Kicking the Flagpole on Game Day

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Master-level engineering student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2018
Primary Language: English

Daniel Shapiro earned his B.S. (bachelors degree of science) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2017.  He is currently pursuing his masters degree in Mechanical Engineering at the same university.  He is a committed fan of USC football – since beginning his undergraduate education at USC in 2013, he has attended every ‘home game’ held at the Coliseum, USC’s football stadium. He honors all of the university’s football-related traditions and dresses in football regalia as he watches the games. In the transcription below, Daniel reflects on game-day customs.  He then goes on to describe one of his favorite traditions: kicking the flagpole before games.


Daniel: “So before every game, everyone hangs out on campus and ‘tailgates.’”

Isabella: “Can you describe what ‘tailgating’ is?”

Daniel: “‘Tailgating’ is when you pitch a tent or set up chairs on [the USC] campus on game days. Everyone just drinks and eats and plays beer-pong or whatever. Students and alumni all come together to celebrate the team.”

Isabella: “Do people stay on campus during the game?”

Daniel: “No, most people walk from campus to the Coliseum to watch the game. It’s a short walk – you just have to cross [the street] on Exposition [boulevard]. Before you reach the end of campus, there are some flagpoles that everyone kicks before they walk through the gates. It’s supposed to be good luck so everyone just does it. You walk up to the flagpole and hit it with the toe of your shoe and it makes a loud ‘ding’ sound. There are like five flagpoles, so collectively, it echoes pretty loud. Once you do that, you just start walking to the Coliseum. It’s supposed to help us win the games… It’s just a superstition, but it’s still really fun because everyone does it and you can feel the excitement.”

Daniel recognizes ‘game day’ as a sort of holiday amongst USC fans.  In this regard, kicking the flagpole serves as a ritual for them — it is a means of showing reverence and celebrating the event.  Moreover, as Daniel notes above, kicking the flagpole is rooted in superstitious belief.  That is to say, there are supernatural qualities associated with this behavior.  Fans of USC football perform this action in the hopes of bringing good luck to the team; conversely, it is considered bad luck to refrain from kicking the pole.  This ritual helps USC Football fans express their commitment to the team and promotes bonding.

The Crypto Term “Hodl”

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Masters-level engineering student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2018
Primary Language: English

Daniel Shapiro is currently pursuing his masters degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA.  He dedicates much of his free time to researching and investing in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology (or ‘decentralized ledger technology’).  As a result of recent profit yields, the market for these technologies has grown exponentially and begun to attract investors from around the world.  Online forums and communities are emerging in tandem with the technologies themselves.  Reddit, an online social news aggregation, is one of the most popular websites among crypto enthusiasts.  There, they exchange information about blockchain technology and offer advice to other investors.  Daniel frequents these websites and has adopted the “language” of crypto.  In the excerpt below, he describes the origins of one specific term, “hodl,” and then explains how it is used across various forums.

 

Daniel: “So, on the Reddit crypto forums, there’s a notorious post where someone was telling everyone to ‘hold,’ as in ‘don’t sell your bit-coins, or your alt-coins’ but he misspelled ‘hold’ as ‘h-o-d-l,’ or ‘hodl.’  So now, in all crypto forums and twitter and in any crypto blogs, space, whatever — people say ‘hodl’ instead of ‘hold.’  And it’s a term to say, when the price is going bad, ‘hodl’ and don’t sell, because if you’re selling away at a low price when you SHOULD be holding and selling at a high price.”

Isabella: “And what is cryptocurrency?”

Daniel: “Crypto is a buzzword name given to decentralized ledger technologies… which are, effectively, networks of computers which operate as a single server, so you don’t need a third-party server to host different networks, which are centralized and controlled by a single party, and require advertising to pay for their servers.”

Isabella: “And why do crypto forums exist?”

Daniel: “Well, these forums exist to… spread news about many of the different cryptocurrencies… such as, when they [the creators and proprietors of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies] release specific products or make specific partnerships.  They’re mainly for distributing information… also to have discussions about the coin.  But realistically, probably about half of these pages are just ‘meme’ pages.”

The original author of the term ‘hodl’ was ridiculed on account of his spelling error. As such, ‘hodl’ has satirical undertones and is often used in a joking manner. But as Daniel notes in the transcription above, ‘hodl’ is also used during actual trading deliberations, wherein the goal is to dissuade someone from selling their shares at a low price. ‘Hodl’ serves as an example of folk speech because it is unique to the crypto community and serves a specific purpose amongst its members — one’s knowledge and use of the term can corroborate their belonging to the community.

Italian Easter Bread

Nationality: Italian-American, Irish-American
Age: 60
Occupation: Special Needs Teacher
Residence: Torrance, California
Performance Date: April 21, 2018
Primary Language: English

Joanna Estrada is a special needs teacher living in Los Angeles, California. She is 60 years old and has three daughters. Joanna has lived in Southern California since birth, moving from Redondo Beach to Torrance in her mid-twenties. Her father was Irish and her mother was Italian; as such, she grew up surrounded by multiple cultures and was brought up in the Catholic tradition. In the excerpt below, Joanna describes an Italian Easter tradition, wherein her Italian grandmother would bake special bread adorned with hardboiled eggs:

Joanna: “My grandmother would bake a woven, like a braided loaf of bread for Easter. She would divide the dough into three separate pieces and braid them together to make a wreath. Then she would bake it… And in the center and all around it, she would put hardboiled eggs that she colored with dye. She would soak them in dye to make them fun looking before she put placed them into the baked dough.

Isabella: “Was the bread symbolic in any way?”

Joanna: “The dough represented life and rebirth and things like that… it was for Easter, so the bread symbolized the beginning of life…”

Isabella: “What would you do with the bread? Was it an offering or sorts or did your family eat it?”

Joanna: “No, we definitely ate it. I really liked it because it had sort of a sweet taste to it. All this would happen in one day—she would bake the bread in the morning and we would eat it in the evening.”

Here, Joanna describes a ritual that her grandmother performed on Easter Sundays. For practitioners of Christianity and Catholicism, Easter is an important holiday. It marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ and has given birth to a number of commemorative traditions. The tradition Joanna describes above is at once a folkloric recipe and ritual. The bread itself serves as a sort of celebratory symbol, and the act of baking it may be considered a ritual. Joanna associates the woven bread with Easter and no other holidays; to the members of her family, Easter Sunday and the woven bread were irrevocably fused.

Alexa Tells A Joke

BACKGROUND:

In recent years, Amazon has launched a produce called the Amazon Echo. The AI “personality” that the Echo conveys is even given a familial name, Alexa. The device is used to serve as a home assistive device, with the capabilities of setting timers, controlling lights, and even convey bits of folklore. Because Alexa has access to a massive database of different bits of information, the device can retell a joke it “heard” from someone else. I decided to test this and ask a device to tell me a joke. In return, I was told a joke that started out sounding like a historical fact (a function the Echo is often used for) and flipped my expectations by ending it with a pun.

“INTERVIEW”:

My “interview” with my source and artificial storyteller, Alexa, went as follows:

Me: Alexa, tell me a joke.

Alexa: As the old story goes, someone sees a reflection of the moon and mistakes it for cheese… un-brie-lievable!

MY THOUGHTS:

Due to the fact that this is a machine with no actual purpose other than to serve its users, I concluded that this source’s identity did not need to be kept anonymous. There is no legal obligations that a user needs to serve Alexa given that its personality is based off 1’s and 0’s, not actual emotions. I still find it extremely fascinating that this device is able to convey bits of folklore, just like a human can. I wanted to explore this concept and see what would happen. I felt like a joke was a good place to start. I’ve heard a version of this joke before but never told like this. I love the way it plays off the fact that it is a machine, in that it starts to convey the joke as a fact, much like it normally conveys facts, and then turns it around and ends with a punchline. This variation of the joke is a fun way in which modern technology can influence the world of folklore.

Astrology in India

Nationality: Indian
Age: 51
Occupation: Mother
Residence: Los Gatos, California
Performance Date: 4/19/18
Primary Language: English

BACKGROUND:

An individual in Los Gatos, California describes her family’s experiences with astrology while living in India. According to my source, her family strictly believed in the folk belief of astrology. The practice involves determining a person’s future based on the alignment of the stars and planets. My source recounts a story that was passed down to her about her grandmother taking both her children to an astrologer to discover their future. The real intention of their visit was to get information on the oldest son. Instead, the astrologist only commented on the younger daughter. When confronted about not talking about the son, the astrologer refused to reveal anything about his future. He continued on about the daughter claiming she had a bright future and was going to move away to a far off land. The family left the astrologer. When the older son was 18, he passed away. The daughter later went on to move to America and eventually brought in the main source of income for their family.

INTERVIEW:

My interview with my source, A, went as follows:

Me: Could you give me an example of a time when astrology was practiced in your family?

A: Hmm… So when my mother was like 8 or 9 maybe 10 years old–In India they believe in astrology, right–so her mother took her and her brother to an astrologer and she really specifically wanted to look at her older son’s astrology map. The astrologer would not look at the oldest son, only looked at my mom. He kept saying she was going to move to a far away country, and she was gonna help the family out and bringing everyone there and their mom kept saying, “No what about the oldest son what about the oldest,” and he would not talk about him. So she kinda just blew it off and said, “okay whatever” and went away. On a later date… my mom’s oldest brother died. He was around 18 or 19. My mother did end up coming to this country.

MY THOUGHTS:

I’ve seen astrology be practiced quite a bit in America. In those instances, however, horoscopes and predictions came via a publication such as a magazine or a post on social media. I find it very interesting that in Indian culture, astrology is conveyed via someone who studies individuals rather than a broad prediction of everyone born on a certain date. The fact that there are experts who specifically practice this one on one during appointments gives a much more authentic feel to the predictions being made rather than finding one in a publication.