Category: Group C

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Reaction GIFs

The above GIF of a Newton’s Cradle counters the typical reaction GIF because it is an action without a reaction. Newton is most famous for his pioneering work in the field of mechanical physics, and Newton’s Cradles exemplify the principle of conservation of energy. However, this GIF shows only the initiating action and stops before the reaction of the furthest ball. People like reaction GIFs because they can relate to those reactions. They do not, however, finding and initiating action relatable, making the GIF unexciting to watch because it does not evoke an emotion in the viewer.

Sports GIFs

Sports GIFs highlight exciting, funny, and dramatic moments in sports. The example of the Dolphins’ holder getting hit in the face mask is an example of a hilarious mistake that a viewer may connect with and relate to. For example, when a math class has easy homework but a really hard exam, a student might use this GIF to describe the unexpected difficulty of the test. Our group’s counter-sports GIF shows a routine punt by the Atlanta Falcons; no mistakes are made, but there is also nothing remarkable about the play. With nothing particularly good or bad about the play, it defeats the purpose of a sports GIF because routine plays do not provoke the viewer’s emotions.

Fandom GIF

Fandom GIFs provoke emotions in viewers by clipping just a few seconds of a significant scene from a popular work of film or television. I chose the scene when Gandalf fights the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dûm because of Sir Ian McKellan’s iconic declaration “You shall not pass!” – one of the most dramatic scenes in all of fantasy film. To counter this GIF, I created a GIF of Frodo and Sam simply walking across a field in the Shire. One of the major complaints LOTR fans have is the amount of time dedicated to Frodo and Sam simply traveling, and this GIF only evokes feelings of boredom.

Conclusion

The recurring theme throughout my analyses is that a good GIF provokes one’s thoughts and evokes certain emotions in the viewer. Counter GIFs, on the other hand, are uninteresting and leave the viewer wondering why they took the time to watch the GIF at all, thereby defeating the purpose of making a GIF out of the clip in question.

Posted from DIG101 Blog by Noah R.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, why use words at all? This seems to be the thought process behind the increasingly image driven communications of the millennial generation. Instead of writing letters, talking on the phone or even texting, more and more young people are communicating through apps like Snapchat and by sending memes and GIFs. While memes and GIFs often capture thoughts and feelings well, they also remove a certain level of imagination and creativity from our communications. Rather than considering carefully how to encode their feelings into language, young people are choosing to browse libraries of images and short clips in order to match their emotions to a piece of media that someone else created. If these memes and GIFs are worth a thousand words, then sending one to a friend to convey a message about yourself is like taking a three page paper that someone else wrote about what he or she was feeling at a particular moment and using it for yourself.

This change in communication plays into a larger move away from the written word. Jordan Weissmann of The Atlantic outlines this departure in his article The Decline of the American Book Lover. Weissmann cites data from Gallup and Pew that shows a roughly threefold increase from 1978 to 2014 in the percentage of Americans who did not read a single book in the last year.

This startlingly trend away from the written word may prove to have adverse effects to a generation that chooses to imagine less and meme more.

 

Posted from DIG101 Blog by Noah R.

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GIFs are short, animated images which offer the meaning a video would but without the audio or size of a video file. We learned in this article that although most can be funny, others can also be used or categorized to spread racist, hateful, or hurtful imagery.

I found a neat article by Mashable, however, showing a positive example of GIF’s influence in which GIFs are used to celebrate and honor black culture and history.

GIPHY, a leading database company which holds the majority of the internet’s GIFs, ran a program for the month of February honoring Black History Month. GIPHY dedicated its efforts to providing “users with GIFs showing the black American experience”, which it hoped would fill the void in black-cultural representation online.

The works published in the first wave highlighted black leaders and offered descriptions of their influence like “Toni Morrison is one of the most prominent literary icons of the 20th century, and rightfully so, as she is the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature.” And while some were reuploads, they also took the time to illustrate some new GIFs to add to the database.

Here’s an example of one of their curated GIFs which highlight personal, cartoon illustrations of women doing their hair. “The company specifically hired black artists to illustrate portrayals of black culture and hair beyond just aesthetics.”

Another addition to the GIPHY database were re-categorization of GIFs of black celebrities in the present world with supportive or inspiring text underneath the person or a loop effect of them smiling, laughing, or making a peace sign.

As the article notes “The work to diversify the GIF archive may be underway, but it’s far from over — and definitely won’t end on Feb. 28.” And they’re right. I use this article not to diminish the problem at hand but show a small example of the positive effect GIFs can cause. The article on GIPHY’s racist categorization problem was written in August, 6 months after GIPHY’s Black History Month project, but GIPHY hasn’t commented on or fixed the problem yet.

Posted from DIG101 by Tucker C.

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In my opinion, the article in Teen Vogue titled “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs” is a little bit of a stretch. It is a very opinionated article, which is fine, but opinionated articles need evidence to support the opinions put forth, and there is little evidence to back up several claims Lauren Jackson makes. The author states without evidence, for example, “For while reaction GIFs can and do every feeling under the sun, white and nonblack users seem to especially prefer GIFs with black people when it comes to emitting their most exaggerated emotions” (Jackson 2017). It is fine to make this claim, but Jackson should have more to support this statement than just her own supposition. To simply say that it seems like people prefer GIFs with black people is not a convincing argument because it is not an argument at all – it is merely an opinion.

Source: http://gph.is/1MbAxgX

After claiming without evidence that GIF users prefer GIFs with black people, Jackson then proceeds to declare, again with no corroboration, that “In television and film, our dial is on 10 all the time — rarely are black characters afforded subtle traits or feelings” (Jackson 2017). Again, Jackson takes what is merely her opinion and asserts it as an undeniable fact. She may actually be correct about both of the claims I just analyzed – I quite honestly have no idea what the data would say, but Jackson’s flawed rhetoric is not convincing unless she presents statistics to back up such assertions.

Without any evidence, the entire article becomes trivial. This article from the Huffington Post, on the other hand, presents three explicit examples of racist digital blackface. If one is truly trying to combat racism in the digital world, perhaps these clearly offensive memes are a better place to start.

 

Works Cited:

Jackson, Lauren Michele. “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in GIFs.” Teen Vogue, TeenVogue.com, 3 Aug. 2017, www.teenvogue.com/story/digital-blackface-reaction-gifs. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.

Lewis, Sedgrid. “Top 3 Types of Digital Blackface.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 Apr. 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/sedgrid-lewis/top-3-types-of-digital-bl_b_9766412.html. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.

Posted from My DIG 101 Blog by Matt B.

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The concept of digital blackface is something that I had never considered when looking at reaction gifs or social media as a whole. In thinking about this I realized that I actually did frequently send and or receive gifs of over the top reactions that I guess could be under the title of “black face.” I think there is something to be said for this idea of popularizing a stereotypical reaction or behavior and applying it to all members of that race or group. For instance when vine was still going there was a very famous video where a black vine star, Marlon Webb, eats/wears/yells watermelon. He would rhyme things with watermelon, but he would pronounce watermelon as water-mel-own. This way of pronouncing watermelon became very popular on vine and many people started to follow his example. This gets a little uncomfortable once the creators are white though. They try to say the words exactly like he does and it goes from a joke to an offensive impersonation.  The vines as a whole are pretty weird and not meant to be racist, but the subject matter itself is already a tough subject. Watermelon has been an African American racial trope ever since free slaves began selling it as a way of living post slavery. Since then it has devolved into a negative symbol often used alongside other stereotypes. Having this in mind turns these vines into something much harder to watch in my opinion.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/

Digital Blackface in a broader sense is something that has grown alongside the birth of reactiongifs. As the article explains this over-the-top representation of the African American race can have damaging effects to society. In my mind the biggest issue is when we see the digital image cross over into conversation and reality. We can find these clips so funny or relatable that we try to use them in person. Much like the watermelon vines people have a tendency to try and mimic the gifs and or videos, this doesn’t work as well when you’re doing an impersonation. Too easily things can go from harmless to racist.

I can hear the counterargument now though of people saying, “Well what about when people try to imitate rednecks and white people with accents.” The difference lies in the history. Historically speaking white people in America have had it pretty good especially if you’re looking at their representation in media and movies. It is a different story when you look at the history of African Americans, specifically in cinema. Black face and dialect poetry and performances were very popular throughout the early to mid 1900’s. That is why it is important that we are aware and careful about misrepresentation in the digital age.

 

Posted from My blog by Patrick H.

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Reaction GIF:

Counter GIF:

The former GIF resembles the general populations sense of utter surprise at something, whether it be ignorant people trying to defend their beliefs or political leaders doing the same thing during a press-brief. This GIF can be used endless situations for acts of awe, disgust, or any negative reaction that makes someone cringe.  My counter-gif example shows a celebrity who is annoyed in an interview.  However there is not much of a present reaction of his face, and he is wearing sunglasses.  Reaction GIFS are meant be over exaggerated, and so by posting the counter example I meant to show that the GIFs are over exaggerated.

Sports GIF:

Counter GIF:

Sports GIFs are usually meant to show triumph in sports.  My first GIF is footage of an amazing dunk made in a basketball game.  These moments are used to show the glory of great athletics.  In contrast, my Counter GIF shows a sports failure in which a baseball player misses an easy catch.  This satirizes the glory of the sports GIFs by making one that is funny to watch because of the unfortunate miss.

Wobble GIF:

 

Counter GIF:

This wobble GIF shows man’s disappointed face moving back and forth in random directions in the frame.  It’s really intense, and it has the caption “Triggered!” on the bottom of the screen.  My counter GIf is used to undermine this GIF.  It shows the same GIF, but modified by taking out the caption and making the effect of the wobble less intense.  This makes the GIF less intense and undermines the principle element of the GIF: the wobble.  For example, making this GIF into a picture would have the effect of making it just a picture of a disappointed face.  My counter GIF shows the same GIF slowed down.

Posted from My blog by Will M.

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When scrolling through Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr in 2017, we are likely to find various iterations of “it me.” Sometimes the self-identification is in response to a GIF (e.g., “literally me rn”) or sometimes the GIF is the punchline (e.g., the caption “me when my food is ready” followed by reaction GIF of someone crying tears of joy). On Tumblr, the “me”-ing often takes the form of a tag, as in #me. Instagram has even added an “it me” sticker for your stories.

The AUDACITY

A post shared by Lola Tash and Nicole Argiris (@mytherapistsays) on Sep 25, 2017 at 10:19am PDT

The issue of digital blackface outlined by Lauren Michele Jackson becomes even more problematic in this culture saturated with self-identification. Nonblack internet users are not just circulating images of black people. The act of saying “it me” clarifies that using a reaction GIF is an act of identification with the image, not merely an act of appreciation or propagation.

This difference may be subtle, but it matters. When you use a black reaction GIF, you situate the desirable elements of the GIF (its humor, its sassiness, whatever) as an extension of yourself. As Jackson puts it: “We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance, your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your “yaas” moments.”

Because GIFs have developed into an authorless form, there is no way (or perhaps no motivation) to credit the original author or the people who appear in the GIF. Giving credit to the author or to the people who appear in a GIF may be one way of saying “it them”–of differentiating between your use of the GIF and your total self-identification with it.

 

Posted from Digital Studies by Hannah L.

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I hear the word blackface and think of the minstrel shows that I learned about in AP US History.  I think that people probably don’t do this today-although I was horrified to read that in fact well-known comedians/actors like Robert Downey Jr and Sarah Silverman did this recently.  Anyway, like lynching of black men and women being subtly given the new name of police shootings and just under the big umbrella term police-brutality, blackface has a new name that is subtly using the anonymity of black bodies in order to express extreme emotions of non-black users on the internet, and I find it as bad as the original.

 

The article We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface is a crucial piece of literature that is a good step in recognizing that GIFs can be inherently racist and can be blackface.  Lauren Michelle Jackson uses popular GIFs to define what digital blackface is, and the fact that these are commonly used is problematic.  This is because black people are not stereotypical objects to be used to show frustration, shock, rage, and extreme happiness.  Although the article nor I am advocating for not using any image of any black person, we need to be aware of how we are using these images.

 

A thought that I hadn’t pieced together in my head until reading this article grabbed my attention that otherwise would have left me wondering where the line is between what is digital blackface and not.  And obviously I shouldn’t be the number one source as a white man.  But Jackson said in We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface that these GIFs of black bodies serve “an uneasy reminder of the way our presence is extra visible in life, every day, in ways that get us profiled, harassed, mocked, beaten, and killed”.  Jackson, most likely a black woman by way of using pronouns such as “our” and “us”, explains that these GIFs illuminate the light in which black people are profiled, harassed, mocked, beaten and killed.  In other words, black people are so much so stereotyped, that these stereotypes are getting them killed.

Posted from My blog by Will M.

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After reading the article “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in GIFs,” I wasn’t sure what I thought of it. Instead of forming an opinion right off the bat, I decided to look at the metadata attached to the article.

Although teenvogue.com doesn’t have a “comment” feature for articles, I was quickly able to find where they’d uploaded it to Facebook.

As with most articles covering any sort of racial topic, there were some very strong reactions from both ends of the spectrum. Out of the 166 comments, the ones that appear at the top all seem more negative than positive. They also seemed to be primarily posted by white people. I don’t think this was a mere coincidence.

When I read the article, I didn’t understand it right away, and I disagreed with some of the things in it. I, like many of the Facebook commenters, felt like Teen Vogue was trying to make “something out of absolutely nothing.”

Other commenters wondered what it would be like if the situation was flipped; if black people were underrepresented in GIFs.

The first four of the top comments are similar to the one above. The first five are from white people. It isn’t until scrolling pretty far down that you see comments like these:

Looking at the metadata attached to the article made me reconsider the problems I initially found with it. There are still parts I don’t agree with, such as “Images of black people, more than anyone else, are primed to go viral and circulate widely online,” because I think that “missing white girl syndrome” is a problem that contradicts this.

But the article opened my eyes to many social standards that I had failed to recognize before, such as seeing black people as a “walking hyperbole.” The article wasn’t “making something out of nothing,” but instead it was making something out of something that was previously completely ignored.

 

 

Posted from Digital Studies 101 by Alivia