Gina's Final - Global Subject and Global Gaze

The Cheezburger Network is a network of related websites which pull together photos with captions. Mostly these pictures show something funny occurring. In fact, that is the main focus of each of these websites: finding the funny in everyday life and everyday photos. People send in pictures, people vote on which captions are the funniest, and these photos with captions are posted on the main page, much like a post on a blog.

This network of sites is all about the Global Subject and the Global Gaze. The resources the technologies provide are simply funny pictures for people to look at, but they provide much more than that. One example of a good thing that these sites provide is they connect people to each other in a positive way. While the viewer may not know the creator/s of the image personally, it connects both people to each other with laughter, or whatever other reaction the viewer may have. And the creator gets the pleasure of knowing that he or she probably made someone laugh very hard at least once that day. Another good thing these sites do is express a current culture in an extremely current fashion, and also archives such culture. Not only do each of these pictures show what people are thinking about on any given day, but also what a huge number of people are looking at right at that very moment. It catalogs the gaze of people, and the reactions of the people commenting, in real-time.

 However, it also has some drawbacks. For example, one of the sites in this network is called Wedinator. It shows some pictures of some dubious ideas for weddings, sometimes with captions. While many of these pictures can be very funny from an objective standpoint, from a subjective standpoint (the standpoint of the people whose weddings those actually were, or someone who's thinking of doing the same thing for their own wedding perhaps), making fun of such a personal thing is offensive. I'm sure if I had a Star Wars wedding I would be offended to see it made fun of (though to be perfectly honest I would probably expect such derision—it's a super geeky thing to have as the theme of a wedding, and some might consider it tacky). The point is, the photos can very often be offensive without regards to the subjects within them. Also, I'm sure that many photos are used without the owner's permission—although, this may be something that the owners or subjects might not care about, if their photo is used to make something amusing enough to make it alright (take lolcats, for example—the subjects in the photos are unable to complain). Still, it's likely that the photos are used without permission—and there's nothing to stop people from using them, really.

How this technology is likely changing how we view ourselves is just like it says in the book: it's mixing the objective and the subjective; making us see ourselves in other people and other people in ourselves. We see ourselves from the outside and at the same time, see other people's inner workings. In terms of the Cheezburger Network, we're seeing ourselves being made fun of, other people being made fun of, and just generally silly and hilarious everyday things.