Social Network FAIL?
Failblog is a website dedicated to the art of failure. It allows users to upload pictures, gifs (moving pictures) and movies of people, animals, signs, documents and virtually anything else that exudes failure in sometimes disturbing and often comical ways. If for example, you had a video sitting around of your cat Mr. Winkles attempting to jump through a window, only to find that it is closed as his kitten head smacks the glass, this would be the site to share that moment in hilarity. Does this website possess any of the traits which make it a community, promote culture, or showcase a convergence of media? I believe it does, in fact.
Burgess and Green called Youtube a “co-creative environment” where not some but all participants can serve as “audiences, producers, editors, distributors, and critics.” Failblog is no different. As a part of the Cheezburger community, one must create a username and password to join. This, in itself, makes Failblog a community be default, but what promotes the collective feel even more is the ability to post comments on each post. Like on facebook, anything and everything that is posted can be responded to by the user. The host in this case takes things a step further than facebook by adding a “reply” feature to each comment. So if you find someone's comment about a painful bellyflop funnier than the actual video, you can congratulate them on their quip by replying only to their comment, creating an isolated “comment string” within the comments section.
Something that seems very apparent upon entering the site is the sheer variety of “taste” in humor. Some posts may show people falling on their faces while attempting dangerous things they shouldn't be doing, while others may simply show examples of poor use in judgment (like a “Fresh Meat” sign placed right below one for an animal shelter). Humor is different for every culture, and Failblog is surely showcases our particular brand. As Zuckerman pointed out with his example of lolcats, however, what we find funny as Americans doesn't necessarily translate well to others. One can argue that if the internet as a whole is a massive community, then each site that invites people to communicate their opinions and ideas promotes a culture all its own.
How does Failblog show us convergence? Just like any other user community that is visited more than ten times a week, there are ads aplenty on Failblog. Side-scrollers, banners, and click-to-play commercial ads to name a few types that appear on the home page. They tend to be what I call “neutral” advertisements; that is, ads that would appeal to the average citizen no matter what age, class or preferences you might personally have. This differs from sites like facebook which tailor their ads specifically to your likes and dislikes. For someone who is not at all fond of ads and uses ad-blockers on their browser like me, this may seem inconsequential. To someone who is not fond of having companies know their intimate details for corporate gain, however, Failblog seems quite friendly. As Burgess and Green would say, this lack of labeling users into demographic lumps for profit helps to promote a “welcoming environment for participation and user-led innovation”.
In the end, Failblog is no different than any other social networking site, in that it propagates the sharing of ideas and culture through imagery and opinion. Given enough time, Failblog will help lend credence to the old adage “a rolling stone gathers no moss”. As humor evolves, so will the website's content, and, given it's apparent popularity (one has only to attempt counting the number of posts and comments) it isn't likely to stop making people laugh any time soon. As Burgess and Green said, merely the act of uploading “serves as a way for the group to talk among themselves, and to the broader community, using the same media texts that bring them together”.
