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'Four years ago, the activists were using the term, "viral media," and I suppose they still are. If I had my way, the term and "memes" along with it would be retired from our vocabulary of talking about how media circulates. There's something sick and unhealthy about the concept of viral media. The term, "viral" operates off a metaphor of infection, assuming that the public are unwilling carriers of messages — yet I doubt very much that the students who sent me this video were in any sense unwilling or unknowing about what they were doing. The concept of "viral media" strips aside the agency of the participants who are sending along this video for their own reasons — in this case, a mixture of political zeal and personal affection and probably some sense that I would find the video intellectually interesting. The term, "meme," implies that culture is "self-replicating" rather than actively reshaped by the choices made by individual consumers and subcultural communities.'
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'spreadable media' :: '… we are moving from an era when stickiness was the highest virtue because the goal of pull media was to attract consumers to your site and hold them there as long as possible … Instead, we argue that in the era of convergence culture, … media producers need to develop spreadable media. Spreadable content is designed to be circulated by grassroots intermediaries who pass it along to their friends or circulate it through larger communities (whether a fandom or a brand tribe). It is through this process of spreading that the content gains greater resonance in the culture, taking on new meanings, finding new audiences, attracting new markets, and generating new values. In a world of spreadable media, we are going to see more and more media producers openly embrace fan practices, encouraging us to take media in our own hands, and do our part to insure the long term viability of media we like. … Indeed, our new mantra is that if it doesn't spread, it's dead.'
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bongo flava 'podcast' (h/t birdseed/reader)
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new(ish) mixtape from my man, wasp, one of the illest hip-hop gen DJs in dancehall — wasp a buss the place! (don't miss his newest don corleone-produced track, "deh deh wid")
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' Last week in Atlanta, I got to interview Soulja Boy Tell Em. I found out just how young he really is. He was one of about ten rappers I interviewed in one day for my BET show, The Black Carpet. I decided it'd be fun to give all the rappers part of the Proust questionnaire. I thought it'd be a way to get beyond image and into who they really are. Most of the guys gave good, thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive answers. I asked Juelz Santana, “How would you like to die?” He said, "Loved." … Then came Soulja Boy Tell Em. I asked him, “What historical figure do you most hate?” He was stumped. I said, "Others have said Hitler, bin Laden, the slave masters…" He said, "Oh wait! Hold up! Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa." … My jaw, at this point, was on the ground."We wouldn't be here," he continued, having no idea how far in it he'd stepped, "to get this ice and tattoos." '
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'global g-tech' = the meme that wouldn't die, even tho, rly, i'm not _that_ kind of bass booster :: here a brazilian blogger reanimates that 'sardonic' term of mine for another run-down of contemporary post-colonial urban electronic dance music (i don't expect that latter phrase to stick) :: google translate sez, 'Borders fall to earth when the techno of Detroit, Pancadão the hill Rio, the house of Chicago, the Angolan kuduro, the South African Kwaito, hip-hop and breakbeat offer rich possibilities for the track and mutants of the 21st century. … And because everything on the planet tag of the Internet and digital facility, so that many people still find it right now has a name: Global Guetto Techno. Who invented the term was Wayne & Wax, in an attempt to explain the aesthetics of a trend that mixes "genres such as the global hip-hop, techno and reggae, among others, with local styles." '
videyoga :: u can get with this or u can get with that (one)
double hell yes on the name drop on the last article!!!
glad to see him doing his thang… question… where the hell is his partner?
i assume you mean wasp. me too! as for dami d, he’s working on other things at the moment. lord knows i’d love to hear him on some don corleone riddims right now.
A serious hold-up on that last sentence — Eduardo is definitely fabricating some unity here, or at least unwilling to see the bad (unethical, imbalanced, uncredited) with the good (collaboration, exchange, creative commons of samples&sounds).
Good call, Greg. Pretty blindly optimistic closing there, though I think we might have to blame “harmony prevails” more on the pull of journalistic cliches than on thin analysis (though it’s that too). We shouldn’t start picking this apart, though, as I think it will unravel rather quickly. E.g.: MIA’s “indigenous” music is bhangra?