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Intimacy

Even though I already watched Her, my perceptions were still as uncomfortable as before. Someone dating a program? In what world is that normal, or more importantly in what world does that even count as a relationship? I doubted the validity of their relationship and yet I struggled to find solid footing on why the relationship wasn’t real. This blog post, I will analysing Pettman’s views of love as an algorithm, the love vector, the human element of a relationship, as well as  supplementing my argument with examples from Her.

Pettman’s article goes hand in hand with the concepts of Her. It challenges us to forgot our traditional notions of love and intimacy. Instead, Pettman pushes the idea that love is a code. Love is not as spontaneous and special as people may think, contrary to the romantic in people. Pettman believes that there are certain motions in relationships and even goes to explain that some love is binary, just like code. However, it is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Pettman uses the example of the phrase “I love you”, where the phrase itself can be seen as a program that elicits certain responses just like code. Though it differs on social and cultural traditions, the responses are mostly predictable. As Timothy Morton said in the reading, “the most ethical act is to love the other precisely in their artificiality,…” Whether you’re fully committed to repeating the sentence or replying with a thank you, it follows an algorithm. If we were to apply the perspective that love is a code, one can notice the patterns (codes) that is commonplace in relationships. The fundamental concept in code is inputs and outputs, and relationships are no exclusion.

In Her, the typical algorithms of a relationship are still cleverly shown throughout the movie. The initial attraction, the first date, fighting, fall-out, and of course the break-up. Though humans always focus on the idea that love is unique, unparalleled, and unmatched, one would be hard pressed to argue that Sam and Theo’s relationship is any different from a societal norm relationship. One thing I loved and hated about Her, was that I couldn’t contest the validity of their relationship. If I couldn’t completely shut down Sam and Theo’s relationship, then it would only mean that I am bound by tradition, the cultural scripts that form my thoughts. If communication technology can play such a significant role, it is completely possible that relationships could be formed with our technology. If love and intimacy can be viewed as a code, then logically a code could be made to imitate said code.

In the reading, Pettman explores the concept of the love vector. The next generations substitute for a love object. Instead of the traditional fixation of “The One”, love becomes in my words, “The Many”. The qualities and desires of the one are distributed indefinitely, settling in various representations and channels. In Her, Samantha tells Theo that she is his, but at the same time she is not. In this scene, I believe Theo embodies the finite aspect, that love is binary. Samantha, being the clever OS she is, embodies the idea that love is infinite. It does not matter who you share it with, and should not be tied down with the traditional view found in the pronouns of the phrase “I love you.”

One of the roots of my discomfort with Her, was the missing human element from the relationship. Sam and Theo’s relationship bear striking resemblance to a long-distance relationship. However, as Pettman mentioned in the article, the main objection still remains true, the relationship does not lead to the tying back of the flesh and blood of the human body. However, Pettman also goes on to say that psychology leads us to believe that something will always be missing in a relationship. Therefore, we may not be used to the human element missing from a relationship, but it is possible that a relationship can still exist without it. We as humans have so often left true undeniable love exclusively for humans and between humans. Yet Pettman’s evidence show us that this love we hold so dear is not as hard to replicate as we choose to believe. Communication is cybernetic, it is as varying as it is binary, it is as coherent as it is muddled, and love manifests itself as a complex algorithmic form of communication.  

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Labor

This week’s blog post focuses on the various types of labor. Due to my topic, I will be focusing on immaterial labor. While also detailing informational, emotional, and cultural work, as well as correlating the convergence of digital labor with the three previous types of immaterial labor. From the social media accounts that I follow, I will tie in professional League of Legends players into the various types of immaterial labor. Immaterial labor activities involve defining and fixing various cultural and artistic standards. In addition, immaterial labor defines current tastes, fashions, norms, and public opinion.

           One of the types of immaterial labor is information work. Information work is data analysis, web design, and forms of media production. In the online games League of Legends, information work is no stranger. To the average non-gamer, it may seem that an online game would not need data analysis. However, that is quite the contrary. On the analytical side, many pro-teams utilize analysts to give themselves an edge on other teams. Analytics jobs aside, everyone participates in informational work whether they are aware or not. Content consumers participate in information work every time they choose which content they view, or participate in. Choosing to watch every game that TSM Bjergsen plays in versus watching every game that TL Doublelift plays in is informational work! Preferring to watch certain teams over others gives important information for various types of groups in the cycle of product, including content producers.

           Another type of immaterial labor is emotional work. Emotional work is as the title entails, it involves work that requires some sort of emotional control during the work environment. For example, working as a sales associate, retail, or even as a server would be types of emotional work. Though emotion may not be the first thing that comes to mind with these jobs, all involve a good degree of emotional control. An argument can be made that every job with human interaction would require some degree of emotional work. In the cycle of production, influencers also conduct emotional work. Influencers do taste work in the sense that they evaluate fashion, but taste work must include emotional restraint. Influencers tell you how to feel about a trend or standard, but at the same time have to control their own. It would be hard fought to find a successful influencer that does not maintain their emotions, especially when it comes to digital labor (Unless their success is built on over-the-top reactions and comments). Professional League players engage in emotional work arguably more than traditional athletes. Pro-players often live in gaming houses, where they spend literally every waking moment with the rest of their team. Therefore, to promote a health team atmosphere, they must conduct their emotions properly on a day-to-day basis.

           Finally, cultural or taste work is another type of immaterial labor. Cultural work involves evaluations of fashion standards. In this way taste work defines and redefines current and future standards of taste and fashion. Cultural work can be about setting trends, working to make your new move, type of creative work, or whatever you have it be the next viral item. However, cultural work is not only about setting trends, it can also be capitalizing on current trends. Many Instagram profiles of companies exemplify this. They attempt to set trends with new challenges or even new hashtags. Additionally, companies follow the trends already set so as to get higher engagement from the general audience. In the micro-culture of professional League of Legends, many pro-players tend to have social media posts about the new meme in the professional scene, with of course will result in higher participation from their followers.

Fantastic Read of TSM’s Analyst Daily Job:

http://www.threetwonine.com/tminus/2015/3/6/analysis-in-competitive-league-of-legends

Taste Work in Meme form:

TSM Gaming House, Pro-Players Living Together 24/7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ieIjPQdxog

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Fans, Amateurs

Our readings this week focus on fans and amateurs. In my blog post I will focus on participatory culture as defined by Jenkins. Additionally, I will also address the contradictions and comments of Jenkins participatory culture that are detailed in Fuchs’ reading. Using the streams of the professional players as a test example of participatory culture, I will detail how under different circumstances it may or may not be considered a participatory culture. Lastly, I will discuss fans, amateurs, and professionals as well as briefly covering what I believe are the characteristics that distinguish a League of Legends player of each category.

Participatory culture as defined by Jenkins, is a culture that has fans actively interacting with one another to create new content. An important by-product of participatory culture is that as this culture manifests, it becomes an alternative source of media influence. Loosely rephrased as power in numbers, I believe that Jenkins is pointing out that in a participatory culture, the amount of resources and skills that are mixed in creating this culture should result in a different type of power as well. Understandably, given the large pool of resources being funneled into the culture. Further characteristics of participatory culture involve a sense of purpose by the members, which could be coupled in with a sense of belonging and importance.

However, Fuchs believes that Jenkins has not covered or factored in relevant considerations of participatory culture. One key contrast is the digital labor of the fans that produce content for their respective culture. Jenkins believes that if the fans are enjoying their work and the content that they produce it wouldn’t be considered work. Which can be compared to age old saying of, if you love what you do you will never work a day in your life. However, Fuchs drives a different opinion home in free work, even if its enjoyable work is undoubtedly, still work. Drawing back to the age-old saying, though you enjoy what you do and that is fantastic for the day-to-day grind, the bottom line is it is still work. Which leads me to agree that Jenkins argument is lacking a solid economic factor of participatory culture.

Paralleling the concept of participatory culture with League of Legends streams, I believe it fulfills the characteristics of the culture defined by Jenkins. In a stream, participation is easily accessible and fan creations are very prominent. In the more popular streams, even though you are one voice of many, oftentimes you will see your voice resounding with others instead of clashing. Stream highlights and fan art referencing specific moments of the streams, are some ways fans are engaging with one another in this participatory culture. However, I do not believe this holds up with Fuchs beliefs of a participatory culture. The effort of creating art and clips hold no economic reward for the fan, but the distribution and creation will hold an economic value for the streamer. As previously mentioned, this is essentially the free digital labor provided by fans.

Lastly, I want to cover fans, amateurs, and professionals. In terms of League of Legends, I believe it is an environment in which these categories are very easily distinguished. Beginning with professionals, anyone who is attempting to enter the League Championship Series (LCS), and is or was a part of the LCS. Amateurs, are those who have not even entered the B-League of the LCS, the Challenger Series. Anyone else would simply be a fan of League of Legends. In class, we discussed various point of interest that would separate amateur and professionals. The ones most applicable to this field, in my opinion, is full-time dedication and effort and any form of payment for their effort. Furthermore, though professionals are the one that have succeeded in any sense, every professional was an amateur at one point or another.

- Resounding similarity in a participatory culture (Screen from Bjergsen’s stream)

Digital Labor - Fan-clipped highlight of Bjergsen’s stream, which ended up on the front page of Reddit ALL. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/5sy63x/bjergsen_i_guess_this_is_my_moment/

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Tl7MS90KY

Stream Highlight Cover Art-

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Online Minority Post

Gaming has without a doubt made large strides in the recent years to become more mainstream. More people every day are starting to realize it is more than just mindless entertainment. Recently League of Legends is starting to find its place as the prominent eSports game. However, though League of Legends gaming is a mainstream game, it still on the fringe of the mainstream bubble. On the grand scheme of things, gaming as a hobby is mainstream. However, competitive gaming, and more specifically professional gaming, is on the fringe of the gaming subculture. Just like any every online minority group, each culture has its own vernacular that would be hard to understand as an outsider. For example, in Florini’s reading, the term “signifyin”, a type of language that allows the Black Twitter users to perform their identity. This is a great example of the shared vernacular that exists in a subculture, it helps members of the same subculture to identify with one another. Gaming culture is no exception. The unfortunate vernacular of gamers is extremely distinguishable and are distinct taste markers. The social media content of gamers are not lacking in the “LUL”, “PogChamp”, “Boosted”, “xD”. Most of these terms are adopted by the gamers that watch streams on Twitch, but have been adopted into the gaming community. Even the pro-gamers I follow are not exempt from this vernacular.

               Competitive gaming exists as a subculture of gaming. In this subculture, there exists its own shared ideology, taste, and vernacular. To better understand this, I will separate the player base into the two groups. All competitive gamers are gamers, but not all gamers are competitive gamers. Beginning with ideology, there is already a completely different mindset when it comes to the game. The norm ideology in mainstream gaming is that you play games to maximize having fun. Contrasting the shared ideology of the professional gaming subculture where you play to maximize winning. Playing the game isn’t fun, winning is the only priority. Their taste in gaming deviates from enjoying the game with friends to constantly looking for outlets to improve their gameplay. Watching popular streamer Imaqtpie for laughs is a waste of time. This subculture prefers to analyze replay footage of their own games.

Additionally, even in the same game, competitive gaming has its own shared vernacular as well. Many terms that are only relevant to the competitive aspect, and are not commonly found in the general gaming mainstream. Terms such as rotations, macro play, scaling compositions are all terms that the gaming mainstream would consider “try-hard”. A moniker in the gaming community that separates one from the casual crowd of gamers. Commonly known as not being to enjoy the game as it is and not being able to have fun. Communication in the game turns into shot-calling plays for their team and honing their focus on winning the game.

               Furthermore, within the competitive subculture of gaming exists the professional gaming culture, those who play games as their career. The shared ideology once again changes in this sub-subculture. You don’t aim to win because that’s what makes the game fun for you, you aim to win because it is your job to win. For example, pro-players such as TSM Bjergsen and Doublelift show their professional mindset through social media. With the shared professional gamer ideology, they are never satisfied with their gameplay, even if they won their previous match. This extremely segmented subculture of gamers is only populated by the elite few. Through various reality show like content on Youtube, one gets a better understanding that their life revolves around gaming, day in and day out. The ideology is to be the best in the world, with tastes that only further the cause.

Gaming Vernacular:

Professional Gamer Ideology:

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Friendship

Friendship has changed drastically throughout the years. As Bloor pointed out, friendship is no longer the Aristotle ideal where friends work together to promote their virtues and further their moral values. With the emergence of social media, friendship has become a casually used word. In this age, it has become harder to separate the instrumental and social relationships. Additionally, friendship in the modern age has transformed the traditional family into something that is dynamic.

Friendship these days have diluted to a feeling rather than a relationship, as noted in Deresiewicz’s article. Social media acts as a sense of connection rather than an actual connection. By following someone on multiple social media accounts you start to feel included in someone’s life. Daily updates about where they are or what they are doing gives you a sense of confidence that you know that person. However, as Deresiewicz puts it, social media accounts essentially refer to the community and not the individual. Many streamers, like Bjergsen, are very well known for this. Streaming their game play with a webcam, many professionals need the high viewership number to have higher visibility and attract other viewers. To imitate the connection of a real relationship they call on you personally to watch their stream, or address the fan when they lose. Making fans believe that their favorite professional gamer cares about them each individually. (Figure 1)

               In the readings this week, it detailed instrumental relationships and social relationships. Taking streaming as an example, it draws a solid connection of how blurry the line between a social and instrumental relationship are. At its core, streaming is a social relation. The streamer provides entertainment free of cost, so that the viewers who tune in get a chance to experience the game with the one that is streaming. In addition, throughout the stream, the streamer will read the chat and interact with viewers so people have a great time. However, though it is social in some sense, a stream is also an instrumental relationship. A quick comparison between two different stream times from the same person show just how instrumental it can be (Figure 2). In the second pictures, we can clearly see a blatant advertisement for the new xXx Movie. Additionally, instead of reading from the general chat with all the viewers, Bjergsen has opted to read and interact from a subscriber-only chat. As the name entails, to be a part of the chat, one must pay a monthly fee. These combined is why is make it hard to distinguish if relations are truly one or the other.

               In Deresiewicz’s article, he refers to the modern proverb, friends are the family that we choose. Traditionally, family is something defined strictly as those of the same blood. However, in the article Deresiewicz brings up the new sense of family that is defined by experience rather than genetics. In our modern age of hustle and bustle, our lives become more dynamic than ever. With that in mind, family is still a need, and our close friends will fill in as our lives go on. It is not something that is only prevalent in dysfunctional families, but instead prevalent in this day and age. Take Bjergsen for example, who moved from Europe when he was only 17 years old. Still a youngster, Bjergsen needed the guidance and support that comes from a family. Something Team SoloMid was glad to provide for one its own team players. (Figure 3).

Figure 1.

Figure 2

Figure 3

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Introduction

Since I am a huge gamer, I want to do an in depth following of professional North American League of Legends players on various social media accounts. League of Legends is the largest multiplayer game at the moment, with over 67 million playing per month. ESports is rapidly growing and it may soon become an officially recognized sport. In the United States, we can see some huge changes in the upcoming decades and it will be interesting to see how these pro-gamers handle themselves on social media given the gamer stereotype. I will be following these players on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, with Twitter being the most active. Furthermore, I want to cover different types of professional gamers in the League of Legends scene.

First is TSM Bjergsen, one of the best players right now who is playing on one of the most popular teams.  Bjergsen, is a European player that transferred onto the North American scene. An interesting aspect about Bjergsen is that he was actually 18 when he came to the United States, and as he developed over 3 years, you got to see him becoming more and more American. As a longtime follower of Bjergsen, once thing you notice on his social media is that he began to post less about his hometown and more about his current town. He has almost 1 million followers on twitters posts a lot about his team, Team Solo Mid.

Second is FOX Akaadian, a rookie player that exploded onto the scene (1st franchise win streak ever).

Akaadian is far from your average pro-gamer, he puts a lot of focus onto his physical physique as seen on his social media. The attitude and persona of a jock is quite rare in the professional gaming scene.  As is he quite new, he lacks a solid following, but I would argue that he is targeting the athlete minority in gamers.

Third is TSM Doublelift, a seasoned player for about 5 years, but has decided to take a leave of absence for one season. From following Doublelift throughout his career, is it quite strange to see him post more about his everyday streaming life instead of the competitive scene. Ever since he retired, his social media content has primarily focused on the famous gamer life.

Fourth is FLY Hai, a professional player who, at his prime, was the one of the best players and recently came out of “retirement” to tackle the competitive scene once more. Unlike the others, Hai is one of the few that posts about current events in the world. A quick look at his social media shows activists retweets, and public displays of his stance on current issues.

Lastly is Yoona, a sub for CLG who is waiting for his time to shine. As he is not the official starter as well as having a small following, it is very clear that he has less restrictions on his social media. As he is very casual and rather crude with his social media humor.  I chose these pro-gamers because I believe it covers some of the various athlete types you would encounter in other sports, and it would be interesting to see how they handle social media. For example, if a veteran of the pro-gamer scene would act similar to that of a veteran basketball player. All of these players tweet multiple times a week, with the more popular ones maintaining their Instagram on a weekly basis as well.