internet cultural studies #2

today's internet cultural lesson is about that bane/boon of all forum goers called "the rick roll."

in the halcyon days of the internet, discussion forums were created and divided by topic to allow serious minded people from all over the world to discuss issues relating to said topics.

unserious minded people could not let all this seriousness persist without challenge and attempts were made to "derail" the conversations.

some of the first attempts at derailing conversations were less than subtle and would consist of people interjecting in the middle of a conversation posts like "and now, here are some pictures of some ducks/bunnies/kitties" followed by pictures of ducks/bunnies/kitties. sometimes the discussion would turn away from serious matters and move to discussions of said pictures and the conversation would have been successfully derailed.

eventually the serious people learned to just ignore these derail attempts and persistently continue on in their serious conversations. the unserious people, however, were not admitting defeat and started to employ subtle tactics by contributing to the conversation in a serious way in order to build credibility, but then offering one or more links that were allegedly relevant to the point they were making. when the serious forum goers clicked on the link, they found themselves taken to pictures that were completely irrelevant to the topic and sometimes a discussion about the irrelevance would emerge to once again successfully derail the discussion.

the most common meme for these derail attempts were often pictures of ducks on skates, skateboards or wheels of some kind which the unserious derailers dubbed "duck rolls."

as inane as the images of ducks on wheels were, the serious forum goers could only stomach one, maybe two discussions about the cutely bizarre pictures and then they learned to ignore them as they did with the earlier unsubtle derail attempts.

clearly the unserious people needed a weapon of mass distraction that could weather multiple discussions and maintain it's power to derail conversations.

some enterprising and young unserious forum goer* happened to be digging into the video archives of the distant past and stumbled upon an 80s era video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up." this forum goer realized immediately that this was the weapon he and his fellow unserious forum goers had been looking for and "the rick roll" was born.

the rick roll seems to have the perfect qualities to repeatedly be effective at derailing conversations. first, the song is actually pretty decent as 80s era love songs go, so it's not painful enough to make one turn it off immediately. on the other hand, the video itself has the kind of gut wrenching quality most closely associated with train wrecks.

the video consists of rick astley pseudo-dancing while singing his song intermixed with images of professional dancers doing random dance moves with little coreography. it's almost as if rick said "well, i dance like a white guy, so let's get some pros in here and have them do all that professional dance stuff. i want people to leap off walls and spin around in circles and all that crap."

another surreal quality to the video is the contrast of how rick astley looks with the rich baritone of his voice. when you first see this red headed doogie howser on the screen you absolutely do not expect to hear the quality of the voice present in the song, yet there it is.

all these factors lead one to realize that the people in the video don't realize how embarrassed they should be while doing embarrassing stuff. there is a natural "what were they thinking?!" quality much like looking at old/new pictures of people in bell bottoms and/or parachute pants. you want so badly to avert your eyes, but you have to watch the video just to see how bad it's going to get and therein lies the essence of the rick roll as a successful forum derail tool.

* attempts to verify the young and/or enterprising nature of the unserious forum goer were unsuccessful.

EDIT: i thought these were kinda funny:
barack roll
news anchor april fools

apparently youtube linked all videos to a rick roll on april 1. awesome!

Why I Hate Halloween, part 1

Hi everybody! It's been awhile since I (the creator of this blog) blogged myself. And I apologize in advance of possibly offending some of you. I know many people LOVE LOVE LOVE Halloween. However, I am not one of those people.

This morning reminded me of one of the reasons - Savannah has been introduced to the Early Morning Sugar High. Jackson "kindly" shared some of his candy from last nights ward party. "Wow! That stuff is great!" thinks Savannah in her little 18 month old brain. So great in fact, that regular food doesn't have a chance. She refuses to eat any breakfast at all. After the kids leave for school she manages to find a wrapped sucker on the floor (surprise surprise) and brings it to me hoping I will open it for her. When I do not comply, she throws a full blown (probably her first official, but maybe not) temper tantrum. For 10 minutes she yells and screams and thrashes about on the floor ticked at me that I won't open that darn sucker for her. Thanks Jackson.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll blog about my dislike of Halloween Costumes and then sometime in the next week I can tell you about the numerous candy wrappers found all over the house, stuffed under pillows and matresses, taffy stuck in hair/carpet/couch. Sigh...who invented this holiday anyways?

Have a great day tomorrow :D

Hula Hunnies

this vid is too cute to pass up -

Hannah and Maegann have been taking Hula lessons from a neighbor girl (she's only 13 herself!) and having a blast! They had a summer performance in the back yard and later performed at Thanksgiving Point. I think I have pictures on my camera but the battery is dead. So for now, here is a link to the video teaser trailer. You have to scroll down past some wedding vids till you find the "hula teaser" one. click here to see the cutest hulas!

Visiting Teaching Conference

As some of you may know, I am in the Relief Society Presidency in the ward. We have been planning our upcoming Visiting Teaching Conference for several months now and are excited to have it ready to go next month! One of the funnest parts in planning this event was a movie we had made by several professionals that live in our ward. All the actors and crew are members of our ward (you may find the voice-over for the promo-clip a little familiar).

The movie is about a sister in the ward who, to put it mildly, does not have a testimony of visiting teaching. Through a sudden change in her assignments, she goes through some experiences that help her gain that needed testimony.

We are really excited about the premiere this November and hope to have the best conference EVAR!

Im having trouble posting the video in this blog, but follow the link to a YouTube showing... click here to see the "Sister Turner" trailer.

internet cultural studies

i was at a gathering recently where it became clear that i have made the transition from popular culture to internet culture. i have no clue what's on tv nowadays or even who the current stars of the month are since i no longer watch tv or really watch movies.

at the same gathering, it became clear that a majority of people have not made the switch yet and cultural references that were common place among my geek peer group were lost on most of the other people.

as such, i've decided to start spreading internet culture through this blog in an effort to infortain.

the first of our internet cultural studies will be Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

enjoy.

internet popular cultural references: "what a crazy random happenstance" and "i have a phd in horribleness"

P.S. i would rate the show PG for some mature subject matter and language, but i suspect it's mild compared to what's on tv nowadays.

BYU Football...

since i moved here to happy valley i've constantly been asked if i'm a byu fan. i felt i kinda should be because a) my wife graduated from there and b) it's a church school which represented church values.

the problem was, i knew some of the football players on the team ~15 years ago and these particular people conducted themselves in a manner that noone would mistake for being religious in any way. this kinda soured me on what i considered to be the facade of byu football and i didn't feel any more of an impulse to be a fan than i was to be a fan of florida state or oklahoma. seemed like it was just another college football program.

my view about that has changed this year as this USA Today article profiling byu football explains.

it would be easy to call byu the underdogs here because, from a traditional perspective, they are operating with a handicap. the recruiting standards imposed by the coaches which emphasize character over skill would be considered a liability in any other college football program. however, i don't think anyone familiar with the story of the two thousand stripling warriors could call byu "underdogs".

in any case, i'll definitely be rooting hard for byu to go the distance this year, so call me a fan. (i've usually rooted for tcu over byu just cause tcu is from texas, but not this year).

GO BYU!

Savannah walking

Here she is, better late than never (disregard the mess on the floor - it is not mom-authorized)


The result of 4 older siblings - walking 6 months later than all your friends. She's still not walking 100% of the time but she's gaining confidence!