Event Title

DP09 - Internet Garbage/Violent Games/ Performative Emotions

Presenter Information

Nazli Akhatari, University of Toronto

Location

VAB-104

Streaming Media

Start Date

4-11-2017 11:15 AM

Description

This one specific statement is hard to completely refute or to entirely agree with: the Internet is full of garbage. Materiality of garbage here is of course of a different nature, however production and reproduction of such garbage as well as its means of engagement within the popular culture has the potential to reveal significant cultural obsessions, collective emotions, and race and gender politics involved. Examining garbage proves to be a scientific way to assess the consumption habits in the consumer culture. But what can assessing Internet garbage reveal in regards to the consumption habits of different types of digital content such as entertainment, advertisement, news, and literature? Internet garbage is a large discourse that includes but is not limited to data waste, spam, malware, and harassment. Internet garbage also refers to the content one deletes in the hope to get rid of for good, despite the fact that it will continue to exist in the indefinite world of the deep web. Garbage in this context also suggests the discrepancy of content and representation; it highlights the failure to hold to some kind of genuineness, legitimacy, or scientific truth. Using a digital poster, I will address the conference's theme of "digital humanities and gender, race and other identities" in order to examine a case study, an Iranian Instagram Blogger, who creates challenging social games using Internet garbage. The discussion can go far by thinking about harassment, cyber-misogyny, and investigating performativity of emotions such as disgust and shame in the violent games played on the social media. Many of these games create performances that are challenging to witness. However instead of entirely detesting these online performances, this poster presentation considers their potential to function as sites of constant social and cultural negotiations worthy of observation. This digital poster will further engage the participants in a discussion about the broad spectrum of Internet garbage and what it does really mean to us as artists, scholars, and daily consumers of digital content. The focus of discussion can vary based on the participants' interests and other themes of the conference.