Category Archives: Digital

Rose Christo and the My Immortal Authorship Debate

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2021
Primary Language: English

My Immortal is a Harry Potter fan fiction that um is famously very bad. It trended and was popularized because of how famously awful it was. And one of the aspects that made it very popular in addition to its awfulness was that nobody knew who the author was. And for years in fan fiction it was a form of folklore *subject winks* who the author of My Immortal was, and people thought we’d never get the answer. But one morn….one week in 2017 a woman on Tumblr claimed that she was the author of My Immortal, and that her name was Rose Christo, and that she wrote My Immortal to be intentionally bad so it would become popular so she could reconnect with her long-lost brother who she was separated from in foster care. She made a bunch of wild claims in addition to that, um, like how in her foster care she was, she was abused for being Native American before it was revealed that she was a white woman completely lying, having never been in foster care. Um, to this day it’s still not known whether she actually wrote My Immortal, because she did have documents hinting that she did. But we do know that she was lying about all of her reasons for writing it.”

Notes: 

This is one of my favorite pieces of internet folklore. The author has gone through many permutations, from the screen name of XXXbloodyrists666XX to Tara Gilesbie to Rose Christo to once again a big question mark. Additionally, there’s the fact that it reportedly got deleted of of fan fiction.net, the original hosting site, twice. It’s one of the first pieces of internet folklore I can remember hearing about as a young teenager, after it’s deletion but before Rose Christo came out as the “author,” so I got to watch her rise and fall in real time. It’s certainly interesting — who would make the claim to be the author of such a notoriously bad piece of work? It’s fascinating to keep up with, and I’m eager to see who comes forward to claim it next.

For more on My Immortal, click here.

Double-Cross Blunt and Other Shaped Blunts

Nationality: Italian-Irish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student (Mechanical Engineering) and Technology Assistant at USC
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles 90007
Performance Date: 2/8/21
Primary Language: English

This friend knows a lot about marijuana, and on Halloween (a few days after his birthday) he made a double-cross blunt or a large blunt with two smaller blunts inserted at the far end. The goal is that the smoker will get two friends to light all ends of the blunt so that the smoker gets an initial rush of smoke. This rush of smoke is more powerful than smoking a single blunt, and the idea was first shared in the movie Pineapple Express.

“Basically, it’s this guy, who’s a process server. That’s Seth Rogen, by the way. And then this is James Franco… And then there’s Danny McBride, who’s read and he’s this kind of comedic in the movie. But in the beginning of the movie, when Dale when Seth Rogen picks up his weed from James Franco. James Franco goes, Oh, Bro, I got this sweet Pineapple Express. And you know, like, Oh, they said the name of the movie. But he’s like, Oh, I who am I gonna smoke this cross joint with? I need two people. Because you need three lighters to light the joint. You need to light all three tips. I needed somebody to light the first two tips on the double cross joint and then like the other two for me as I lifted the front.”

There is no religious association with the blunt.

The speaker continued to explain that there are all sorts of shaped blunts (note: a blunt is not the same as a joint). There are turkey-shaped blunts and tarantula blunts (the legs or ‘feathers’ are additional blunts).

When asked what this double-cross blunt meant to him, the speaker said, “You’re smoking with two boys, or whoever’s there. But like, you’re just chilling out. You’re having a good time you’re smoking.”

*

I know that this piece was important to the speaker and he was very proud of his double-cross blunt. I do not smoke but it is interesting to see that there is an art to creating blunts and edibles (this speaker also creates cannabis butter from sativa which he then uses to make very strong edibles.) Because this speaker has knowledge of weed, I respect him more than were he just a regular ‘stoner.’

In this example, the speaker learned about the cross blunt from the film Pineapple Express, but this tradition is seen in other online weed forums and even Pinterest boards. Lighting the blunt is a group activity because the speaker cannot light all ends of the blunt at once. Adding the double cross shows that the speaker has improved the movie’s version of the blunt, and it allows for multiplicity and variation.

The embodiment of the Italian spirit in a Meme

Nationality: Italian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/26/2021
Primary Language: Italian
Language: English

Main piece:

L.L.:Ok so. [laughs] Every-time I see this meme I start to laugh. [laughs again] Basically there is this gif, which has now become also a sticker that we send to each other in chats, where there is the woman, I think she is a television’s reporter or something like that. Hum…anyway, she basically looks directly into the camera and does all these gestures and facial expression which are simply hilarious to me. Probably because it perfectly portrays the way I and the majority of other Italians act. And, I don’t know. To me it’s funny because I associate it with the daily online conversations I have with my friends and how we use it to simply represent what we would be doing if we were face to face. Also, [laugh again] it’s so funny because it has now become a thing we do “live”, so we basically mimic the woman, who is not doing anything special or different from what we would actually do normally. But I don’t know, when we now do those kinds of gestures, all the people of my generation know who are we referring to…It became a sort of national indirect joke, I guess. 

Background:

My informant is a 19 year old girl who was born in Crotone, Calabria(Southern Italy), but who spent most of her lifetime in Bologna (Italy). She is a dear-fiend of mine, with whom I have daily conversations both on the internet and off. This piece of cyber folklore is actually fairly recent and it came to her attention both through conversations with some friends and thanks to social networks. She particularly enjoys this piece because -as many trends do- it perfectly portrays the general atmosphere of the moment in which it became viral and, at the same time, it is able, somehow, to picture in a couple of frames, typical gestures, expressions and attitudes of the average Italian.

Context:

I myself entered in contact with this piece in the last few months, and we were imitating it during a lunch when I though it would be a good idea for my informant to talk about it and describe it to me. My closest friends and I use these kinds of meme/stickers quite often during online conversations, usually with the intention of either portray on a chat our physical behaviors and expressions, or maybe ‘soften’ more serious topics.     

Thoughts:

I consider this meme quite interesting for various reasons. First of all, it was originally taken from a television clip and re-created by other people-especially teenagers and young folks- on social platforms like Tik Tok or Instagram. Later on, it was transformed in various forms of cyber-folklore, like memes and stickers, which, again, young people started to exchange on chats and online conversation with the main objective of portraying their current facial and body expression also in a written chat. This, in my opinion, perfectly reflects folklore’s definition of “Multiplicity and variation”, it having been transformed and utilized ‘vernacularly’ in various different ways. At the same time, it can also be said to be a sort of new and innovative format of “artistic communication” in small groups, it having been re-crafted in various ways throughout the short-period of time from its creation. 

Secondly, I find it really compelling from a cultural and national point of view. The woman which gesticulates and has such strong facial expressive articulations is able to supremely depict the Italian way of communicating which, despite the sometimes erroneous stereotypes, still talks a lot through hand-gestures and “visual phrasings”. 

I believe this meme -and its affiliated stickers- to be extremely representative of my nationality and this is why I will probably never get tried of using it.

Color Green Protects Eyes

Nationality: Chinese
Performance Date: 03/29/2000

Background: The transcribed conversation between me and the informant shows folk belief on how to protect eyesight. 

Informant: My mom bought a cactus for me… she says it absorbs radiation from computers and cellphones…

Me: Does it really? I’ve heard of it before but I don’t think it actually works.

Informant: I’m not sure, but I fell like it’s just a misconception. Mom says it protects your eyesight…maybe because it’s green?

Me: Oh that kind of makes sense. I’ve heard a million times that green protects your eyes, not sure if it’s true. Where did you first hear that? 

Informant: I don’t know but I’d guess it’s because green is the color of nature and we’re supposed to look at nature more hahaha

Analysis: Cactus or other things can absorb radiation; color green protects eyes. These two are fairly common folk beliefs. They reflect that while we are surrounded by technologies, people can still be suspicious of the constant progress and existence of certain technologies. The association between color green and nature shows that nature is still regarded as healing, healthy, and in control.

The Jersey Devil

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Calabasas, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2020
Primary Language: English

Background: 

My informant, NK, is 19 years old and of South Korean descent from both her mother and father’s sides of the family. Her grandparents live close to her, so she spends a lot of time with them. She is very passionate about cooking. Even though she is majoring in biochemical engineering at UC Berkeley, she has always been, and remains to be, extremely interested in conspiracy theories. While she may not necessarily believe them, she enjoys hearing lore from across the world. (I’ll be referring to myself as SW in the actual performance).

Performance:

NK: So, there’s this urban legend in New Jersey, called the Jersey Devil. I’ve heard about it from different like conspiracy shows or websites, and just word of mouth. Um, and it’s one of those things like Bigfoot. The myth goes that there’s a woman – there’s some variations obviously – but she had one kid or thirteen, depending on who you ask, and she had a pact with the devil or hooked up with him, or something. And so either that one kid or the youngest one was born deformed, so he had like wings and a beak and was human-like but also bat-like. He grew up to huge sizes, and then would be seen around New Jersey, I’m not sure which area. And then there’s been sightings, I’m not sure when the first one was, but there were a lot in the 20th century. I wanna say it’s similar to Mothman: big wings, red eyes, part human. 

SW: Do you know anything about the origins of the story?

NK: I’m not sure, but I think there were some sightings that were hard to explain, so people kind of made up the lore to explain them. 

Thoughts:

I love urban legends. As NK pointed out, like many urban legends, it’s safe to assume that the legend of the Jersey Devil developed in response to some unexplained sightings in an effort to make sense of them. There are a few different variations of the Jersey Devil legend. Most seem to identify the woman NK mentioned as Mother Leeds, as Leeds was one of the first settlers in New Jersey, and family with the name Leeds can still be found there today. There have been numerous accounts and sightings of the Jersey Devil, many of which can be found all across the internet. For more background on this urban legend and personal sightings of the Jersey Devil, see “The Jersey Devil.”

Annotation:

“The Jersey Devil.” Weird NJ, Weird NJ, 13 Jan. 2017, weirdnj.com/stories/jersey-devil/.