What is a sponsor? Thank you Mr. Macguffin I would love to answer that! Well, in essence, it is someone/thing that influences your decisions due to a prior exposure, a sort of scratch-get-scratch mentality. However, in the case of literacy, a sponsor is someone who helps you improve your literacy: to use the machine, technology, or syntax available to creat a better product. A person in which improves your writing though does not destroy your own voice is the best possible sponsor. In this new technological era our sponsors include, though are not limited to, those that aid us in finding our own voice in company with new social medias (cough Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and countless others, end cough). In the article #PleaseHelp: Learning to write (again) on Twitter, Keri Franklin suggests that her colleges @stevejmoore and @tmmaerke, as well as several other twitter articles are the sponsors of her literacy. This leads to a new idea of sponsor, no longer is a sponsor an editor that overlooks your work, or even a specific professional, instead there is a sort of informality and freedom in sponsor-sponsee relationship.

The sponsorship in the print-based world would be a strict relationship, a sort of teacher-student relationship. The teacher introduces you to opportunity, trains you, and helps you improve according to the teachers own conscious or subconscious biases. The student, under the impression that the teacher is already more knowledgeable attempts to, if not copy, absorb what they think is the best of this teacher and adding their own style gradually. However, there is already a sort of power dynamic, a void to fill. The teacher is the ‘professional style’ while the student is the ‘unprofessional/unrefined style.’ That already makes one right and the other wrong, even if that is not truly the case. So if this is the style of old is there a change in our sponsor-sponsee relationship today?

Thank you Mr. Macguffin I was getting to that… Change is inevitable, and sponsor-sponsee relationships are no different. The largest difference being a new mentality, or outlook, over the sponsor. The sponsor is no longer this master of the specific art; at times, a sponsor is an equal. In Keri Franklin’s example, it is her colleges that sets her on her Twitter education and though she admits to looking at other ‘professionals’ these same ‘professionals’ also seem to have both failings and successes in the new medium. She mentions, “Sometimes I would read a fantastic link, but the text of the tweet did not reflect the quality of the link. So, it wasn’t enough to be concise, the tweets were headlines or signposts that allowed readers to see that this tweet included an interesting link.” This murks up the waters between the ‘professional’ and ‘unprofessional’ styles when both tend to make mistakes. In fact, it is her own attempt to understand what makes a good tweet that allows her to look critically at the professionals. With such a drastic difference is there any familiar elements between these two sponsor-sponsee relationships?

Once again Mr. Macguffin, your ability to bring about the next paragraph is remarkable, I would say yes. In both the print-based age and the digital age the sponsee seeks to improve their own particular style by looking and mimicking the sponsor. Just as Keri Franklin looks at her colleges and other twitter sources, weighing the pros and cons, so too did the up-and-coming reporter look to their own colleges. No sponsee seeks out the work of a simple scribe, duplicating the same style and idea of their sponsor like sheeple. A sponsee’s end game is to improve their own style and introduce new ideas atop of the ideas of old, perhaps even surpass their sponsor. Though I would claim that the digital age gives us a wider data base to expand on and find our own unique voice, both era’s sought out this improvement. In essence, the objective has not changed, only the process. Now let us talk about fails baby, lets talk about me, me, me.

Just about an hour or so ago I was doing a Twitter assignment for another class, for the curious mind I was to find a political opinion of Milton’s and share it under the hashtag of engl260, a simple task… for the technologically literate. As for myself, I wrote the Twitter and tweeted it out… to absolutely no one because instead of adding a hashtag I decided to simply write engl260. I mean hashtags are for conformists right! So, just like Keri Franklin, I failed at tweeting, unlike her I still find Twitter a tedious and pointless media outlet I never wanted. How about another digital literacy fallacy?

Well, Mr. Macguffin, I do not know if I would call this a fallacy but my excessive use of INTJ images for my blogs must speak volumes–or perhaps whispers–of me. While most posted images have a sort of purpose to their assigned blog I tend to default to an INTJ image as if to stress my INTJness. I suppose the argument could be made–to which I would claim–that the image is to give the audience a glimpse of the writer as opposed to the text however this argument is horrible flawed. For one, the most INTJ person would probably post an image related to the blog as it would add visual stimuli to their argument. Second, a person’s writing should reflect that person a lot more than a personality type made chiefly by two people, by which I mean Briggs and Myers. Lastly, the image for this blog makes no sense, if I had a secondary brain in my heart cavity blood would stop circulating through my body thus depriving it of oxygen and killing me. Silly image, being illogical and thinking I would not notice…

“I started reading mostly on my own, mostly Stephen King books.”

“The last two jobs that I had dealt with writing a lot of incidences in detail.”

In our class we had a discussion on memes and why they have been so successful in this new computer literate society. There was a discussion on why they are so effective in selecting your own audience or even how they can be clever ways in including new people into an otherwise obscure group. Yes, there was a lot of discussion on why they are so effective but not on what makes a successful meme as opposed to a failed meme and what I’ve come up with is that meme’s follow closely to a set pattern that resembles Hamilton’s theory of social literacy. When I say this I want to focus on this quote, “visible literacy events are just the tip of an iceberg: literacy practice can only be inferred from observable evidence because they include invisible resources…” For while the failed meme in question has parts of this, the successful meme will have far more depth to work with.

A small note to add to the back of your mind of the origins of these memes. Both come from the financially and culturally successful Portal franchise. Even people who hadn’t played the games know, or at least has heard, of the famous The Cake is a Lie meme. This meme not only acts as a subtle joke among the fans of the series but also as an entertaining meme machine for the casual look through of internet whats-its. While the other meme is so obscure that some of the most hardcore fans would look at you in confusion if mentioned, harder fans then me hadn’t even heard of it. That said, let us start with the failed meme, Hoopy the, overlooked, Hoop.

On the surface, this meme seems to fit in with Hamilton’s prior-mentioned quote, so why did it not sink in to the gaming world? The Valve team, the producers and creators of the game, spent a large amount of time and brain power in trying to create a successful meme. They thought of their fan base and attempted to make the meme so in your face that it would be impossible to ignore, so why the failure? The Valve team had searched the internet, expecting to find Hoopy the Hoop memes everywhere and were actually surprised–and perhaps even a little disappointed–when they found nothing of poor Hoopy. Let there be a brief discussion on what it did right according to Hamilton, “invisible resources,” is the driving force behind Hoopy the Hoop. The Valve team took time to create this Hoopy and even thought of their fan base. With games like Half-Life 2 under their belt, they already had experience with their fans. This is a group that over-analyzed every bit of their games, trying to find clues at to what Valve intended by this or that, there are countless youtube videos to prove this. So it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that this lone hoop could have sparked some attention from their audience, but it still failed. Let us now turn to what they failed to realize, “visible literacy event are just the tip of an iceberg.” No company can make a meme, no one person has such influence, people–or more accurately a collection of people–make memes. After you complete Portal you are sent flying through the air with debris falling from the sky, as well as a hoop, so what? You just beat GLaDOS, the best in evil AI technology since HAL 9000, or perhaps SHODAN. You even managed to get your hands on a portal gun! Compared to all that a simple hoop, one of many pieces of debris, seems very underwhelming. Which leads us to the cake.

Hoopy the Hoop was forced on an audience that was completely oblivious to its existence but the cake was subtle. At the beginning of Portal, when your friendly neighborhood AI sought to encourage you she/it promised you a reward of cake. If by cake she/it meant a lava bath then she/it truly did attempt to follow through on her/its word. As the player, you find several clues and must infer on your own intuition as to the cake reward. Even the ending song makes a jab at this cake. If given the two meme’s and asked which one was intended and which was made purely of the internet masses it would stand to reason The Cake would be labeled as intended. There is a level of mythos, a history, and even a direct connection between protagonist and antagonist that comes form this meme. A familiar piece of information to remind the player of the game, riddled with that glorious experience that made up playing Portal. The success of this meme, though in the end must fall directly to the internet masses, stems largely from the dramatic build up of this meme. Though an inquisitive eye may have caught a misplaced hoop in a set of falling debris, it takes no effort to understand the fact that you were promised cake and given an unhealthy dose of neurotoxin in its place. It was easy to pick out the connection between player and rival, protagonist and antagonist, then some insignificant hoop, sorry Hoopy but it’s true. This layer of connection is an invisible connection, one that cannot be explained, one that must be experienced. There are some that were so distraught at this lack of cake that they made videos of themselves making cake, physically making cake. Something they played somehow forced, or perhaps inspired, people to make something in order to somehow further their connection with the game. Now, I’m not saying that Portal is the best game ever made, that claim belongs to Half-Life 3 which will be confirmed any day now, but few games can boast of that kind of power over players, not to mention a game that you could beat in a few hours of afternoon leisure.

So when it comes to a successful meme there has be be a sort of build up but more importantly then that it, it is up to people to create the meme. There has to be some sort of element that connects people. For some it may be some sort of sports memorabilia, others a novel, some a game, but there is no way to force a meme. In the end a meme is only a meme because people allow it to be, they must feed into the meme and spread it out. Even if you want something to be well liked and appreciated it may not be noticed in they manner you expected. Though memes have been able to amass attention to unknown individuals and achievements that may not have been noticed or recognized otherwise, it up to the collective to select their memes, not any one man or group.

I was once labeled a low level reader and now I can proudly boast that I’ve finished War and Peace, so the question is where do the lines cross? When I was young I found the whole process of reading to be tedious and boring now it happens to be one of my favorite pastimes. What changed for me is my mentality for reading. Even at a young age I found it hard to accept a teachers assigned reading; when I was forced to read a book the whole book became spoiled for me. It wasn’t until I started writing that I actually gave reading another look. So perhaps starting with writing would be the safest focus point.

As a young boy I had the pleasure, and in some ways disadvantage, of a mother who found no faults in her child. I would often spend my childhood in the company of the ever narcissistic and egotistical me, making up grand adventures and unique stories to pass the time. I would have a whole reason for a game and when I played with others their character had to fit my world. There came a point when my mother told me to write these stories down as never to forget them. Filled with a narcissism that is only acceptable with small children, I sought my path as a young writer. It was only when I began to enjoy the art that I thought it would be best to look at the product of professionals and while teachers of all grades would assign academic reading it wasn’t that genre that interested me, it was simply fantasy. So a splurged on my selected genre and soon grew to love everything about it.

Now I will never claim to be a great writer, no doubt this post is riddled with grammatical sins, but I will claim to be a great reader. A single book read in my process has yet to be forgotten. I read slowly and in shifts of sudden zeal but the result is always the same, I can recall most, if not all, of the information I read, something I still cannot accomplish with a mandatory text. This is partially because any given reading assignment has a deadline, forcing the reader to read the text quickly as to avoid hitting that deadline. What I’ve learned from my assigned reading habits is one of two things: a) I finish the novel as quickly as possible and risk the process of retaining that information, or b) I wait until the final moment and either barely finish or do not finish at all. Both of these processes are terribly inefficient and though I value efficiency and education I find it next to impossible to break these habits. Through reading what I like I slowly built myself as a reader and willingly sought to expand my reading skills. That is why I find this class fascinating, the opportunity to expand on what it means to be literate from someone who was once considered below average at best.