Laughter is the Best Medicine: How Humor can Change the World

Last year, I blogged my digital literacy autobiography as an assignment for a course I was taking at the time. Now, I’m posting something sort of similar: a discussion of digital public writing. 

Growing up, one of my favorite books was Hatschi Bratschis Luftballon, a story about a pipe smoking bearded brown-skinned wizard in a turban who travels the world in his hot air balloon to steal misbehaving children. I can’t remember the details of the story (the book is back in Austria, or I’d refresh my memory), but I remember finding the name Hatschi Bratschi funny, probably because of the rhyme, assonance, and consonance. The name is really a perfect storm for capturing the imaginations of small children. It’s also culturally insensitive in and of itself.

I don’t remember being especially afraid of the titular character, but I think the 1968 edition of the book that I had featured less frightening illustrations than the original 1922 publication. Also, I was a fairly well behaved child (as far as I can remember), so I felt pretty safe from the wrath of Hatschi Bratschi, who preyed exclusively on bad children who ran away from home. The book doesn’t seem to be in print anymore. But that just shows how terrible this all is. Before I learned even to read, this book taught me that non-white, non-Christian people are evil child predators. In our politically correct world today, such literature is no longer welcome.

With hindsight, I can say that no harm was intended. No one was trying to enculturate me into xenophobic racism. It was just a book, and I was just a kid, too young to understand. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that my mom pointed out how problematic the book really is. Something she was aware of when she read it to me.

I don’t remember where the book came from because it’s been part of my life since before I can remember anything. It’s just always been there.

This is where institutionalized racism comes from. It’s just part of the system, and so no one is aware enough of it to point it out, to gesture towards the root by which we must pull it out. This is where misogyny comes from. And homophobia. Transphobia. Bigotry of all varieties. It requires an outsider to point it out to those of us who have been socialized and assimilated into the system. We’re so close to it that we can’t see it. My mom, for example, is not racist or xenophobic. (OK, she is a little bit, but she’s also my mom, so I don’t think about that until she says something that causes me to shake my head in disbelief… it’s just so deep down, so not on the surface as to barely exist at all, but it is there…) She’s one of the most liberal, open-minded people I know, and she passed that along to me. While reading Hatschi Bratschis Luftballon to me. (So I must have that same deep-down white privilege racism inside me as well. In fact, I know it’s there because sometimes it comes out.) It’s all very complicated and it would take a summit of psychologists, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists to tease it all apart, to tell us why we are the way we are, how society has become what it is.

In the meantime, it’s paramount that we point out to ourselves and each other when our inner bigotry bubbles to the surface. It turns out we have just the right tool for the job: humor.

Humor and the resulting laughter are social phenomena. In his article “Why Do We Laugh?” Wilson D. Wallis writes that laughter and language are “very similar in origin [and] in function. ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you’ may be true when the world is a society; at present, ‘laugh and your social group laughs with you’ would come nearer the truth” (343). According to Wallis, laughter is a way to put wrongdoers in their place and teach the uninitiated right from wrong. So humorous critiques of current social standards (such as the satire we see on shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight) are a way of emphasizing the problems with those standards.

J.P. Steed takes this theory a step further. For Steed, the insight required to make and understand jokes points to laughter as a tool not just for reprimanding those who step out of line, but also “to provide and provoke self-examination, self-understanding, self-criticism.” (299). Steed bases this concept on the theories of Henri Bergson, who complicates superiority theory of laughter by claiming that laughter is “corrective in nature. The distinction here is subtle but crucial: the former sees laughter as essentially alienating while the latter sees it as essentially assimilating” (300 Steed). For example, by “pointing and laughing” at Western mainstream media’s narratives of oppressed, helpless Muslim women (Kasana 239), satirical blogs like Oppressed Brown Girls Doing Things teach readers to stop buying into these misguided beliefs. Here’s how it works:

1. Western mainstream media is inflexible in its portrayal of Middle Eastern women.
2. Blogs such as Orientalism is Alive are pointing out this inflexibility.
3. Western readers laugh at the joke, initially out of a sense of superiority, but then we catch onto the joke and realize our own prejudices are part of the problem.

Now that I’m an adult and I know better, I can laugh at my childhood obsession with Hatschi Bratschi, but by laughing, I’m acknowledging that the book is problematic, that my exposure to it and my enjoyment of it were wrong. Hindsight makes me feel superior, but I can’t escape the crux of the joke: the flaws of my upbringing, of my enculturation at the hands of this xenophobic book.

Do you have any examples of insightful jokes? Memes, videos, or blog posts that point out our flaws and demand we do better? Share below.

Works Cited

Kasana, Mehreen. “Feminism and the Social Media Sphere”. Women’s Studies Quarterly 42.3/4 (2014): 236–249. Web. 22 March 2016.

McCorkle, Ben and Jason Palmeri. “Putting Our Bodies on the Line: Towards a Capacious Vision of Digital Activism.” Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. 1.11 (2014). Web. 6 March. 2016

Pervocracy, Cliff. “Cosmocking Catchup: October-Decemeber ‘13!” The Pervocracy. 3 January 2014. Web. 17 April 2016.

Ryder, Phyllis Mentzell. “Counterpublics: Beyond Deliberative Conversation.” Rhetorics for Community Action: Public Writing and Writing Publics. Lexington Books, 2011. Print.

O’Reilly, Tim. “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models.” The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Ed. Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin, 2011. 215-229. Print.

Ouellette, Jessica. “Blogging Borders: Transnational Feminist Rhetorics & Global Voices.” Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. 1.11 (2014). Web. 6 March 2016.

Steed, J.P. “‘Through Our Laughter We Are Involved’: Bergsonian Humor in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction.” Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 46.3 (2005): 299-313. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 10 April 2016.

Wallis, Wilson D. “Why Do We Laugh?” The Scientific Monthly. 15.4 (1992): 343-347. JSTOR. Web. 10 April 2016.

Warner, Michael. “Chapter 2: Publics and Counterpublics.” Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002. 65-114. Print.

Vetter, Matthew A. “Queer the Tech: Genderfucking and Anti-Consumer Activism in Social Media.” Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. 1.11 (2014).Web. 6 March 2016.

 

Digital Literacy Autobiography: Conclusion

If you’ve been following this digital literacy series, you might have noticed a pattern: I played video games with friends, I joined social media at the request of friends, I moved with the tides of friends in choosing which social media to stick with and which to drop, I even got upgraded tech and upgraded access to the internet so that I could keep in touch with loved ones.

It’s the social aspects of Web 2.0 that got me engaged online in the first place, and it’s the participatory nature of the digital writing platforms I use that keep me online. I use Facebook, above all, to interact with family and friends. I actively participate in the “collective intelligence” (O’Reilly 223) of the Web 2.0 by liking, sharing, and commenting on articles and videos as well as adding links to my blog post. Even the internal and external links on this blog are examples of my participation in this process (the process of growing the global brain, if you will). I never used to think about this as an important part of improving the web, but in recent years, I’ve become increasingly active in sharing meaningful information.

I’ve noticed a problematic trend of my Facebook friends sharing hoaxes and outdated content because they don’t bother to fact check before they share. If there’s one thing that really worries me about the Web 2.0, it’s that the “collective intelligence” is constantly tainted by trolls who usurp the system for fun and the lazy, gullible users who fall for the tricks (I say as if I’ve never fallen victim myself). Ok so there’s another thing that worries me: oversharing of personal information and not thinking before posting.

But when all is said and done, I’m glad I have the internet to keep me connected to my increasingly far-flung friends and family. I’m grateful to have the world’s infinite information at my fingertips. I appreciate that I can publish this blog and that people can read and respond to it. I’m nervous yet excited for Web 3.0, the semantic web that Randall McClure hails as the future of “WritingResearchWriting,” the melding of conducting research and writing into a single process aided by smart agents that find and present information for us as we write.

What does your digital literacy autobiography look like? Does Web 3.0 frighten or excite you? Do you think collective intelligence works, or are we all becoming stupid shallow narcissists?

Works Cited

McClure, Randall. “WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project.” Computers and Composition 28 (2011): 315-326. SciVerse ScienceDirect. Web.

O’Reilly, Tim. “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models.” The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Ed. Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin, 2011. 215-229. Print.

Digital Literacy Autobiography: The Necessary Tools

Before getting connected to the internet, I used my computer for word processing rudimentary photo editing, doodling in MS word, and playing video games. Plugging in that Ethernet cable opened up a totally different world, and my computer became useful in completely new ways.

Once I got connected, I embarked on my journey of digital literacy with the following web applications (the crossed out items are ones I no longer use):

• Personal email
• ICQ
• AIM
• Myspace
• Skype
• Facebook
• Youtube
• WordPress (duh)
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Pottermore
• Goodreads (check out the widget below to see what I’m currently reading)
• Dropbox

So why did I switch from ICQ to AIM? From Myspace to Facebook? Why do I ignore my Google+ account? Well, all the people I care about keeping in touch with moved on to the newer and therefore inherently better application. Because all of these applications are social in nature, and because I began using them in order to keep up with friends, the applications became obsolete the moment the last of my friends abandoned them. So I had no choice but to follow suit and move on to AIM, move on to Facebook (and delete my Myspace account; good riddance). If suddenly all of my friends decided to use Google+ again, I would surely follow them there as well.

In middle school, when I started using ICQ to instant message my friends and eventually a broader circle of classmates, I also got that first flip phone. I mostly used it to call my parents and my closest friends. I had to constantly remind people that I did not have a texting plan and that they were costing my parents money. By high school, it got to a point where my friends basically stopped making phone calls altogether. During my sophomore year, I got into my first romantic relationship. I used to borrow my friend’s cell phone during biology to text my boyfriend.

Finally, my parents caved to my requests and got me a texting plan.

But issues of connectivity inevitably returned when my friends started upgrading to smartphones. They sent group messages that my phone couldn’t open or fully participate in. They texted me links that my phone couldn’t open.

Finally getting a smartphone in grad school changed the way I use the internet. I’m on Facebook more often. Aside from time spent outside the country, I’m pretty much never not connected: I’m constantly receiving and responding to notifications. I even check my email more often on my phone than on a computer. My favorite feature might just be that I can switch my Google keyboard to German. When I’m going to be writing in German on Facebook or in an email to my dad, I prefer the comfort of my phone’s German auto-correct to typing on a computer that underlines almost every word in red. Not being able to change the language at the click of a button seems highly antiquated.

I’ll get into this in greater detail in a future post, but just to get the juices flowing, let’s take some time to think about something pretty weird: the internet is like a “global brain” (O’Reilly 229).

“Hyperlinking is the foundation of the Web. As users add new content, and new sites, it is bound in to the structure of the Web by other users discovering the content and linking to it. Much as synapses form in the brain, with associations becoming stronger through repetition or intensity, the web of connections grows organically as an output of the collective activity of all Web users.” (O’Reilly 223-224)

“If an essential part of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence, turning the Web into a kind of global brain, the blogosphere is the equivalent of constant mental chatter in the forebrain, the voice we hear in all of our heads. It may not reflect the deep structure of the brain, which is often unconscious, but is instead the equivalent of conscious thought.” (OReilly 229)

“…like Wikipedia blogging harnesses collective intelligence as a kind of filter. What James Suriowecki calls ‘the wisdom of crowds’ comes into play, and much as PageRank produces better results than analysis of any individual document, the collective attention of the blogosphere selects for value.” (O’Reilly 229)

So, welcome to my corner of our collective global brain!

Works Cited

O’Reilly, Tim. “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models.” The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Ed. Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin, 2011. 215-229. Print.

Digital Literacy Autobiography: A Glimps at How I Became Me

Although I started using computers when I was about six years old to play a Little Critter game, my digital literacy really developed when I started middle school and was exposed for the first time to instant messaging. This was also when I got my first cell phone: no texting plan, just a basic flip phone with a camera that took very grainy pictures. Truly a phone for emergencies only. Gaining access to the necessary tools—a PC connected to the internet being chief among them—and joining a social circle that necessitated also joining online communities are the two keys to my digital literacy, and the continuing evolution of these two aspects is what drives my continuing development in digital literacy.

Here’s a picture of my little sister after I bequeathed my very first digital camera to her. I took this picture with my first real digital camera.

I got my first PC toward the end of elementary school to feed my burgeoning interest in computer games. It was a used Compaq that my step-dad bought from one of his employees. It had a pen jammed into the disk drive, but everything else worked fine once we replaced that. I used it to play video games. I also spent a fair bit of time editing photos taken with my first real digital camera, doodling in MS Paint, and processing words for school. But this computer sat in our attic guest bedroom, where it didn’t have internet access. I used to do research at school or on my mom’s computer in my parents’ shared home office and bring the printed materials upstairs to do my writing. Talk about a separation of research and writing into to two exclusive processes (McClure 315-316). It was during middle school that my computer migrated to the basement and got connected to the internet. I can’t pinpoint the exact cause of this migration, but I think it had something to do with the dissolution of my step-dad’s carbon brush plant and the adjoining office. We got a lot of new stuff from that: a whiteboard and office furniture being the key items added to our unfinished basement that made my computer’s move possible. OK the whiteboard wasn’t that important, but I got bored waiting for the computer to boot up (it made some intense and worrying noises during this lengthy process). In those early days of internet access, I frequented webpages that listed silly newspaper headlines and asked the hard-hitting questions like, “Is a turtle without a shell homeless or naked?” I printed out the ones I found most compelling. They’re still taped to my desk back home. Sadly, I failed to save a link to their point of origin and I can’t recall the URL.

In the cafeteria at some point during seventh or eighth grade, I heard people talking about chatting on ICQ after school. I had a personal email account already, and I used it mostly to communicate with family in Austria and a few of my friends from elementary school. Instant messaging, however, was new to me. It remains a mystery to me how all my classmates knew of this technology while I had no idea. It was the prompting of one of my new middle school friends that led me to download the instant messenger onto my computer. Over time, I added a bunch of friends, many of whom I talked to more on ICQ than in person. I would bundle up in a sweatshirt and fluffy socks and spend the afternoon in my Bat Cave, as I called it, (the computer was dubbed Alfred, and my digital camera Walter because calling him Commissioner Gordon would have been disrespectful to that character) chatting with whoever was online about all sorts of trivial things. A couple of times, I even used instant messaging to ask important questions about school, but mostly, my conversations were about, well, nothing. This probably had something to with the fact that, as I said, I didn’t talk to these people much in person. I just got requests to add people, and I never turned anyone down. I have since learned to be more selective on who I connect with, though my Facebook friends list still far exceeds the number of people I regularly interact with. But I also don’t chat with those people on Facebook. I keep them around because they share interesting links, which I like and share in turn. Sometimes they even like a post of mine in return. These highly mediated[i] interactions share little in common with the typical instant message exchange of, “sup?”

“nothing much. sup w/ u?”

“not much.” Followed by a string of nonsensical emoji.

Eventually, for a reason that escaped me, all my friends slowly graduated from ICQ to AIM. I hung onto ICQ a bit longer than most. I didn’t understand the point of switching, but because I used instant messaging to keep in touch with people, I needed to use the same messenger that everyone else was using. I added AIM, and when I switched computers, I didn’t even bother to install ICQ on the new-to-me reformatted computer that was my mom’s before it crashed and she got a new one.

A little while after I started using instant messaging, I also got a Myspace account because one of my friends encouraged me to get one. I continued to use Myspace until I finally deleted the account during my first semester of college (more on that later). During the summer between eighth and ninth grade, my good friend Elyse, who I’d known since I was in first grade and she was in kindergarten, got me to create a Facebook account. She claimed it was better than Myspace without saying why (again, someone had discovered a new technology and encouraged me to switch to it because… reasons). I obliged because she had moved south and was up north visiting for just a little while. I wanted to stay in touch with her, and since she wasn’t using Myspace or personal email anymore, it made sense for me to join Facebook. Gradually, more and more of my friends joined Facebook and abandoned Myspace. My step-siblings and friends in Austria were the outliers for a while: Facebook wasn’t available to them. Once they made the switch, I felt free to delete my Myspace. Stay tuned for more details on these shifting preferences.

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[i] In the first chapter of their book Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction, Jones & Hafner claim that the “tools we use to mediate between ourselves and the world can be thought of as extensions of ourselves” (304). While I never thought of my instant messenger as an extension of myself, I do think about how my Facebook profile, this blog, and other social media profiles communicate who I am to the rest of the world. The things I “like” and the links I share demonstrate my interests in much the same way as a conversation with another individual. It’s like a conversation between me and the rest of the internet, mediated through my social media account.

Works Cited

AIM. AOL, Inc. 2015. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

ICQ. ICQ, LLC 2014. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

Jones, Rodney H. and Christopher A. Hafner. Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introdction. London: Routledge, 2012. Kindle.

McClure, Randall. “WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project.” Computers and Composition 28 (2011): 315-326. SciVerse ScienceDirect. Web.

O’Reilly, Tim. “What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models.” The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Ed. Mark Bauerlein. New York: Penguin, 2011. 215-229. Print.

“Theresa Hoffmann.” Facebook. Theresa Hoffmann. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.