Category Archives: Digital

AI Poem

Background:

Informant (T) is a student studying at USC.

Main Piece:

“Nothing is so good or so bad that it can’t be both at the same time.”

Context:

“My friend likes to create poems using AI, and this was a sentence made from one of them, and we like to use it a lot now.”

Analysis: 

The usage of digital technology in folklore is now a primary topic of debate. Whether or not this saying can be constituted as folklore could certainly be contested, but as according to my informant, they use it amongst their group, thus being passed around orally. Folklore studies are also generally less concerned with the origin of a piece of folklore in recent years, so despite the technological origins of this piece, I believe it still counts as folklore. This particular saying is both vague and universal enough that it emulates an actual proverb, which are popular as they are short and easily understood, and also embody a form of historical wisdom. In this case, the saying speaks on moral balance and the inherent gray nature of things (rather than having a clearly defined good vs. evil), which perhaps aligns with the moral compass of my informant and his circle of contacts.

Using digital technology as a means to create folklore also raises interesting questions on copyright and ownership, which are also increasingly prevalent discussions in the 21st century. While my informant didn’t specifically touch on ownership, it is highly possible that such pieces of digitally-created media are then owned by its creator (perhaps the most prominent example of this would be NFTs), and while in this case the saying is attributed to my friend, if it spreads across a larger population, the origin of such a saying could eventually become blurred.

Twitter Slang: “Drinking from the mother lake”

Text:

FC: “There’s a saying, when someone serves seismically, you say that they drank from the mother lake. And the mother lake’s not a real lake, believe it or not. It’s kind of a metaphorical, symbolic source of power for, like, motherly behavior. And motherly behavior, anyone who serves, who delivers some sort of jaw-dropping performance, piece of media, they’re mother. They’re queen, they support me, they nurse me. And in order to gain those powers, that ability, they had to drink from the mother lake. The primordial source of power.”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old college student from St. Louis, Missouri who has been using Twitter since his early teens. He describes the community he occupies on the app as “stan Twitter,” which is an online community of young people who bond over their fandom for certain musical artists or pop culture interests. Stan Twitter has a specific sense of humor and vernacular, much of which is derived from the cultural practices of the LGBTQ community, of which which many members of the online subculture are members. Black drag queens in particular are responsible for the creation and proliferation of much of the language employed by stan Twitter users.

“It’s very common to talk about celebrities, music icons as, you know, people say “queen” and a lot of that comes from LGBTQ slang, like drag slang,” FC said. He believes that the term “mother,” a reverential term colloquially applied to usually female artists whose work an individual finds exceptional or resonant, was taken from drag and ballroom culture. Since many people involved in these subcultures found themselves alienated from or rejected by their families because of their queerness, drag houses and drag families, or communities of queer people and drag performers, substituted as the kind of support networks which traditional families usually provide. In these groups, “there’s always a mother of the drag family who is the most experienced queen or ballroom performer with the most knowledge and experience to share,” FC said. “They are just held on a very high pedestal and their abilities and servery is applauded, and I think that’s a lot of where ‘mother’ comes from.”

FC described how stan Twitter humor often involves taking one foundational joke or vernacular element, and continually modulating it into absurd derivations. He thinks that the term “drinking from the mother lake” formed through this process, beginning with trends of calling artists “queen” and “mother” and coming up with increasingly extreme, peculiar, and culturally specific ways to express this same admiration.

Analysis:

         This slang term, and slang used on stan Twitter in general, is deeply grounded in LGBTQ history and identity. Young people on this platform connect with previous generations of queer people by using their language and traditions, arguably creating a community or uniting people of queer identities through common experiences or a common culture. Moreover, stan Twitter users form a community by fostering common interests, a sense of humor, and a vernacular style often derived from culturally specific references. To understand the linguistic traditions used by this community, one must understand what the lingo refers to and how humor functions on the platform. Someone’s ability to employ these vernacular traditions, communicate, be funny, or find others funny identifies them as a member of the community, as a member of the in-group, and provides the opportunity to bond with others who share interests and experiences.

The collaborative process by which this slang term evolved strikes me as particularly folkloric. There is no individual author, instead, people add onto each other’s versions, with different derivations branching off and becoming popular in different circles. With every iteration, a new dimension of strangeness and cultural specificity is added, so appreciation for a song or an artist can be expressed by saying that such artist “drank from the mother lake.”

Obamaprism

Story: Well it all started rather harmless. A friend, A, introduced us to an instructional video on the different possible obamium shapes. From there we got deeper into the lore, engrossing ourselves into online communities such as Reddit to find like minded believers. I even went so far as to create my own media, using vfx to bring obamaprism to life in Los Angeles. A created a shrine in his living room one day consisting of a table with a candle in each of the corners and a triangle create by laying out approximately 8 paper obamaprisms out and a large image of Obamamium printed in a piece of paper hung over the shrine. We would play the sacralicious music and pray to our shrine. It’s all mostly still available on YouTube but I’ve since moved to worshipping the geico gecko.

Context: I was told this story over text, as the informant has COVID and was unable to meet in person, and also did not want to call or FaceTime. A little bit about this particular informant – while I knew these were great examples of folklore, which is why I included them, I do not believe they took the topic seriously. As a result, they told the stories in a very theatrical way, which might not be a terrible thing in the context of folklore, however it may make it hard to understand.

Thoughts: When asked about why this stuck in his head, the informant says that it was the best times he had goofing around with the friend group. His friend, A, ended up leaving after the semester that this happened, and he hasn’t seen him since.

Analysis: My interpretation of the story is that these friends got comically into the Obamamium meme, which was a meme that started on Reddit and ended up showing up on many other platforms. It was basically just a picture of Obama’s face on a pyramid and people called it Obamamium. I am also into memes, and hearing the story made me much more fascinated by meme folklore and how things escalate in folk groups.

Herobrine

Story: So Herobrine is a mythical being in the world of Minecraft. So, basically in the early development stages of Minecraft, Notch, who was the creator of Minecraft, would put in the developer logs, like removed Herobrine. And the story that was eventually developed around that very innocuous term, was that um Notch had a brother who died at some point in development who played the game, and his brothers soul became trapped in the game, and essentially began haunting players by attacking them.and the avatar of the character, herobrine, was like the default character, Steve, but without pupils in his eyes just like white in his eyes. And he was basically invincible, and could set you on fire, and just do very awful things to you. And multiple times during the beta development cycle, notch would put in removed Herobrine, and for the young kids who played the game who knew that story, we were always like: [in a quiet yell] ‘Oh my god! Hes back! He came back. Like what the fuck.’ and we would always be really freaked out, because the devoloper was confirming that herobrine was a real thing, and it wasnt just a bunch of kids, it was also like the developer of the game that was talking about it.

Context: I was told this story by the informant in person, and recorded them so that I could better transcribe later on.

Thoughts: The informant said that they loved telling this story, as it helped them to remember some great times with their friends playing Minecraft. They think the story stuck in their head so much because it is the only ghost story that they ever genuinely believed in.

Analysis: I remember the Herobrine legend – me and my friends also were also terrified of a potential encounter with him. I know this folklore was more widespread, but it was crazy meeting someone who grew up on the opposite side of the country talk about it, especially with the developer log detail which I had never heard before.

A Glitch in the Matrix – Sourceless Light

Context: J is my friend’s father, who works as a dentist. He claims this story happened to him a few years ago when he was in his mid 40s. The topic of living in the Matrix spurred this conversation.

Me: What if we were all living in the Matrix? What if none of this is real and we just respawn when we die?

J: I think you’re actually closer to the truth than you think.

Me: ?? What do you mean? You think we’re living in a matrix?

J: Well, I haven’t experienced anything disappearing or people “glitching”, but I have encountered a light with no source.

Me: Uhhhh what?

J: Ok story time. So I was driving on this highway in the Valley with a friend, right, and it was really late one night. Along the middle were these street lamps that made a pretty noticeable cone of light. Like, they did a good job of lighting up the streets.

Me: Mmhm, I see what you’re saying.

J: Anyways, they were pretty regular, and we didn’t really pay much attention to them. Then we saw a cone of light with no lamp to cast it. Looked EXACTLY like the light from the other street lamps, just being produced by empty air.

Me: That is sooo bizarre. Were you able to investigate it?

J: I wish we had. We easily could have, since there wasn’t anyone else on the road, but we just drove on. We still talk about it sometimes, but we’re still scratching our heads to this day.

Me: Noo I can’t believe you didn’t investigate! The curiosity would’ve killed me. Did you believe in the Matrix before this?

J: No, I didn’t really know that people actually believed in it. I just thought it was a movie. After seeing that, though, I looked into it more and was kind of surprised to find more stories like mine.

Me: Do you actually believe those stories now? That we could actually be living in a matrix?

J: Well, they’re certainly more believable now hahaa. If it wasn’t a “glitch”, I don’t know what it would be. Maybe our eyes were just tired but that was really quite strange.

Me: Wow, thank you so much for this story!

The concept of living in a simulation, or simulation hypothesis, is not new, with roots dating back to the ancient Greeks or Indian philosophers. However, the popularity of movies such as The Matrix and Inception brought the idea into the mainstream. Personally, I do not believe that we live in the Matrix, although stories like these are very intriguing, since they remind us that there are still so many things that we don’t understand about our universe. Though I have read stories about such “glitches” online, with the most popular ones being about surviving a supposedly fatal accident unscathed, this was my first time hearing about a glitch through someone that I know. It was definitely very confusing and left me with many questions about the world and what I have been taught. Although I have not experienced any glitches myself, hearing this story led me to become more open to other ways of interpreting the world.