The Subculture of the Internet

With the introduction of the internet came sounding changes that I don't think anyone could see coming. This world wide web of information enabled people to have access to a seemingly unlimited amount of information. For instance, my dad and I attempted to replace a headlight on his Chevy Tahoe over the Christmas break. After spending roughly 30 minutes trying to open the casing which locked the headlight in place we decided to check youtube for a demonstration. In a matter of three minutes a young man we had never met before showed us what we were doing wrong and how to fix our mistake.

Numerous times I have scoured the internet searching for help on school or recreational projects. Even last night I was on youtube looking for help in my engineering class. The internet has become a well of information that we are constantly connected to, whether in our homes, on our phones, or nowadays even in our cars. However, along with that plethora of information comes another side effect: interaction.

Through the use of the internet people from all sorts of societies are able to talk to one another and exchange ideas. People from completely different continents are able to work on projects together. I occasionally browse the website reddit.com simply because I love seeing the interaction between people of totally different cultures come together. It's a chance for strangers to show the world what exactly they are like and what they like to do, and the internet is a fun place because no matter what it is that you like to do, you can find a website with people who love doing the same thing. Through the exposure of every society on the planet and absorbing bits of each of them, the internet has become a culture all in itself. Words, such as "troll", "meme" and "pwned", all have meanings originating from the internet. The language of leet (1337) speak, which uses numbers, letters, and other ASCII characters to create words, began on the internet. A more recent example of how the internet culture has entered our own cultures is the rapid exposure of the Harlem Shake. Personally, I had never heard the song before but now I can recognize it instantaneously.

While certain sections of the internet is are very scary places, much of it is incredibly interesting. What do you think? Is there a predominant culture residing in the internet? Is it a conglomeration of others or is it unique and separate? I am interested on hearing other's views.

The Grunge Movement of the 90's: How It Affected our Culture Today

On February 1st, Sound City hit public theaters and video-on-demand. Directed by Foo Fighter's frontman Dave Grohl, this documentary of the Los Angeles studio of the same name elaborates on what my friend can only call "...dirty, greasy, old time rock and roll stories." Of all the musicians today, Grohl is certainly no stranger to these kind of stories. Grohl hit mainstream success with a little help from a band called Nirvana. During the 1990's, Nirvana was one of the leading bands in the grunge movement, a phase of heavy music which originated in Seattle. Alongside such notable bands such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana pushed grunge out into the rest of the country, radically changing our culture of music.

While looking for blogs concerning the grunge movement, I found a blog which seemed to be equally as angry as grunge itself (click here). Looking at the rhetorical devices used in this post, the first thing that sticks out to me is the diction. Ryan uses such loaded words to denounce the new bands that are taking the reigns. Overall, the tone of the post seems very, very angry. This technique, however, does a great job in mimicking the type of music is talks about. If Ryan were to be commenting on Katy Perry with this same type of tone, it would feel greatly out of place. Grunge was a type of music new to our culture; it was one that was intended to be judged, to be rejected by the majority, and to stand out. The author knows this and writes his post the same way a grunge artist was to write a song.

On the other end of the spectrum stands a more professional and less furious (click here) blog post about grunge. In this post, the author relies heavily on ethos and spends much more time telling why the grunge movement became what it was. It is much more calm and a lot more coherent. It is, in a way, much like Sound City. It is a documentary. The diction is a lot less loaded and the tone seems more informative than persuasive. There are no vulgar similies or metaphors. With the use of these device, the author conveys much more clarity and calmness in their post.

It may just be a personal bias but I truly believe grunge changed the music scene of our country. As such, I highly doubt that without the Seattle Sound music today would be the same. Music movements change our culture. We saw it happen with Elvis and Buddy Holly and again with the British Invasion, which ushered in big name bands such as The Beatles. Grunge was no different.

Technology: Is it our new culture?

After drastically losing our intramural basketball game on Thursday, I and a few members of the team (and of the organization I am a part of) decided to drown out our sorrows in pancakes at the local IHOP. While waiting on our food, we began talking how our meeting went last week and we discussed the new technique we had adopted in order to keep people involved in the meeting. Our executive board introduced live tweeting the meeting and at the end of the meeting, we would go back through the feed and showcase the tweets on our projector. It was about this time at IHOP when a friend asked me if I have a profile on Twitter, to which I replied I do not. The shock on her face was indescribable, almost to the point where I was about to ask if I had, instead, said something offensive.

Twitter is just one example of how technology has taken over our lives nowadays; it is so ingrained in our lives now that you're almost not human if you haven't embraced the new technology. That night at IHOP I had left my phone at home and, to be perfectly honest, I felt naked without it. Letters have become text messages and video chats are almost as commonplace now as phone calls. There have been times that I have called home only to be told by my parents that they want to "Skype me instead". Phones have now become our lifelines. At any moment one can find the weather across the state, have access to breaking news happening nationally, or even start a conversation with someone who is not even on the same continent with you. Society today has gotten to the point where when you apply for a job, you essentially have two resumes: the printed pieces of paper and your Facebook profile.

There's a wonderful picture floating around on the internet of the presidential family and Vice President Biden all staring into their phones during the second inauguration of Barack Obama (source: www.politicker.com). When I first saw this picture I immediately realized how much our culture has changed in recent years with the explosive growth of the smartphone. Not even the family of the most powerful man of the United States of America can escape the pull of technology. If not even someone like our president cannot put aside his cell phone for a couple of hours, are we, as members of a society that now relies on access to social media sites, expected to rely less on our phones?

I am not saying technology is bad. I am not saying that our technological culture is something we should be ashamed of. There is no need for us to go back to a time where we used a telegraph to tell people how we were doing. But instead, I ask that you look to the future. What kind of technological advances do we have in store for us in the upcoming years? Is that something we can even begin to predict? Is it a bad thing that hangouts with friends have become people sitting around together while on their phones? Technology, and especially the smartphone, has turned this culture around, but is it for the better or the worse?

Culture Defined

During my freshman year I lived in a four room apartment with two other guys, neither of which I knew beforehand. Sylvain was far more interesting than the other roommate. Sylvain was a graduate student from France who had traveled to College Station to further progress his Petroleum Engineering degree. From a first hand experience, let me just go ahead and tell you that nothing else on this planet makes you more aware of your culture than having someone from a different country live with you.

His first night in Texas was spent sitting in the passenger seat of my Toyota Tundra. We had attempted to go to Breakaway that night, I being a Christian and he being, as he said, "open-minded", but unfortunately we could not find a parking spot. We stopped to get gas, and when it was time to leave the gas station, he told me something that I will never forget. He looked over at me and jokingly told me "You know, this is the first time I have ever ridden in a truck. I've driven and rode in cars, but never a truck like this." I chuckled and replied "Well, we do have a few of them down here." And then, with a very puzzled look on his face, he asked me "Why do you people drive trucks down here? Do you have a lot of stuff to move around?" I was a little taken back by this. At that moment I began to notice all the trucks around me and how little work the bed of my own truck was getting. I had never really thought about why I had this truck. "Well, no" I said, "but occasionally I do so it's nice to have a truck. But, I mean, a lot of us don't move things around in our trucks daily. It's just something we have 'down here'."

I now realize that that, essentially, is culture. Just something we have or do "down here". Culture isn't something that can be written down and passed on to generation from generation like a book; culture is meant to be lived and experienced! We all hear stories of how in Mexico you have a time of the day when everybody goes home and takes a nap and in the United Kingdom evidently all there is to drink is tea. We all know that this is part of their culture, but we cannot truly say we understand that culture. Sylvain could (and did) tell me of different methods or reasons that he did in France, but I could not understand them without experiencing them. In turn, it's hard to exactly pinpoint what exactly our culture here is without an outside view, such as a foreign roommate. Why do put on our best button down shirt and cowboy boots and go dancing? For what reason do we strap people onto very angry bulls and time how long they can hold on to it? When on the bus, why is it really necessary to sit at least one seat away from someone? The answer to these questions is very simple. These are all just things that we do "down here".

Culture is not something that can be easily defined. It is not even a word that has various adjectives to describe it; we cannot call it green, tall, or solid as we can many other words. It is an omnipresent force which influences every aspect of a society. Art, music, food, politics, sports, education, and nearly any other part of which we call “normal” is prone to culture. In fact, to call culture a simple definition would be to under appreciate it. Culture is a mist that you must surround yourself and get lost in to completely understand the meaning of it.

Sylvain came home one day after a walk through the local park. Wide eyed, he ran into the kitchen area where I was heating up leftovers for dinner. He looked at me and, with the most bewildered look I have ever seen on a human face, he told me "Travis, I saw an armadillo today! It was in the park and it scurried under the bridge! I've never seen one before!" Laughing, I replied back to him "Yep, we have a lot of armadillos around here! They're just something we have 'down here'."

So, with this in mind, if you were to know someone from foreign soil, could you explain our culture to them? How would you do it? Could you explain why, exactly, we do what we do? It may sound simple, but to others, it is not as straight forward as you would think.