting works as those who are creating the truly horrific and degrading images.
In case you haven't seen some of the more encouraging and delightful images, check out what's listed in this post. Pay special attention to incredible talent of Fredo Viola.
I agree with you it's - well I would use the word sad rather than frightening - that more people know that word, which represents degradation, than know about Fredo's moving and technically astonishing work. Can we change that?
I hope you understand that's ... a common reaction. The packaging of that squick factor into a net meme is more or less a defensive social reaction. The more net-savvy may well seem more inured to such imagery, but it's partly the jokey frame that makes it tolerable.
I do wonder when grandma will be as goatse-blase as the rest of us. Certainly Ron Jeremy, of all people, needed to be initiated ...
By the way, I disagree about the "degradation" involved. The model in those shots seems to be a fetishist who would, likely, reject that label for something he does voluntarily for his own pleasure. Degradation is a social effect, involving more than one person.
And if you think there's some sort of contest between the uplifting and the degrading, well ... I'm not sure we're at all on the same page. Fark is never going to be a place where "uplifting" imagery is used as a surprise for someone blindly clicking on a link, you understand.
]]>Degradation isn't "social". It is not a verb. It is a noun, and I'm satisfied with my use of the term.
degradation - n.
1 The act or process of degrading.
2 The state of being degraded; degeneration.
3 A decline to a lower condition, quality, or level.
You understand that you are making all sorts of unfounded assumptions. You make assumptions about the level of my net savviness. Why is that? Because I'm offended? You seem to also be assuming that my initiation was recent. Why is that? You are also making huge assumptions about the human being in the image.
Deep Throat was a film before the label was used for a character in Watergate. The woman who starred in the movie was drugged and forced to perform in that movie. Would it change your cavilier attitude toward the degradation depicted to learn that the photo was taken under duress?
I was tricked into viewing the image by a 17 year old boy. It appears that he has many peers in the blogosphere.
Btw, I've been on the net since 1985 when it was still called the Arpanet. How about you, Dan?
Do you remember the Green Card Lawyer?
]]>Where's the delete comment key? Never mind.