ROFLcon. You had to have been living in a nuclear bunker if you hadn't heard of it: essentially, a conference spanning several days where the internet elite met at the Harvard Berkman Center to discuss the theoretic significance of "internet culture". The event was ostensibly "the internet made flesh", and included many microcelebrities such as Tron Guy, Tai Zonday, etc., and also included new media hard-hitters like Alice Marwick (whose analysis grounded the discussion, lending it academic credence).
Marwick theorizes that the internet democratizes the star system in that anyone with DSL can garner fame, even corporate recognition, if their product is viral enough, if it catches the internet's attention, if it gets enough hits (and we have counters for that). She recalled Andy Samberg's "Lazy Sunday" video as the vehicle that rocketed him to fame on SNL. Henry Jenkins cited Soulja Boy's chance to parlay his amateur music video into an undeniable You Tube hit and then a legitimate record deal. (And we all remember the Arctic Monkeys, Tila Tequilla, and the rest of the MySpace hit factory.) What Marwick touches on, that Jenkins ignores, is that, because these systems of distributions are owned by large media conglomerates (Viacom, Fox, Google...), the owners of these systems see considerable "profit". That there is profit to be had is another ball of wax altogether (we still don't know how too effectively monetize YouTube and MySpace...). But what remains is the distinct possibility that as [potentially] money-making media outlets, these channels of distribution are subject to the same mores, codes, and hierarchies of traditional media outlets. To put it another way, these new media channels are but an extension of existing and heavily entrenched media outlets: as Marwick states, "these [microcelebrities] who bubble up to the top fit an existing image" (and then her slideshow clicks to the infamous "You're a Fag!" image). She follows up with the question: Is new media culture actually upholding the status quo?
I break here. Marwick implores the ROFLcon audience to think about the discourses that are upheld and those that are silenced on the internet, and challenges them to be activists in furthering discourses that diverge from the predominating culture. This is a fair challenge to put the audience to, especially from their standpoint. However, I find a fundamental flaw in her reasoning, and in that of ROFLcon altogether. Her address claims that "internet culture" ignores certain voices; only earnestly supporting certain discourses. "Internet culture" glosses over multiplicities of racial identity and sexual preference (and insists it's video girls be blonde & big-breasted). However, she fails to account for the one intrinsic structural quality of the internet that makes it a plane of almost boundless expanse: it's (relatively and conceivably) unlimited bandwith.
In saying “internet culture ignores discourse X in favor of Y” is wrong. “X” is out there, somewhere, just not on her, or any of the event's participants, browser. Furthermore, this indictment only belies a firm and inescapable belief that "internet culture" has effectively PROCLAIMED the net for its own. The internet is not at fault here, what is at fault is a sense of entitlement that allows people like the ROTFLcon-ers the ability, the inalienable right, to claim media (all media) for its own, and in its own image. This proclamation, however cautionary (because I truly believe that Marwick "gets it"), is circular: spurring the audience on to activism on behalf of some Other establishes the very existence of an Other to "internet culture".
By illustrating the link between participatory culture and larger media industries, Marwick has effectively asserted that "internet culture" is part of a capitalist factory of production. Just as money is a stand-in for [something] in a captalist society, hits, page views, "Whuffies", have been introduced to "internet culture" as a yardstick by which one can quantify one's worth in comparison to others. This "internet culture" is a new incarnation of capitalist society. One cannot help but to harken back to Theodore Adorno's "Culture of Industry," which elucidates the impossibility of a cultural product to break free of a society-sanctioned nexus of signification, and thusly all attempt at subverting its paradigm falls short as merely parody. As Adorno writes:
"Whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks of the trade, he is forgiven because his departures from the norm are regarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more strongly to confirm the validity of the system."
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