meta-cyborgology

This post is somewhat of a stretch, but I think it remains applicable nonetheless. Below I have embedded three video clips, each dealing with “the hipster” as a relatively recent subcultural form and social type.

First, we have the “Hipster Olympics,” a viral video that made the rounds a few years back. The video makes a parody of the hipster, mocking their supposed elitism, pretension, dependency on new technologies, and obsession with authenticity as a source of subcultural distinction (note the subtle play on Pabst Blue Ribbon).

Second, we have a short clip from the “2 Broke Girls” a new CBS television series focusing on the epicenter of the hipster subculture, the gentrified Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. In the clip we see the confluence of hipsters and homelessness, which ultimately serves to as a satire on the “Poor Chic” fashion trends of New York’s urban hipsters (Halnon 2002). We also notice the association between hipsters and personal hygiene (or lack thereof), a stereotype that has also been foisted upon the #Occupy protestors.

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Image of the week. augmented reality: the online infiltrates how we perceive the offline, made literal here.

Meanwhile, it was busy this week on Cyborgology…

PJ Rey writes about Klout and how it infiltrates our mind’s eye

Dave Strohecker and Jenny Davis team to write about the gender-switching ‘Jailbreak the Patriarchy!’ browser hack

Nathan Jurgenson provides some initial reflections on the OWS Raid at Zuccotti park

PJ Rey gets Marxian and discusses value, productivity, labor and the web

and Mike Bulajewski responds

Sarah Wanenchak reflects on the evolution of the ‘human microphone’ as Karl Rove gets mic-checked

David Banks tells the important story digitality and materiality with the example of getting Wi-Fi running at an Occupy park

And, finally, a guest-post by Doug Hill discusses the continuing issues of automation, jobs and how society should respond

Image of the week is a photo Cyborgology editor Nathan Jurgenson took yesterday while visiting Marshall McLuhan’s Coach House at the University of Toronto. A former horse stable, this was the home of McLuhan’s research center and where he held his famous weekly seminars that attracted celebrities like John Lennon and Woody Allen. Many described the atmosphere as similar to Andy Warhol’s Factory.

This past week on Cyborgology…

Dave Strohecker critiqued Tom Morello’s new song as another example of the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ trope

David Banks reflected on the recent Society for the Social Studies of Science meetings in Cleveland

PJ writes a rich essay on Julian Assange’s politics and importantly distinguishes cyber-libertarianism from cyber-anarchism

David Banks is at it again, this time writing about panoptic surveillance at Occupy Wall Street as a panopitcon in the clouds and the crowds

Jenny Davis offers a theoretical review of the new film In Time, and inspires discussion in the comments

And Dave Strohecker wraps up the week with his take on the technology of social-movement tattooing as a new form of slacktivism

Over the summer of 2011, several interns at BBH Labs (a marketing research firm in New York) came up with The Social Tattoo Project as a way to direct empathy towards natural disasters and social crises that continue to plague populations around the world. They used Twitter to track “trending topics” and then asked the Twitterverse to vote on which issues they wanted to see memorialized in a tattoo, essentially “crowdsourcing” the content of each piece. Volunteers were then selected to receive these tattoo designs without ever having seen them ahead of time. The final five topics included “a cresting wave for Japan, handcuffed hands for human trafficking, a broken heart for Haiti, a pie chart for poverty and a flower flag for Norway” (Corr 2011). The video above is a short clip highlighting the “broken heart for Haiti” design and the woman who had it tattooed onto her body.

However, this project is not the first of it’s kind. For example, Iraqi American artist Wafaa Bilal took it upon himself (quite literally) to commemorate the deaths of Iraqi’s and American’s since the invasion started in 2003. On March 9th, 2010, he had over 100,000 recorded fatalities of the “War on Terror” tattooed on his back during a live, streaming performance at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts gallery in New York City titled “…And Counting”: 5,000 dots were tattooed in red ink to represent fallen American soldiers and 100,000 dots were tattooed in invisible ink to represent (largely overlooked) fallen Iraqis. His art project was featured on NPR and DemocracyNow, and became the focal point for discussions about the costs of the “War on Terror.” more...

A couple weeks back I posted about Steven Greenstreet’s video titled “The Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall St,” linking it to an emerging media trope called the “Manic Pixie Dreamgirl.” The phrase, coined by Nathan Rabin in his review of the 2005 film Elizabethtown, has quickly become a powerful reminder of the androcentric manner in which female characters are so often constructed in media texts.

I also connected the media trope to an emerging cultural stereotype about progressive young women. I argued that the manic pixie dreamgirl trope is largely a stereotype about young, progressive, non-conformist women who speak out of turn, defy normative conventions in self-presentation and behavior, and largely serve as “inspiration” for (white) male leads to step forward and grab life by the horns, assuming their rightful place as heirs to power. more...