Imagine a world where you can get an RSS feed of all the comments that you leave, to save for reference or repost as your comment blog. A world where you can subscribe to all the comments that another person leaves across different journals. Imagine a world where you can post a video comment as easily as a text comment. A world where you can simultaneously Tweet your comments to your Twitter account. Where other readers can rate your comments, and those ratings shape your reputation as measured in points. A world where the owner of the journal where you're commenting can change how your comment is displayed, with a note that the moderator edited the comment, but the original unedited comment is retained in your commenter profile. Where comments and reactions to your journal posts in other journals and on other services -- blogs, delicious, Twitter -- are automatically aggregated and appear as links in your posts' comments. Imagine a world where readers who don't have an account with your journal service can post comments under their Facebook account.

What is this brave new world, that has such features in it? A commenter's paradise, a nightmarish dystopia, or just another alternate universe?

It's called Disqus -- a free, third-party hosted comment system that can be plugged into other platforms like WordPress and Drupal, but not journal services built on LiveJournal code (and yes, Disqus does allow for threaded comments and email notifications).

Comment cultures -- the norms, expectations, values and practices that coalesce around commenting systems -- are driven by both social and technical factors. The tensions, conflicts, and debates thus play out differently in different cultures.

( Read more... )

ETA: see also the sequel to this post.

Today's philosophical conundrum: at first glance I assumed that the Fan Secrets tumblelog was a parody of fandom_secrets. At second glance I wasn't sure. Now I'm wondering whether it's even possible to effectively parody fandom_secrets or whether it's always been a self-parody.

Today's fan fiction craving: I caught up with recent episodes of The Young and the Restless last night, which has been teetering on the brink of the Rich and the Vapid lately. But! They've just launched a new storyline modeled after Rebecca, complete with a Mrs. Danvers figure, a prominently-displayed pencil drawing and life-size marble sculpture of the dead wife, plus a sinister son faking blindness and, in the role of the new Mrs. de Winter, a pregnant woman with a history of miscarriages and mental breakdowns haunted by the sound of a baby crying in the night. And let me tell you, so far it's awesome! So I'm wondering if anybody has recs for any gothic-style Rebecca-themed stories in any fandom -- or for that matter, Gaslight plots to make a character believe they're going insane? Bonus points if they're not complete AUs but rather grounded in canon.

Today's short film: Philip Bloom's Alone in Tokyo (via Jean Snow)

 I've been in the fannish doldrums since the Sarah Connor Chronicles finale. TV, why hast you forsaken me? And yet I persevere, in search of squee. Last week's field notes:

( light spoilers: SYTYCD AU, Chuck, LOST, SPN, Dushkuhouse )

Oh well, better luck this week, maybe?

And I just got two more Dreamwidth invite codes "for the following reason: Thank you for supporting Dreamwidth!" This must be what it feels like to be a Girl Scout during cookie season with a quota to fill -- I haven't managed to give away any of my first set of invite codes yet. What's worse is that I haven't actually done anything to support Dreamwidth.

So: take my invite codes, please! Otherwise I'll be forced to set up multiple journals for myself: cat_of_crypto, crypto_on_politics, crypto_sings_gershwin -- it won't be pretty.

If my LJ friendslist/DW reading page is at all representative, the Dreamwidth invite code bubble peaked hours ago. But I do have five invite codes to unload, straight from the warehouse and still in mint condition.

Sadly, the invite code market has already been commoditized by everybody giving theirs away for free, no strings attached. In a bid to artificially pump up the value of my invite codes -- limited edition! luxury item! status symbol! -- I am going to buck the trend and make you earn them.

So here's the deal:

1. Watch Boom Boom Satellites' music video for "Girl" (via lo_rez aka rez_lo) -- YouTube link or embedded below.

2. Write something about the video in the comments. Feel free to be creative! For example, you could:

• tell me what you think the backstory is behind the characters & events in the video, or what happens next
• give me a brief header/summary for a hypothetical fic based on the video, as if it were a Yuletide fandom (like last year's stories for Rihanna's "Disturbia" video) -- here's a (dated) sample of what I mean by header/summary for a hypothetical fic
• treat the music video as a vid that someone made for an imaginary TV show, and share your squee about the show and why I should be watching it
• reminisce about your own days as a pole vaulter or women's track & field coach

3. Profit

And when I say "Profit!" I mean get rewarded with a personalized Dreamwidth invite code from me, plus the glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing you earned it.

Except I want everyone to play! Especially since the majority of my LJ friendslist is already on Dreamwidth. So submit your own comment about the music video, even if you don't need a code -- and let me know if there's some other way that I can reward you. Besides the "everyone's a winner!" just due to the sheer awesomeness of the vid.

Act now! This offer won't last forever!
( My girl's talkin' 'bout revolution.... )

Thank you so much to the person who gave me paid time!

I believe that it's customary to offer fic to my anonymous benefactor, but I don't want to sprain anything or scar anyone. So instead, I would like to make a post just for you, if you give me a prompt -- maybe you'd like to hear my thoughts on yaoi (or yuri!), or write a follow-up or sequel to a previous post.

Alternately, you could take this opportunity to ask me to stop posting about _____, or commit to avoiding all comma splices and HTML errors (curse you, cut tag!) for at least a month, or get some new icons if you're sick of my simian default. It's your call, anonymous patron!

(I've never had a paid account on LJ, so I will try my best to use it responsibly here. Feel free to gently remind of this promise if I let the expanded features go to my head and start flooding your reading list with pointless polls.)

Swine Flu Photo Op: "Heidi Montag was back in her bikini yesterday to hit the beach with her husband Spencer Pratt during their pre-honeymoon in Cabo. The health-conscious duo added a new accessory for their outing in the wake of the swine flu scare — surgical masks!"

U R A Fever - Don DeLillo on Heidi and Spencer, sort of

TokenBlackChic's new video: MTV Hills Cast Contracts Swine Flu!


(Anybody remember Boing Boing's SARS Digital Folk Art project? People made tons of great stuff for that. Swine flu, not so much, so far.)

Okay, a year old, but new to me: Japanese turntablist DJ Baku's "Akbah Attack": brilliant music, mesmerizing video.



DJ Baku on MySpace; interview at Tiny Mix Tapes; his new album Japadapta comes out in Japan next week.

Bonus over-the-top press release from last year:

( ...but now we can do it on a multi-lingual global Death-Note viral scale! )
[Speaking of Boom Boom Satellites, has anyone seen any vids to their songs? I can't listen to What Goes Around Comes Around or Moment I Count without craving a good action vid -- someone must have used them for a Matrix vid at some point, right?]

Mathilde + Christine: Rondins de bois & petits chiens (via Changethethought) -- scrapbooking aesthetics as fine art?

Seen on ESPVisuals: CD Richardson's Cryptozoological Artand John Isaacs' Meat Art -- the flesh fantastic

NYC's Club Animals offer Free Bouncy Rides on the subway and a Human Petting Zoo (via Wooster Collective) -- flipping the geek hierarchy?

Via Lost At E Minor: Character Hunter, "a fun little blog that documents the ubiquitous cartoon characters found on Japanese product packages, advertisements, street signs, and vending machines."

Most excellent of all -- the video for Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden's ridiculously awesome new single "Bonkers":

My Dreamwidth Pledge to You (list in formation)

I will not tell people on LJ that my Dreamwidth user name is 'swinefluevog'.

I will not start a 'Ten things I assume you know about me post' with "I am a genetically engineered super ape (distantly related to Monsieur Mallah) who escaped from the Soviet space program at a tender age and led a fugitive existence in an Eastern European traveling circus until fleeing to America after the fall of the Berlin Wall."

I will not cross-post with comments disabled on LJ, only to edit the LJ post's 'comment on DW' link to Rickroll my hapless readers or redirect them to a random stranger's post.

I will not use however many Dreamwidth invite codes I receive to breed a mutant zombie robot army of sockpuppet journals to do my bidding, because they'll only achieve sentience and band together to turn on their creator in the end, and that would be very sad (for me).

ETA: I will not suggest that people read me on Dreamwidth instead of LJ, despite the identical cross-posted content, if they prefer to follow the darker, edgier "reimagined" version of my journal.

Wow, nothing like trying to find an old LJ post to make me realize how lousy I am at subject lines and tagging.

Aaron Schutz of the community organizing website EducationAction posted "Self-Delusion and the Lie of Lifestyle Politics" on OpenLeft. It's one of those essays whose basic arguments I already generally agreed with, but the person writing comes across as so self-righteous and obnoxious that I want to distance myself from what he's saying.

Rebecca Tushnet blogged the IP/Gender conference on "Female Fan Culture and Intellectual Property" last week: keynote, panel one, panel two, panel three. I like the conclusion from her keynote address: "Asserting their creative independence and their creative embeddedness at the same time — their basis in and distinctions from the commercial economy — fanworks offer a working model of hybridity in creative production, one the law would do well to recognize." Tushnet's articulation of a hybrid vision traversing the creative, the commercial, and the communal feels like a much more salient and productive version of Matt Hills' emphasis on the contradiction between fans as consumers and the "anti-commercial ideologies" of fandom in his book Fan Cultures (see here for my tl;dr post/critique of Hills' argument).

Speaking of Hills, I finally caught up on the new season of The Hills. I'd been feeling guilty for wanting to watch it before I'd started on the second season of In Treatment, so I'd let a few weeks pass before I caved (sorry, Gabriel Byrne!). The weird thing about watching a reality show filmed in advance is that celebrity gossip becomes plot spoilers. Having Heidi and Spencer go to couples therapy after she catches him with another woman is a shark-jumping moment all by itself. But any suspense over the fate of their relationship evaporates with the news that they got married this past weekend. Also, their visit to the therapist just reinforces my guilt for not watching In Treatment instead.

[cross-posted to LJ & DW]

Juan Martín Prada, "Forms of Resistance" for the online exhibit Tag ties and affective spies:


Would this be an argument for, or against, Dreamwidth as a commercial endeavor?

What might a "resistance to the fascination exerted by 'social media'” look like on, or through, or from within Dreamwidth?

In an interview with we make money not art, "Tag ties and affective spies" curator Daphne Dragona links the concepts of "[e]xposure, affection, and a kind of surveillance" with reference to Twitter. Does Dreamwidth's splitting of LJ's 'friend' function into 'subscribe' and 'grant access' unbundle these concepts, or simply multiply and disperse their points of intersection in new ways?

Wang Du: Photographs (an installation of 50,000 photographs taken in China in 2007) from a 2007 exhibit at Paris' Galerie Laurent Godin (via VVORK)

Anthony Almeida's Victory Kiss at Times Square (November 4, 2008) - Barack and Michelle Obama (via James Danziger's The Year in Pictures).

Jacques Rival: A giant inflatable mouse floats on the Rhône river, during an artistic happening by French architect Jacques Rival to inform people of the risks of floods -- photo, with more at Getty (Guardian, via we make money not art)

Three shows currently up in New York

Kalup Linzy: If It Don't Fit at the Studio Museum in Harlem -- "From his original take on the soap opera and sketch comedy genres to his music videos and filmic shorts, this compilation tracks the artist’s clever and complex approach to questions or race, gender, class, sexuality and national identity." Kalup Linzy's website and YouTube channel: watch All My Churen (2003). (via Lost at E Minor)

Surveillance from the Doll House at Mireille Mosler on East 67th: "Whether dressed to play a part or a plaything to address, the dummies, dolls, puppets, and personalities of Surveillance from the Doll House represent a mysterious combination of vitality and immobility." Work by four female artists who aren't Joss Whedon including Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons. (via we make money not art)

Generational: Younger Than Jesus [145 artists under the age of 33 from around the world], now up at The New Museum in NYC -- exhibit blog (seriously, I have no excuse to miss a show at a museum I can see from my apartment, right?). Artists with work in the show include:

( LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cyprien Galliard, Cao Fei, Ryan Trecartin )

Finally, three embedded videos below the cut, also linked for your convenience: music video auteur Chris Cunningham's new Gucci perfume ad (via PSFK), the viddish I´m thru with love - Diana Krall and Hollywood divas (via Danziger) and YouTube vlogger kevjumba's Asians Just Aren't Cool Enough? on the Dragonball movie casting:( videos behind the cut )

(The show, that is....)

1. How long until a fan attempts to perform an exorcism on Jensen Ackles' girlfriend?

2. Rampant pandering: run-of-the-mill fanservice, or opening Pandora's box?

3. Misha Collins: reckless, endearing, or SPN's version of Eve Harrington?

Enquiring minds run screaming in horror shrug and go back to thinking about The Sarah Connor Chronicles season finale, still hoping for a third season.

ETA: Problem solved -- I checked the LJ FAQ and found out it's a paid feature, found the link to manually upgrade to paid, and figured out the link to edit journal privacy based on the LJ equivalent. /ETA

I just imported my LJ, but I want to set all of the imported entries to private -- that is, I want (for now) to use Dreamwidth to back up my LJ, but not duplicate it.

I thought, from LJ, that there was a way to instantly flock all of your entries, rather than going through each of them manually. But I can't find anything on Dreamwidth, except for an option under Account Settings to change the default security level for new entries.

Is this a paid account feature? I didn't temporarily upgrade my Dreamwidth account when I created it, and now I can't figure out how you do that to unlock paid-only features.

Thanks in advance if you have any suggestions or pointers!

I never paid much attention before to the breathless exclamation points accompanying my email notifications when someone added me as a friend on LJ -- probably because they don't come in bursts or waves.

But as my gmail inbox fills up with the Dreamwidth equivalents over the last 10 hours recreating my LJ social network, there's something comical about all the '!!!' in a row. Is the Dreamwidth autonotifier shocked, or delighted for me, or trying to warn me of imminent danger? Maybe emoticons would help.

If they weren't busy with their push to move into open beta, I'd put in a feature request for an opt-in random editorial commentary generator to accompany each subscribe & access notification:

____ subscribed to your journal! Funny, I never would have thought you two would have much in common.

____ granted you access to their journal! Just FYI, beware of tl;dr and TMI ahead.

____ subscribed to your journal! I'm not saying they're a stalker, but mama always told me that where there are persistent rumors of restraining orders, there's fire....

____ granted you access to their journal! Hey, you've finally made it to the big leagues -- now don't screw it up, 'cause you won't get a second chance with that one.

Hi, I'm crypto -- cryptoxin on LiveJournal.

You may remember me from such LJ posts as:

At any rate, I'll probably start cross-posting here and on LJ next month -- until then, I'll keep posting on LJ while I look around here.