Parodies are one of the most entertaining and popular forms of network culture. They are inspired by mass popular culture, such as movies, t.v. shows, and music, and they represent the creativity of multiple individuals and portray multiple meanings for each audience. The fact that the original structured media can be manipulated to have other meanings than what the original owner intended and the popularity and interest that it draws from a large audience shows the importance of participatory culture and the effectiveness it has in generating interest. This is imperative for our group in generating the interest of an audience for our short term goals. Of course the idea of the parody is to be a hilarious misinterpretation of existing popular media, and our topic is one where a humorous approach would be inappropriate. However, the pull that participatory culture has on people would prove an important factor in our project.
My specific parody youtube video is a voice over of the popular Disney song “Let it Go”, and the audience being those who have heard or know of this song. The original song is massively popular and so the author of the parody chose that song knowing that people would be interested in their version since the original is so well known. The message of the parody concerns studying for finals and also the crude title of the parody all serves to target a younger audience, an audience which is most likely to be on youtube the most. The author therefore displays Ka-knowledge in basing their digital rhetoric on their target audience. This goes to show that our group needs to consider the audience we are trying to reach out to. Parodies and humor are probably not the best way for us to reach out considering the sensitivity of our topic. Instead we should try for ways to evoke sympathy through somber emotions and heartfelt stories so that our audience truly sees our issue as something that affects them as well.
That transition from saturation to occupation is also key and seen in my parody example. By viewing the video you can also see that other people have taken the parody and continued to make their own parodies of the same song, granted with a lot less viewing success but they are there nonetheless. In showing the possibility of what can be created using a combination of existing media and original creativity, the author has inspired other people to try making something of their own. That’s exactly what we want to accomplish in our project which is to inspire people to just think about how our issue effects their lives and recognize that there is a problem. The daily challenges we present are an attempt to get people inspired to think about about the issue of mental illness and connect it with their day to day lives.
The point of the parody video is just to convey the author’s personal thoughts and ideas through existing media, so one sees the effects of Clicktivism in the “likes” section of Youtube but overall there is no negative effect since the fact that many people are viewing the video is what matters. However, the interaction that my group is looking for for our project requires us to stay away from simply asking for people “like” our efforts. Interaction is key, so every video we post or every challenge we present is an attempt at inspiring more sacrifice from our audience instead of just clicktivism.
A Word To the Wise 