Catfish and Web 2.0

            Catfish is an American documentary created in 2010. It was about a man, Nev, who was being filmed by his brother and friend. The plot of Catfish circles around Nev, and how he builds a relationship with a family, and even furthering into a romantic relationship all via the Internet. He sees Abby’s work in the newspaper, and asks her if he would paint her pictures of his photography. He becomes friends with the family, and his so called “girlfriend” on Facebook, interacting with them through this social networking site, then later furthering to the telephone and mail.             

           Abby Pierce is an eight-year-old artist who lives in Ishpeming, Michigan. Abby sends Nev paintings, including paintings of his own photography. This is what bonded Nev and Abby’s family together. Because of this, they all became friends on Facebook; including Angela, Abby’s Mother, Angela's husband, and Megan, Abby’s older sister, who becomes Nev’s “girlfriend.”

            For the documentary, Ariel and Henry (Nev’s brother and friend) film Nev and his long distance, Internet relationship with Megan. Through their relationship, Nev starts to unravel that Megan is a big phony. She sends him her so called music, but when Nev researches her “songs” he realizes they’re not hers at all, they were taken from other song artists.

            Ariel urges Nev to continue  with the documentary. Nev and the other two boys eventually make their way to Michigan and make a surprise appearance at Abby’s house to confront the lying family. When they arrive they figure out the Megan does not even exist. Abby does have a sister Megan but they have not seen her in months. The pictures of Megan were actually pictures of a family friend of Angela’s, and it turned out he was the one communicating with Nev the whole entire time. All the pictures and friends that were used on Angela, Megan and Angela’s husband’s Facebook were fake, and all made up. Nev also finds out that Abby is not as good of an artist as he thought. She cares little for painting or drawing altogether, and in reality is Angela doing most of the painting.

            Angela made these Facebooks’ in order to escape her daily life at home and the sacrifices she had to make in order to raise a family.

            This whole documentary exhibits and clearly demonstrates what has been shown throughout our whole course. Catfish shows how truly anonymous the Internet can be. Any person can pretend to be any one they want. I can make a Facebook account saying I am Jessica Alba, and I can have people believing me. It is scary that I can take anyone’s pictures and remake an account for them if I wanted to. Creepy stalker men can be on Facebook, looking through any girl’s pictures and downloading them to their computer. You can be talking to any person and not truly know if its them or not. It is scary to think that this could happen to anyone. I know from experience that my friend Carlin had a fake Facebook made about her. It was all her information, and all her pictures, but she was not the one controlling what was said. She had no access to this account and eventually had to report it to Facebook. It is scary that Web 2.0 allows this to happen. Everyone’s information is so easily accessible to us at any given time. This is how false information, and false accounts occur. It should be more regulated, but it is very difficult to do so.

            I found Catfish extremely interesting. It was so cool to watch Nev unravel Angela’s secrets and lies, and witness everything she did, and all the trouble she went through to talk to Nev. She made a fake account, made fake friends, used fake pictures, all to have a long distance relationship. Web 2.0 makes this easy to do, and can happen to any normal person at any time. 

MBW- artist or not?

Do you feel that "Mister Brain Wash" is a legitimate artist who is creating meaningful art?

            Mister Brain Wash, also known as MBW, in my opinion is nowhere near a legitimate artist who creates meaningful art. Meaningful art is a self-explanatory statement. It is art that one creates that actually means something to them, whether it be personally or emotionally. The art most people like to buy, that art that is at least in my house, is art that someone painted, or sculpted, or created that touched them deeply, and therefore has touched us deeply.

            Mister Brain Wash was originally a filmer. He filmed things that he found interesting, that caught him of interest. This is more of an art, then what followed. After his meetings with Banksy, Mister Brain Wash realized that he wanted to paint, and create artwork pieces.  What he started creating were tracings and sketches of work that was already created. He painted pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and Disney characters. He took ideas from already famous artists such as Andy Warhol. Mister Brain Wash himself was a lazy good for nothing so- called “artist.” He had people work for him, and create this work that he took credit for. When it was time for his premiere, Mister Brain Wash didn’t even set up the layout for his own show. He was bossing around people, who I don’t even think were being paid. Mister Brain Wash is so very far from an artist. His title is correct though. MBW definitely does “brainwash” people into thinking he is an artist.  He does brain wash people into thinking his work is original. He does brainwash people into thinking that he makes his own work. 

            I have been in art classes since I was in second grade. I am nowhere near artistic. I have not created anything that any real person would want to buy. But, I can say that I am more of an artist that Mister Brain Wash. For starters, my work is one-hundred percent original. On second note, what I create, I create because it caught my interest, because I liked what I was doing, because it was meaningful to me. That is what being an artist is. Creating something that you personally find interesting, and joyful, and makes you happy. What Mister Brain Wash is creating is only making him happy because he is having airhead people buy his work.

            That is the thing about art. Every piece, every painting, every sculpture, it all means different things to different people. When I see “The David”, a statue of a naked man, that is a very very notable sculpture of art, I just see a big naked man. I see absolutely no meaning to that at all. I do not get what all the fuss is about, and why it is one of the “things to see” when you are in Italy. I saw it first hand, up close. It is in it’s own section in the museum, guarded by a rope. Why? It is a naked man statue. Nothing special. But see, to many people, that statue is GODLY, it is awesome, it is wonderful, might as well be the 8^th wonder of the world. So to say Mister Brain Wash’s work is meaningless, useless, unoriginal and lacking in creativity is just plain harsh. Because from an outsider view, what I saw in the movie, that is 100 percent what it seemed like, but there is always two sides to every story. Maybe to Mister Brain Wash, his paintings did mean more to him then filming. Maybe it was not about the money. Some people can argue for Mister Brain Washer and say his work is awesome. But to me, and the question you asked “Do you feel that "Mister Brain Wash" is a legitimate artist who is creating meaningful art?”, I would PERSONALLY have to no. I think he creates useless, meaningless and insignificant work. 

Grade Update

Illustrator- Tracing Photo

Illustrator

Keen&Rushkoff

How does Keen define Democratized media, and what are his main issues with this trend? use examples from the web in the form of links.

            Democratized media is described as Web 2.0 according to Keen. He said he never realized democracy could have so many possibilities, such as media, information, knowledge, content, audience, author, but mainly us. We are all going to be democratized, and participating in Web 2.0. We are Web 2.0. There is no such thing as a knowledgeable source. We are writing blogs on OUR highly opinionated thoughts, we are remixing music, and there is no such thing as originality anymore. Keen uses Darwinism as an example. “The survival of the loudest and the most opinionated.” Those are the voices that are going to be heard. Keen says that Web 2.0 is bringing superficial observations rather then deep analysis. Everything can be created yourself, encouraging plagiarism and property theft. Web 2.0 initiates a lack of creativity and originality, and initiates the borrowing and using of other people’s ideas.

Compare and Contrast Keens take on Social Media with Douglas Rushkoff's. Which one speaks to you and your own experiences and why?

            Douglas Rushkoff thinks that Social Media can be beneficial to society. It keeps us informed on a many topics, allows us to keep in contact with family members, friends, relatives, and people who are not close in distance. Social media allows us to just in general stay connected to the entire world.  Although Rushkoff does believe that social media can have a few negative aspects, such as being time consuming and addictive, he believes in general that social media has a positive outlook, giving society a positive reinforcement to stay in touch with one another.

            Andrew Keen has a very opposite outlook. He thinks Social Media is ruining our society and is very harmful to society. Keen thinks that if Social Media is pretty much our main way to communicate with one another, and exchange information. He thinks this is a fictional way of living, and we are going to be inexperienced and unable to personally connect and interact with one another.  

            I think both Rushkoff and Keen make good points.  While Rushkoff is right that Social Media can be beneficial to our society, whether it be for communication or the exchange of information, Keen is right when he says that Social Media now consumes many of our lives, weakening our personal, face to face interactions. Rushkoff's view of Social is more influential in my opinion because this generation has grown up in a time where Social Media is the norm, the thing we most know. Life without Social Media is not life at all. Not only can we keep in contact with family and friends, but you can exchange different view points and keep in touch with people miles and miles away.

Whither the Indiviual Continued...

I wrote on Samantha Dickerson, Brian Arfanis and Brett Houseal's blogs.