Bound 4 (Blogpost 7)

While not Kanye West himself is not a company, he is most certainly a brand. He has his music, his fashion and an overall image that he attempts to maintain each day. In November of 2013, West released a music video to “Bound 2”, one of the popular singles from his recently released album, Yeezus. This video, which can be seen below, received immediate attention for obvious reasons. It depicts West and a shirtless, then fiancé, Kim Kardashian provocatively riding a motorcycle through scenic backdrops. The video blew up, by anyone’s standards it was a viral hit, and today has over 62.5 million views on YouTube alone.

This assignment asks for us to examine a video that was “strategically placed by a company as part of a viral marketing campaign.” Some may not agree that a music video qualifies, but I strongly believe that this video is just that. Whether you like it or not, we live in a world where almost anything that Kanye West or Kim Kardashian say or do becomes newsworthy. Combine the two in a risqué music video promoting a Kanye West single and you have created the perfect viral video. There is not a doubt in my mind that West, and everyone on his team, knew exactly what would happen to the video.

The initial response to the video was not very clear. As with anything West creates, those who love him loved the video and those who hate him hated it. However, even those who loved it did not really understand it. Spin, an American music magazine, said of the video “a pretty bad idea seen through so completely that it stops being a bad idea.” Even today, in the YouTube comments, fans and haters argue with each other over their opinions.

One of the most interesting aspects of the video is its spreadability. Spreadability refers to the additional value created by the ability for others to remix and repurpose material and is more descriptive and specific than classifying something as viral. While West may have known his video would become incredibly popular, my guess is that he did not anticipate just how spreadable it was. Just less than a week after West released his music video, comedians James Franco and Seth Rogen released a parody video titled “Bound 3.”

“Bound 3” has over 9 million views on YouTube and became a “viral video” in its own right. What amazes me is that this parody video became so well established and accepted that other people began naming their parody videos “Bound 4,” further legitimizing number 3 (A screen shot of a YouTube search for ‘Bound 4” can be seen below). But the parody videos did not stop there. Saturday Night Live aired a short holiday-themed parody in December of that year (link – starts at 3 minutes), and South Park created their own interpretation as well (link).

Despite the millions of views and the breadth of parody videos online (also with millions of views), I think the true testament to the original music video’s spreadability is the ease with which an average person can replicate it. Take me and my friend Justin for example. During our travels this past semester, Justin created somewhat of a mini Instagram project. Whenever we found something we could both straddle together, we took a picture and he posted it with the hashtag “bound #.” It all started with a statue of a donkey in Maastricht. We took the picture, he turned to me with a smile on his face and said: “Yo. Bound 4.” I knew exactly what he was talking about, which further illustrates the power of this video and its spreadability. In total, he posted 6 pictures, numbers four through nine (ok, we started off pretty strong and then kind of forgot about it, but a few examples can be seen below).

 

The music video for “Bound 2” was released to promote West and his music, not necessarily to go viral in the sense that a company might try with their own video. While I think it would have been a bit presumptuous of West to think he is so influential that two guys would mimic his video while studying abroad, I stand by the notion that he knew what he was creating. In the world of today in which a single person can be just as much a brand as any company, anyone can make their video go viral, but it takes something special to be spreadable.

This Guy Fuchen Hates Participatory Culture (Blogpost 8)

Participatory culture describes the act of creation on the behalf of fans and consumers, resulting in free content and publicity for companies, both positive and negative. Because it allows anyone to create, participatory culture pushes society in a more democratic direction as creators are able to help shape culture, rather than having culture impressed upon them. This is very much in contrast to old school mass media in which companies were the senders of media and consumers the receivers, with very little exception. Many people are in full support of the shift in the way content is created because of how it increases democracy, but also because it has created a new economy in which everyone plays a role. However, not everyone views participatory culture in this light. One such critic is Christian Fuchs.

One of Fuchs’ main criticisms is that describing participatory culture as more democratic is a form of reductionism, meaning that the entire concept is defined by one narrow characteristic. While it is technically true that allowing anyone to contribute to culture is more democratic, part of the process is being overlooked. While it is true that the creator of content has said over what they are expressing, that is where their ownership ends. Once content is created, companies have all of the power. They decide what to share and how content is to be used. Furthermore, they control the actions of their company. Even though a consumer is participating in this new culture and their content is being used, they have no say over the entity using it, which in reality is not very democratic at all.

Fuchs also criticizes the exchange of participation and creation for the satisfaction and fulfillment that comes with the use of different platforms as he sees it as unfair. The reason being that companies not only receive free content in the exchange, but they are then able to monetize this content for their own profit. He argues that just because the participation does not feel like work does not mean the users are being any less exploited.

The problems Fuchs has with participatory culture can be seen when a company, like Pepsi, runs a campaign asking fans to design a special can for them (seen below). Their intention is not to increase the democracy in out culture or to give the people a say in how they run their company. Their motives are purely capitalistic, driven solely by profit. Not only do they forgo the cost of paying an agency to design the new can, but they also received publicity and sold more cans of soda.

In an earlier paper, Van Dijck and Nieborg also presented criticisms of participatory culture, however they sought issue with different aspects. The underlying problem they see with participatory culture is that it is not fair. They state that not all users are equally creative. This is to say that some users are naturally better than others at creating YouTube videos or contributing to Wikipedia articles. This is not a problem until considering their second point, that some users have more motivation to participate than others. On many participatory platforms, it is common to see a small group of elite creators whose content is consumed by a much larger group of people. I for one have never posted on video to YouTube myself, but have of course watched many of those produced by others.

In my day to day life, I experience many forms of participatory culture, both good and bad. One such example of a good use of participatory culture is Study Drive. This platform allows for students to post class notes in a central online location so that others can benefit from additional resources. Another example of using participatory culture in a good way is posting and or sharing on Facebook to find missing people and items. This is the modern day equivalent of posting missing children’s’ pictures on milk cartons. Some posts are shared hundreds of thousands of times and can be successful in locating what was lost.

One of the many ways I see participatory culture being exploited in a harmful way can also be seen on Facebook. During the 2016 US election, millions of people took to social media to share not only their opinions but also articles. The only issue was that not all of the articles being shared were from reputable sources, meaning that inaccurate information was spread at an alarming rate. However, just skimming an inaccurate but eye-catching headline is enough to sway people’s minds, and ultimately their votes. This has actually caused Facebook to consider implementations that signify if an article is verified or not.

Prisons and Hospitals and Schools, Oh My! (Blogpost 4)

While Discourse Analysis I deals with images and text, this chapter discussed Discourse Analysis II, which focuses more on the institutions and practices responsible for the production of said images and texts. This form of analysis also examines how these institutions influence their subjects. Common topics for this form of analysis include prisons, hospitals and schools. One thing that all of these institutions have in common is a large disparity in power; guard to inmate, doctor to patient and teacher to student. These kinds of relationships are often products of the rules and structures in place around them.

As Foucault says, institutions are made up of two things: apparatuses and technologies. An institutional apparatus is the larger form of power and or knowledge upon which the institution is built. While often physical, like architecture, they can also be more abstract like laws or morals. Institutional technologies are the smaller more technical practices and objects that enable the power and or knowledge. An example of this can be the tinted windows in a prison watch tower that let guards see out, but do not let prisoners see inside. Besides the physical components of institutions, like the building that make them up, Discourse Analysis II does allow for other sources to be studied. As far as primary sources go, one could analyze anything from blueprints to documents such as rules and regulations.

I will be using the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as the subject of my analysis. This is a museum that I have visited on two separate occasions during my exchange here, and I have noticed the presence of many of the ideas brought up in the text. The institutional apparatus is the physical museum itself, including its layout, architecture and location. Its layout is responsible for guiding visitors through in an intuitive manner. However, the building’s architecture and location go further and demonstrate the importance of the museum. The exterior’s intricate design, which can be seen in the image below, shows guests a precursor to what they will see inside. And the central location, in the middle of the city’s arch of canals as well as the end of a grand park, almost naturally leads people to it. In addition to that, it is also the home of the IAmsterdam sign (which can barely be seen in the picture below). This is one of the most well-known photo ops in the entire city and adds to the museum’s centrality.

The Rijksmuseum is also home to many institutional technologies that inform guests on how to make their way through the museum. The most obvious examples of this are both the guided tour and the information sheets available in many rooms. The tour comes in the form of an application you can download on your phone, or an iPod you can borrow from the museum. It guides you through the museum room by room, explaining the history and significance of one or two paintings per room. The information sheets are available in many of the larger rooms and give readers more information on one painting, highlighting very minute details that could otherwise be easily missed. What these two technologies have in common is that it takes the decision of which paintings to look at out of the hands of the guest, as the Rijksmuseum is essentially telling everyone what they see as the most important pieces to look at.

One of my favorite things about the Rijksmuseum is the library. I have never opened a single book from it, nor do I know how to gain access to them. However, it is simply memorizing (pictured below). What is almost as amazing as the extensive collection is the silence you experience upon entering the library, as you would expect when walking into any library in the world. All that separates the library viewing area from the exhibition room right before it is a glass door. This barrier, despite being transparent, along with the knowledge that one is entering a library, is enough to silence every guest that enters. The constant buzz heard throughout the rest of the museum is gone, and it is silent, like every other library I have ever been to. While technically an institutional technology, it is much more subtle here. This is because the rules of a library are much more universal than most other types of institutions.