A Promising Beginning

I arrived late last night in my family's hometown of Iola, KS. While I've never personally called it 'home', it certainly feels like family here. The basement of the house has become my headquarters so I have space to stretch out and work, and the ping pong table has become my workspace. On one half is my computer apparatus (complete with headset, external HDD, Time Capsule, and other gadgets) and the other half is home to the slide scanner, notebooks, and stickies.

After arriving here around 4pm, I sat around with family members and enjoyed the usual Mentzer pastimes - football, cheese plates, and talking about the grandkids (me as well as my cousin's kids). As the Regehrs and younger Pumphreys began to make their way out it grew quieter and out came the tea. I spoke briefly with my uncle Craig and his wife Denise (who own the family farm here in Iola) as well as my aunt Sherryl and uncle Darren (the California-dwellers are here until about the 5th) about getting some stories. Many of the pictures I'll be scanning are not solely for a professional goal - some of them are my family's personal history, and I want to learn the context for the pictures just as much as I want to learn the who and where of them.

While a sizable portion of my visit is family-oriented, I am also here to develop my own skills and work on the undigitized portion of my grandfather's slide collection. For a time he was in the Philippines working for a co-op to assess and help develop their agricultural techniques. He went twice, and he's quite a picture-taker, so I will have a hefty task ahead of me. As those have yet to be scanned I'll be tackling those first and moving on to the rest of the family photos as I finish.

My Internet here is slow (3.26Mbps/.084Mbps), so I may or may not be easily reachable by video/audio chats. I am, however, reachable by Skype (zephyr42) as well as anything on the sideboard to the left.

I'm really looking forward to my next two weeks here before my last semester begins. This portion of my family is not one I've been able to spend a lot of time with, and I'm excited about both the project and being able to see them.

"The importance of numbers is best seen in a street mob, which becomes more tumultuous, more passionate, more a creature of instinct and less a creature of reason, the larger it is. So, too, the reading mob, as it grows bigger, becomes more emotional, more excited, it reads and talks with greater avidity, is increasingly vehement in its likes, dislikes, and opinions, forces the book on its neighbors with greater rigor, buys, borrows, gives, and lends more and more with the swift and sure emotions of instinct. The reading mob is, perhaps, the largest species. The numbers who read the lower bourgeois novel are fabulous. Those who read the higher bourgeois novel are very numerous. In the meridian of its glory the mob novel soars up to several hundred thousands."

-Henry Dwight Sedgewick, "The Mob Spirit in Literature". The New American Type: And Other Essays. 1908.

Welcome to the Internet

In my classes and in assigned articles, it has occurred to me that many of my classmates are unaware of what Reddit actually is. It is often mentioned in the same sentence as StumbleUpon, Digg.com, and Delicious. However Reddit is a beast of a completely different nature.

Remember BBS Boards? Remember IRC Chat? Remember the crazy range of topics, subjects, and interests those communications offered? Reddit is that - a massive online forum. Anything you want to talk about, learn about, or be trolled about, all in one place.

Reddit is the overlord forum, and within it are the aptly named "subreddits" - mini forums you can subscribe and contribute to. Each subreddit is formatted on Reddit thus: reddit.com/r/funny. It is therefore pronounced "Arr-Funny". The '/' is silent. There are many subreddits - numerous subreddits, to be precise. Just like your old BBS forums, there may be a large amount of crossover between contributors, but by and large each one has a unique clientele and givers & takers. For example, r/TwoXChromosomes (TwoX, for short) is a subreddit almost primarily made of users who want to talk about women's issues. This subreddit is a place to talk about women's health issues, sexism, accomplishments, or questions about feminine life. It is not exclusively for women, but it is about women. There is the male counterpart, r/OneY, which is essentially the same, but about men. Lately it's been about No-Shave November. In contrast, r/askwomen or r/askmen are a place for women to ask men questions or vice versa. The four forums do have an overlap of themes and topics, but they are all indeed very separate and individual from each other.

Now that we've defined "subreddit" and taken a look at the community-centered subreddits, let's take a look at some of the popular subject-centered subreddits of Reddit. r/atheism may be the one that you encounter first, and it is precisely what you would assume: a subreddit about atheism. More precisely it seems to be subreddit about anti-theism, as most of the subject matter is not about philosophical atheism, science, or skepticism (r/skeptic is for that) but rather about how ridiculous religion 'X' is. On the other hand, r/Christianity is a sub made up of the many different denominations of Christianity are welcome. Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, Mennonite, and other denominations all have their own other subreddit, but this one is the umbrella community. For religious debate, r/debatereligion is one of the few places the r/atheism and r/Christianity overlap. It's also the place where other religions (r/Islam, r/Pagan, r/Hinduism, r/Judaism, and so on) meet to debate.

r/atheism and r/Christianity seem to have a sort of online quasi-war between the them, as they are both large communities and the two most prominent religio-centric subreddits. Both subreddits appears to think the other somewhat ridiculous and borderline offensive. This kind of rivalry is a good example how how fractured Reddit is in all its idealism. For all that it is a place of international free speech and shared waters it is also a place where small squabbles can become Montague and Capulet-scale feuds due to the anonymity of the Internet. Seeing a user's identity as a comment rather than their comment history or another human being can be harmful, and unfortunately it happens a lot on any online platform. Due to the magnitude and scale of Reddit, it's rampant. While hate-speech is cause for banning, being disrespectful and intolerant more or less gets you a slap on the wrist or a heap of 'downvotes' (which means that you didn't follow reddiquette or contribute something meaningful to the conversation).

Spend enough time on Reddit and you'll find memes and ragecomics. Memes are insubstantial concepts and stereotypes portrayed through pictures, typically the same pictured recycled with user-made captions to relay the same theme. The subreddit for most memes is r/AdviceAnimals. One of the more popular memes is Ridiculously Photogenic Guy:

Made by Redditor beardedbrad

It's a great way to show how people react to Ridiculously Photogenic People - all they have to do is walk into a room (or run a marathon) and have an immediate and hyperbolic event! Search on Reddit for "Ridiculously Photogenic Guy" and you'll find many meme photos with him as the subject. There are similarly memes like First World Problems, Overly Manly Man, Overly Attached Girlfriend, Good Guy Greg, and Scumbag Steve.

I would be greatly remiss if I did not mention the primary function of Reddit: Cat Propaganda. Everywhere on Reddit are pictures of cats. Kittens, sphinxes, tabbies, happy cats, grumpy cats, white cats, black cats, and every kind of cat in between. They are the secret overlords of Reddit, and they rule supreme. Cats have their own mythos in the world of LOLCats, having the benevolent Ceiling Cat (usually a white cat that sites in high places and gazes benevolently or in an accusatory manner at the photographer) and the evil Basement Cat (which steals socks and hides in cereal boxes). Cats may be affectionately referred to as 'Karma Machines' as posting a picture of your cat may earn you upvotes and increase your total karma score. Some cats have lived long enough to become memes, more recently as with Grumpy Cat:

As linked to by Redditor boyinice

This cat's real name is Tard (short for 'Tardar Sauce') and he has his own Tumblr.

There are many more memes, and more than I can put here on my blog without feeling like I'm sullying my webspace. Take some time to familiarize yourself with them, as they can be great to illustrate a point in PowerPoints and Keynotes while adding a bit of spice and humor.

I hope you learned something about Reddit. May your forays be cautious and tiptoey. If you are unsure where to begin, I recommend you begin in r/funny, r/bestof, or r/trueReddit. Stay out of r/circlejerks, r/spacedicks, and r/wtf. You notice I didn't provide links, so I'm serious... beware of those subreddits. r/trees is not about the environment (hint: it's about marijuana). Don't click on anything that says NSFL (Not Safe For Life). Good luck.

Inclusivity

"Libraries are more than lenders of books. They are part of society and community. They should stand for inclusivity. They should do this not only by adding ramps and magnifiers but also through welcoming attitudes, support of adaptive technologies of all types, and lobbying for open formats that reward authors without restricting access and forcing disclosure on those who are invisibly disabled. By looking at inclusion through variations in normalcy, we can address methods that provide access for all library users."

Desjardins, M. (2010). Invisible Disabilities. Feliciter, 56(3), 106-108.

DRM and Disability

"In a day and age where there is almost always a digital version, systemic, bureaucratic or technological barriers are erected to prevent theft, which translates to preventing access for people with print impairments. For example, e-book readers have print functionality disabled -- a requirement for format shifting -- if digital rights management is used. . . . We are coming into an era that will either be revolutionary for people with print disabilities or entrench intellectual property restrictions to the point of forcing disclosure on people with invisible disabilities or, worse, systematically preventing access altogether."

Desjardins, M. (2010). Invisible Disabilities, Feliciter, 56(3), 106-108.

On the cutting of cataloging resources

"Nonlibrarians, no matter how skilled, educated, and experienced, cannot take total responsibility for the library's database no more than competent paralegals could take responsibility for a law practice."

Gorman, M. (1995). The Corruption of Cataloging. Library Journal, 120, 183-199.