Bella Jenkins

Jenkins wrote, “The Net opened up new space for public discussions of media content and the Web became an important showcase for grassroots cultural production. On one of my favorite websites, known as the Refrigerator, parents can scan in their children’s artwork and place them on global display” (Jenkins 555). CLICK. This idea was my a-ha moment. The idea of this website seems so funny, so simple, so purely NORMAL and at the same time so foreign and strange, that I can only process it through my postmodern lens. Jenkins wrote, “new media technologies [enable] average citizens to participate in the archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation, and recirculation of media content” (Jenkins 554). Bringing artwork home from school for my parents was such an exhilarating act. I’d worked so hard on my two person, stick figure, colorless drawing, and if my mom put it on our fridge, I would squeal and laugh with glee. Take that idea, digitize it, and put it on the web?! I don’t know why, but this just pushed me over the edge of comprehension. It goes from being such an insignificant, routine act…thinking about it on a website just blows my mind. Jenkins talks a lot about the Do-It –Yourself culture and expressed his hopes that DIY films and media would find an outlet to be shown. Well, Jenkins, I’d like to introduce you to a thing called YouTube. Anyone, anywhere, at any time can upload a film, clip, music video, commentary…ANYTHING onto YouTube and have the rest of the world see it. Some of my favorite YouTube videos have become so popular that the stars are now famous, maybe with TV shows, record contracts, or online talk shows. DIY is the culture of today; we are resilient, smart, and tech-savvy. We are constantly learning new tricks and ways of ‘expressing ourselves’ online. I think this article was only written in 2003, so it is mind blowing to see how far we’ve come in such a short time.