Thinking Out Loud

In this week’s reading bundle, there was a piece titled ‘The Age of the Essay‘ by Paul Graham. It wove in and out through the history of the essay, how we write them, and why we write them. One thing that resonated with me was the difference of what we’re told an essay is in our early education days, and what an essay should actually be.

“In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you’re writing for yourself. You’re thinking out loud. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out.” – Paul Graham, Trying, ‘The Age of the Essay’

The ‘writing for yourself’ notion is what caught my eye as I was a student that heartily enjoyed writing essays, but that enjoyment didn’t arise until I found that my stride was only hit when the writing became for my own understanding. In the early days of being introduced to the very idea of essays, students such as myself were presented the iron-clad structure we were to follow to create a successful essay. Graham identifies them as the “topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion,” which is essentially the only way I was taught to write them.

Though, in the reading Graham is specifically referring to essays written about English Literature. This only resonated with me in terms of essays being written in English class, but the topics were broader. This was the single section in the reading that stood out to me as being dissociative in my experiences. Yet, in the rest of his analysis, especially in terms of being given a clear goal of what you’re writing towards, rang true.

Graham states that “the other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn’t take a position and then defend it.” For example I recall being given a prompt about a particular interpretation of a film we had watched, yet that wasn’t the interpretation I had gathered from my viewing. But the prompt was written in such a way that forced adherence by the students to argue for that interpretation.

Reading the above piece by Graham prompted me to think back to the essays I had to write in high school. The first touch I think I had with a differing essay was in Year 12 Media when our prompt was to choose a sub-genre of film that is alien to us and analyse it’s history. When questioned about what we’re supposed to be aiming for with the essay (whether it should be argumentative, expository, persuasive), my teacher just told us that we just need to explore the sub-genre and find what’s interesting about it to us. So essentially, in our Year 12 minds, we’re thinking this teacher is just lazily telling us that we need to teach ourselves about this sub-genre, then again my media teacher was always a bit kookier than the norm.

Anyway, I chose B-Movies because I had just become familiar with Quentin Tarantino and watched interviews with him where he’d consistently reference B-Movies. When I got to the end of the essay, I felt I had explained to myself what makes a B-Movie, in terms of tropes and the like, but also what makes people find genuine entertainment in B-Movies. My curiosity for what I shallowly self-classified as films that fell into the B-Movie genre allowed me to read into many different connections and reasons for why B-Movies are the way they are.

The films that first exposed the notion of a ‘B-Movie’ to me.

“So if you want to write essays, you need two ingredients: a few topics you’ve thought about a lot, and some ability to ferret out the unexpected.” – Paul Graham, Surprise, ‘The Age of the Essay’

The connection I’m trying to make with this memory and this reading is that Graham is correct in saying that “the best way to get information out of someone is to ask what surprised them.” I wasn’t expecting to find out what was appealing about that genre, I just set out to know more about it, which helped exponentially in rounding out an essay that was more surprising in nature than if I was just given a prompt to argue about that sub-genre.

Graham also touches on the importance of knowing your audience. Being aware that your writing will be read heightens your willingness to think deeper and accentuate your writing ability. Knowing that my essay was eventually going to be read by my teacher, who had made it well known to me that he’s well-versed in B-Movies, gave me added incentive to make sure the work I was churning out was well researched, as well as giving my own understanding of how I saw the genre from my perspective.

I guess I can see why we’re taught to write essays in high school with the intent of defending/arguing a point, as a kind of building block to improve the writing with the predisposed idea that someone will have to be influenced by it in some way. I just wish that Graham’s reading was something that was incorporated into the teachings as well, as a way to broaden the student’s horizon and to remove the daunting pressure when you were given a prompt.

Regularly Checked

There are several sites that I regularly frequent to keep my ear to the ground about the current events. To give you an idea of the style and interests that this blog will churn out, here’s a short list of the sites that get my consistent clicks.

AVClub

AVClub homepage

  1. The AV Club is my go-to for when I’m on the lookout for any news relating to pop culture, be it movies, television, music, gaming, and events. I often find myself spending hours on AVC just reading old episode-by-episode reviews of decade old television shows.
  2. The Huffington Post for current events. I prefer their layout compared to most as it’s condensed many articles into a limited space.
  3. Reddit, the homepage of the Internet. This can be informative at times, but more often than not I’ve found myself just reading the stories from /r/creepypasta at inappropriate times in the night.
  4. Vice is also a good one for expository documentaries. I first got a whiff of it when I watched a documentary by Vice concerning poisonous frogs… and yes, I will readily admit that I Googled this topic because I watched the Simpsons episode where Homer licks a hallucinogenic frog.

These sites have a general common ground of interest for me, and I’ve noticed have taken up a large portion of my days.

It’s important to note that had I made this list a year or so ago I would’ve had a few different sites lingering in their positions. It was touched on briefly during class but the rise of ‘clickbait‘ articles have lessened my default sites that I visit. One such site was Slate. I regularly read up on Slate but after I began following them on Facebook, my enthusiasm for them went on a steady decline. More often than not their links to their articles had a sensationalist headline that was morally or ethically questioning the reader. A quick browse on the site made me question myself on ‘Why Shouldn’t the Cannibal Cop Look For Love on Match.com?‘ and hyperbole galore with ‘8 Shocking Facts The Media Don’t Have the Courage to Tell You.’ Australia’s own ‘Pedestrian.TV‘ first caught my attention as a ‘hip version of SEEK,’ but a Facebook follow and a year or so later, their headlines got so biased that it took all the fun out of looking for jobs.

You’re probably then thinking why I have The Huffington Post on the list. Well, I find that I do like the layout more than I enjoy their article headlines and titles, so yes, it’s more than likely that it’s just an aesthetic like I have for the site.

Hopefully I can add to this list in the future and it’s smattered with less entertainment sites or at least there are more reputable news outlets.

All I Have To Do Is Search

This time two years ago I began trawling the Internet to find a video of Elvis Costello on The Colbert Report performing a cover of  ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ with Stephen Colbert, which originally aired in 2010.

After a light search, I was made aware that musical performances are quickly removed from the Comedy Central website, essentially making it impossible for me to even see or hear the cover via a legal source.

The screen Australians are frequently faced with when searching for Comedy Central content.

The screen Australians are frequently faced with when searching for Comedy Central content.

Eventually a friend had passed on an mp3 rip of the track, along with a less than stellar video of the performance, which was more than I was going to get by trying to track down an official source.

What this short-lived goose chase allowed me to discover was the tighter the copyright restrictions and monopolisation of content becomes, the more ways you’ll find workarounds for what you’re after.

I tried to find the content on the Colbert Report website, iTunes, Comedy Central, and then any DVD releases. I guess what I’m getting at is the age-old defence of ‘if it were legally available to me, I’d get it’ is valid, at least in my specific case.

Of course the discussion on piracy and reasons for it are dense and many, and throughout the course of this blog, it will be a common topic of discussion for me.

My Introduction to the World of Blogging

I’d never been one to keep a journal for my day-to-days, yet the amount of journals I’ve been given through the years would challenge that, but the elating experience of attending concerts with a few friends and leaving with a dozen more felt like it needed to be documented, and had the potential to be an interesting read.

4 years ago I began a blog on a microblogging and social networking platform called Tumblr to keep track of little details I’d otherwise forget from those shows. Those details then snowballed into essay-length recounts of everything from the lead-up to the concert, right up to whatever I managed to take home with me after the act was long gone.

Screenshot from my personal blog

Screenshot from my personal blog

Since then, I’d been consistently surprised at the amount of like-minded people that contact me on the basis of a single similar interest, and through the years have either upheld continued correspondence or, when possible, have met and become friends. What began as a one-note blog turned into a digital snapshot of my day-to-day, travel diaries, reviews of movies and television, and whatever else I felt I could express well enough in words.

With this experience, I’ve grown to see blogging in a different light, and have become aware of what this relatively new phenomenon can accomplish in the world of networking and social norms.

This week’s reading bundle included ‘Blogs in Media Education‘ by Adrian Miles. It explores the use of blogs in further education as blogs can be utilised to inform and educate. It rings similar to the workings of Bruns’ ‘produser’ theory, where users can both present what they have learnt from the knowledge they’ve consumed, and represent that information to inform themselves and others.

What’s important to note though is the use of ‘network literacy’. Much like a student referencing books and journals they which to associate in their schoolwork, blog authors should also comply with proper associations to source knowledge and ideas to retain legitimacy for both the author as well as readers. In another piece by Adrian Miles, ‘Network Literacy: The New Path To Knowledge‘, he addresses the ingrained literacy we have when it comes to the process of attributing books and journals in our work. With the rise of the Internet being used as a method of acquiring knowledge, the same literacy should be upheld online.

In a previous elective I undertook last semester, we were required to also utilise a blog to submit analysis about Television Cultures and systematic TV tropes. That was the first instance I properly referenced any of my writings that I’d published on the Internet, and unlike previous coursework done purely on Word, the duty of referencing on blog posts felt alien. I’m unsure as to whether that feeling rose because I’d never felt compelled to in my personal writings or just because it’s not something that was ‘ingrained’ in my learning habits.

Throughout this course, I’ll be exploring these issues in the blogging sphere, as well as documenting my own experiences online.

Implementation Test Activity

We’ve passed around lists of things people would like to implement on their blogs, but are currently unable to do so.

Our group received a request for an integrated display of their Twitter accounts.

To tackle the Twitter feed conundrum, our group deciphered a method of implementation using simple WordPress widgets. This allows users to have their live Twitter feeds running on their blog.

We found two methods that seem to be the simplest ways to incorporate your Twitter account.

1. Create a Twitter Widget

Log into your Twitter account, go into your settings and click on the Widgets option.

In this option, you can create a widget that displays your recent tweets.

This option however requires some editing in your theme in the ‘sidebar.php’ file. Please be aware that editing this may require some development coding knowledge, otherwise it could alter your theme or deem it unusable.

2. Twitter Widget Plugin and shortcode

Rotating Tweets from the WordPress Plugin Directory installs a widget that displays your recent tweets in an animated rotation.

Within the above link is the instructions and files needed to download and install your Twitter widget.

Inaugural Post for 2015 Summer Semester!

Week 1, Day 1.

So this is the first post, basically a quick run around of the WordPress machine to get a feel for what I’ll be dealing with in the next 6 weeks.

It will essentially be running in conjunction with the subject blog Networked Media.

As there’s essentially nothing entirely relevant yet to post here, here’s one of my favourite tracks.

It’s important to note that I really enjoy modern artists covering old, old tracks. Just for sound quality’s sake.

And to add a bit of personability to yet another online blog, here’s me to the left of Stephen Colbert: