Songlines and YouTube: Say whaaat?

Not often will one think about the Indigenous Songlines and relate it to YouTube. The only time that may occur is when one purposefully goes on YouTube to listen to Songlines. Other than that, YouTube and Songlines have no real reason to be discussed in an academic manner: until today.

Firstly by looking at Kuttainen (2016), she explains that not all Songlines are the same but instead change from region to region. This comparison can also be made with YouTube with much of the content categorised into music, gaming, beauty/fashion etc.

Although YouTube as a whole is a social network (as can been physically seen at Vidcon) they are mini networks within the social platform. Roosterteeth for example would more likely do a collab with another gaming channel instead of a beauty channel because they would have the same target audience.

In a sense, categorising audiences into certain preferences is much like the regionally diverse Songlines as each category has its own fan-favourite content creators.

Kuttainen (2016) also mentions that Songlines are busy and inhabited. YouTube is very similar in this aspect, as one can get lost in the oblivion by continuingly clicking onto the next suggested video, a habit that sees Buzzfeed raking in billions of views monthly. 

Image: Screenshot of a Buzzfeed video with suggestions of what to watch next on the right. Do DIY Hair Masks really work?

However the difference between Songlines and YouTube in terms of busyness is that Songlines are actually meant to lead you to a destination. YouTube on the other hand leads you into the wilderness.

The most obvious difference between Songlines and YouTube is the cultural significance of each one. Going from video to video does not provide the same ritual journey that ‘walkabout’ does. Songlines are about creation, a philosophy (Chatwin, 1987, 14). Video jumping however is just an aspect of YouTube which a user submits themselves too.

References

Buzzfeed. (n.d.) About Buzzfeed. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/about

Buzzfeed. (2016, August 21). Things You’ll Miss About Your College Roomies [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUUNVMFDvOI

Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. London, United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape Ltd. 

Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002: Stories of Place: Story Lines, week 5 notes [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Roosterteeth. (n.d.). About. Retrieved from http://roosterteeth.com/about/home

Virtual Identity: real or fake?

Image 1: Hiding behind a mask and a computer

in this weeks reading, Laurie McNeill discusses the idea of having an authentic identity as opposed to a ‘fake’ identity especially when it comes to the online world. Mark Zuckerberg’s (the founder of Facebook) statement “you can't be on Facebook without being your authentic self", has opened up a conversation that many professionals are starting to analyse. Are we really our true authentic selves when it comes to being online in a social network?

On Facebook you have an individual profile where you include a photo (profile pic), personal information including your full name, date of birth, where you went to school, all the way down to your favourite movies or hobbies and interests. On the contrary, you have the option to include as much or as little information about yourself. By having the ability to add only selective pieces of information about yourself stands to contest Zuckerberg’s notion of being your authentic self on Facebook.

Let’s take the profile picture for example. There are many photo editing apps out there where you can alter an image. By editing or altering an image of yourself, and then uploading it to Facebook to put as your profile photo, would not be representing your true self. In this week’s lecture Kuttainen states that “Facebook acts as a ‘shadow biographer’ (McNeill) directing users about how selves should be constructed” (Kuttainen, 2016), which is exactly what Facebook is doing. They encourage us to alter our pictures by adding the filters option, so when you upload a photo you have the ability to apply a filter. In reality we can’t apply these type of filters to ourselves unlike Facebook and many other social networks, so it stands to say that being our true authentic selves online is not 100% true. McNeill notes that a Cyborg, in which she defines as “producing selves through/from a human-machine interface” (McNeill, 2012), indicates that we are no longer our authentic human selves but rather a post-human cyborg that hovers on these social networks.

References:


Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 6: Networked Narratives. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

 McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography 35(1), 65-82. University of Hawai'i Press. Retrieved September 2, 2016, from Project MUSE database.

Image Credit: Wonder How To. Retrieved from: http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/95/41/63479609026720/0/create-fake-online-identity-for-website-registrations-just-one-click.1280x600.jpg