Narratives
are a wonderful and broad medium which have become a large part of websites
such as Tumblr (yes, this means we're going to be talking about memes.)
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| Retrieved from: http://www.gurl.com/2015/07/20/new-meme-stealing-breadsticks-hilarious/ |
Narratives common to Tumblr include both networked and localised narratives. From what I
gathered from this week’s lecture, a networked narrative is a story spread
through a person’s connections with others, regardless of location (Van Lyun, 2015). A large portion of the stories told on the
site are of an event in a user’s life that they found amusing and wished to
share with others. For example, one user wrote a post reminiscing about old
commercials which sparked a wave of other users posting about other old commercials
and sharing videos of the commercials themselves.
However, “authors
do not necessarily have control over their own texts and where their images and
words may end up” (Van Lyun, 2015). Memes, for example, are certain
stories that other users latch onto and spread through their network, often
changing it slightly as they go. A popular meme unique to Tumblr is the “breadstick”
meme which depicts a conversation between the user and an unnamed, imaginary
date. It goes like this:
me on a date: so what do you think of X (fictional
character)?
them: [insults X/unpopular opinion about X]
me, shoving
breadsticks into my bag/purse/pockets: i have to go home right now immediately
This meme
became incredibly popular because the format allowed a user to change X to
whatever character or person they liked and thus appealed to all “fandoms”. It
also lead to variations of the same meme but with a different format such as this post and this post.
Localised
narratives are stories being experienced in the places where they are set
(Zeccola, 2012). Usually, this means reading a story while standing at a
particular location, however localised narratives are slightly different on the
internet. On Tumblr, users often post stories about the site itself and things
they have experienced while using the site. However, a person would not
understand the story unless they had actually been on Tumblr themselves. For
example, there are often glitches on Tumblr, which leads to users posting about
the glitches they experienced and sharing screenshots of the amusing chaos.
Having experience with Tumblr allows a person to engage with and understand the
story, thus making it a kind of localised narrative.
Reference
List
Van Lyun, A. (2015) BA1002: Our
space: Networks, narratives and the making of
place, Lecture
6: Networked Narratives: Intertextuality. [Powerpoint
Slides].
Retrieved from http://www.learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
Zeccola, C.
(2012) Locative literature: Where installation art and narrative fiction
collide. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/emerging-
writers-festival-locative-literature-120531/default.htm
I completely agree, memes are a very interesting narrative have sprung up recently out of no where. But they have taken a life of their own, I would go so far as to say they become a cyborg it themselves, a mixture of human comedy and robot repetition which is capable of having a life on its own. Such as what was referenced din Van Lyuns lecture the meme video which became auto tunned and eventually an ad, it grew from a simple news article into an entity all on its own. I also agree with the glitches making their own localised narrative, when something goes wrong people tend to all share similar feelings and make their own feelings on the wrong feeling. Connecting those stores together and creating a local narrative, a story with many different viewpoints but still sharing a similar feeling. Another good blog! Keep up the good work!
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