Multimedia Communication

Tonight I suffered through another Mass Media class at my uni. When class was finally over and I stepped outside, the entire world was white with snow. During the last three hours of my life, the world had gone from patchy pieces of snow to being a winter wonderland.

But I have not come to describe the weather to you. Most of you live in Michigan, and if you want the details on that particular story you can either A) Look outside of the window, or B) Call my dad. He likes chatting about the weather. He was a meteorologist in a past life.

If you do not live in the U.S., google me. I don’t know.

I hurried back to my dorm, and the first things I did were as follows:

1. I realized that I left facebook up again for the whole world to see and my roommate to hack (if she was here, but luckily she wasn’t, she went home for the weekend). During this time I had ten alerts and my friend Stephanie messaged me.

2. Debated going to an event on Mary’s Mantle.

3. Debated untagging myself from the event on Mary’s Mantle.

4. Checked my e-mail.

5. Went on tumblr.

I’m going to be very open and honest with you right now. I am addicted to tumblr. Tumblr is how I get my news. It tells me, Something bad is happening in China; people are being stabbed; YOU SHOULD BE AWARE. It tells me that YouTube has this gosh-awful Barbie drama that I should watch, and so I watch all thirteen episodes, most of which contain bodily humor. Often it reminds me that Lydia Bennet just posted a new vlog and ** SPOILER ALERT** dear God, she just kissed Wickham!!! **End Spoilers**

Now, I am also going to be frank with you. My tumblr is private. Only two people on my facebook know where my tumblr is located, what my  name is, all of that jazz. However, if you were to see my tumblr profile, you would surmise that: A) I am obsessed with the U.K., B) My favorite singers are Steam Powered Giraffe and Owl City, C) I love Pride & Prejudice, and D) I am an avid feminist.

Oh, and E) I am madly in love with Thomas William Hiddleston.

On tumblr, I am able to follow people who like the same things I like—feminism, Tom Hiddleston, the U.K., Pride & Prejudice. And the people I follow introduce me to things like The Most Popular Girls in School, John Green’sbrotherhood 2.0 videos, and History Channel’s new first-ever scripted series Vikings.

When I got back from class tonight, there was a lot of messages waiting for me on tumblr. Steam Powered Giraffe is airing a livestream event tomorrow; I should watch it! Rachel Kiley, one of the scriptwriters for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, is being mean again. Tom Hiddleston is going to be in a vampire movie (after he gets back from Africa, anyway). Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Julian Assange (and he looks terrible with white hair).

This is my news source. This is how I find things that are interesting to me.

Tumblr is how I learned the names of the men (and woman) in my favorite bands. It’s how I follow the careers of my favorite singers. It’s how I see theories on how Sherlock Season 3 is going to go, and what’s going to happen with Lydia Bennet. It reminded me that I should wear orange to support the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay. Tumblr is for people to make connections with other people, and while I do not talk to anyone on tumblr, it helps me navigate my world.

But it’s not just tumblr. It’s YouTube and it’s livestream and it’s blogs and it’s music. I find new music, which leads me to iTunes; I find gifs, which leads me to videos on YouTube; I learn via tumblr and YouTube that SPG is going to be on livestream tomorrow. That means I’m even more connected to my favorite band than I would be normally; with only a 7-second delay, I will be engaging with the band members as if I were actually in the room with them. They can see my comments onscreen, and so we are engaging in communication.

That’s all that this is. It’s communication.

And communication is something that Steam Powered Giraffe and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries do well. They are examples of interactive media, this new phenomenon that’s been taking off because of the immediateness and presentness of the internet.

Let’s take SPG for example. Originally, there were three members—Bunny “Rabbit” Bennet, David “The Spine” Bennet, and Jon “The Jon” Sprague. (There was a fourth, but we won’t concern ourselves with her here.) They have always been open with their fanbase, and so when Jon left the band, Bunny was honest with her fans. However, after the fact, the band thinks that they were possibly too honest (because a lot of early fans were divided in their hatred for Jon or the Bennet twins, because obviously when the founding members of a band break up battle lines have been drawn), but their openness is, really, a good thing. I feel like I know SPG, and I understand why they do the things that they do. This is why I was stoked to meet the new member, Sam “Hatchworth” Luke (okay, so he wasn’t new, but whatever).

In the case of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modern vlog adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, from the beginning, viewers were consulted. We were told to stay in contact via facebook, tumblr, twitter, and google + (like anybody uses that). I subscribed to all of the above (I have a google + account, zomygosh!) and so I am always always always in the know about my favorite fictional characters.

For example, take YESTERDAY MORNING. I woke up, went on facebook (it’s like brushing your teeth, you are required to check facebook in the mornings, it is law) and saw that Pemberly Digital, one of the…for lack of a better word…widgets of LBD, had posted a quote: “Today is the day that everything changes.”

OH

MY

STARS

ABOVE

Something was going to happen. Sure enough, a video was released later that day by Gigi (Georgiana Darcy), hinting at future events. 

It was not until 11 a.m. that we saw the first ramifications of “everything changes.” For those of you who don’t watch LBD, I won’t spoil it (or confuse you further), but something traumatic rippled the fandom. People got upset. People were confused. I cried. Brooke laughed at me. Then, at 12, one of the characters sent out an SOS on twitter.

This right here, folks, is the use of three different websites used for one purpose. It is an interactional television show in real time, in real life. No 7 second delay.  

Today in class, we were discussing the openness of media. Should everything be as open as my YouTube videos, as my bands? Should—gasp—businesses be required to open up everything to the reader, to release PR reports supporting their choices, as Bernie Su, one of the writers of LBD, did today?

Is this the future? Will I, an audience member, be able to watch in real time as Toyota builds a car? Will I be able to offer input? Will the creations that I and others I collaborate with via the internet someday become real and tangible things? Is this terrifying? ABSOLUTELY. The future is always terrifying.

But as for me, I am liking what I see.