Have You Reddit?
By Elena Moore
Space and place is different to everyone.
Everyone lives out there own narrative, everyone is the center of their own
story. From the places we live to the country, we live in everything and
everyone has a name, and deemed a part of human civilization. It is within
human nature to place names upon objects, landmarks, animals, and people in an
effort to acknowledge existence; to give a name is to give meaning, importance,
and power.
It's similar in the online world, names hold
power and names hold importance. The name of an application or a social network
gains power as the influence of said app/network grows. Examples of some
influential/powerful networks being Facebook, twitter, and to some degree
Reddit. What we view on the Internet and conversations that we as people engage
in, within our chosen social media, have an effect on our relationship to
space, place, and the names we may choose to represent online personas, whether
that be fandoms clubs or interests.
The interesting thing about Reddit is that
it is based off different communities on a range of topics from cats to NASA conspiracies
where people claim that the world is flat. An example being, in one community
an individual might know all there is to know about cats, and be a common
visitor to the page, it's almost guaranteed that that person is neither going to
care, or know anything about NASA conspiracies therefore would not hold any
power over that particular community like they do when it comes to cats. ‘kittyCuddles4LIFE’ would hold zero
power compared to ‘NASA-Always-Lies-1969’.
 |
| Space Cat https://au.pinterest.com/pin/474215035743069029/ |
Name and its ability
to act as a compass tracing family, and cultural background back to its origin
and the power a name can posses. The topic of societal pressures and
discrimination by those who don’t grasp the meaning of names outside of their
own culture or nationality is addressed in this TED
talk by Erikan Obotetukudo see link provided. (2017)
Name holds significant meaning across
cultures for example in the reading The
Songlines by Chatwin, B. the significance
of dreaming is addressed describing how the Ancestors created themselves from clay in the forms of
totems and how aboriginal people identify their place of belonging by one of
the many totems created the example used being a wallaby. “Here in Australia
the ancestors created themselves from clay, hundreds and thousands of them, one
for each totemic species”(1987, p.p 12). If an aboriginal person was to say
that, there totem was a wallaby it would mean that they are part of the wallaby
clan, wallaby’s would be considered kin, and to kill one for food would be
cannibalism and fratricide. The name or the wallaby holds power over all those in the wallaby clan but it also creates a bond and a grouping of people providing those involved with power and a sense of belonging, a place.
References
Obotetukudo, E.
(2017, June). The power in your name
[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ0kF8ot2E8
Unknown. Space Cats [Image]. Retrieved from
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/474215035743069029/
Chatwin, B. (1987). The Songlines. (p.p.12)Bedford Square, London: The Spartan Press
Ltd.
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