Prompt 2: Select from one of the participatory subcultures (Wikipedia, Fan Fiction, Remixes, Mash-Ups, or Parodies) and find one or two cultural artifacts that fit within the participatory subculture chosen. Analyze the cultural artifact(s) in regards to the model of culture, language, and method of cultural transmission. What aspects of culture are being transmitted through the artifact?
There are a lot of subcultures within social media, and online in general. I am choosing to do Mashups. I am also thinking about doing crossovers as they can fall under mashups since they are mashing two or more shows into one show. When I think of Mashups, I think more of song and music mashups. It wasn’t until recently that that definition can mean more than one thing. It could mean a mashup between two character villains from famous comics or tv shows. An example I saw was a mashup of The Joker from Batman and Green Goblin from Spider-Man.
There are a lot of cultural artifacts that can fall under Mashups and Crossovers. According to Kendall and Schmidt, in Social Media, ” a mashup is when two or more cultural products are combined into one”. A mashup that I chose to analyze is an annual video that a YouTube channel, Pop Danthology, does at the end of every year. Daniel Kim, the creator behind these videos, mashes up between 20 – 40+ songs that were very popular throughout that year. It was such a success, which is why we continued to do so for so many years. Even so that he started doing mashups for certain times such as Summer Mashups, using the popular pop songs during the summer, to make a smash hit. These mashups aren’t ones that are very publicized or known about to many people. People tend to look them up on YouTube as they aren’t made for everyone. Youtube does something similar to these creators as well. Youtube does YouTube Rewind, an annual recap of what the year had in store. Whether it be pop culture, politics, or any trends that were very popular within that year. YouTube Rewind has become very publicly known by everyone when the end of the year comes around. Sometimes YouTube itself gets backlash from it as they don’t include certain popular YouTubers in the video. Or if the video itself is just plain “lame” and doesn’t meet expectations that everyone has for YouTube. Sometimes I find myself criticizing it like this as well, since I know how great these Rewinds can be.
Within these types of cultural artifacts, I think the culture that they are trying to get at are Pop Culture. Pop culture is very prominent within the media, whether it be popular action movies, pop music, or anything going on within a celebrity’s life. These types of aspects are what shape pop culture. So when making these kinds of mashups, it makes sense that they only tend to gravitate towards Pop music than say Country or House music. The same goes for crossovers. Networks tend to merge their most popular shows into one to make them each more known. They wouldn’t really do so with lesser known or popular shows within their network. They want to market as big as they can with their most successful shows.
Humphreys, A. (2016). Social media: enduring principles. New York: Oxford University Press.
Juan Bonete 