A Rage Phenomena

A Rage Phenomena

The Actor Network theory and The origin of MEMES 

Christopher Kelty (2008) came up with the idea of a recursive public. The actor-network theory (Lataour 1999) is a concept that was conceived as a means to address societal processes without being drawn into a closed, cultured and mechanical universe by traditional organisations. Actors can be anyone and when a network is established, things start to move hence becoming important. Deleuze & Guttari (1988) Rhizome principles instigates that any point of the rhizome can be connection to anything which is similar to networks.

To explain these concepts is best explaining with the use of an example. Rage comics are a prime example of a cultural phenomenon. These originated from the popular site 4chan in 2008 and gained popularity due to its simple art, real life experiences and humorous punch-lines at the end. At first, the simple image was of a guy showing rage, however these have since changed when another website named Reddit in 2009 launched a sub-reddit named ‘FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU’ which created numerous more characters. As the popularity increased, there was a need for easier method of creation, management and thus, rage makers were introduced (Knowyourmeme 2014). Organisations such as New York Times even circulated the works (Boutin 2012). There are numerous actors that occur here that has caused this popularity and it still continues. From one site to another and from various people and creation of more characters, this cultural phenomenon has merged technical and the human to operate around networks mixing entries of social, politic and aesthetics compared with previously.

As mentioned above, this phenomenon had a problem. It is often difficult to find who created the origins of the characters as the various places they are posted but altered. Some faces even remain unknown and some faces meanings were changed such as the ‘Me Gusta’ Face and some were used without authorization (Mar 2012). Faces even have emerging stories and receiving attention from other non-English speaking countries showing the network capability of a cultural phenomenon. This shows the potential power of without interference by traditional processes.

BibliographyBoutin, P. (2012). Put Your Rage Into a Cartoon and Exit Laughing. The New York Times. [online]. Avaible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/technology/personaltech/rage-comics-turn-everyday-stress-into-laughs.html [Accessed 8 November 2014].Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing.Kelty, C. (2008). Two bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software and the Internet. Durham: Duke University Press.Know Your Meme, (2014). Rage Comics. [online]. Avaiable at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rage-comics [Accessed 8 November 2014].Latour, B. (1999). On recalling ANT. The Sociological Review. 47(1).  pp.15-25.Mar, T. (2012). Fffuuuuuuuu: The Internet anthropologist’s field guide to “rage faces”. Arstechnica. [online]. Available at: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/the-internet-anthropologists-field-guide-to-rage-faces/2 [Accessed 8 November 2014].

x