We can see examples of this rich folk culture when we look at the way that children can be extremely crafty and clever in their play. I’m sure everyone remembers one or two of the rhymes that kids use to choose an “it” for a game, right? Eeny-meeny-miney-mo, catch a tiger by the toe, and all that jazz? Well, then perhaps you’ll also remember the common situation in which you were rhyming your way through your playmates and it became obvious to you that you were about to end the rhyme on an undesirable “it.” What to do? Add a verse to the rhyme, of course! “My mother says to pick the very best one and you are going to be it!” Or, if that one leads you to the wrong “it,” too, you can say, “… and you are not going to be it,” thus starting the rhyme over again. It’s great to see how a tradition that’s ostensibly for the purpose of introducing randomness into the selection process can be turned against that goal.
Children also have a ruthless sort of ranking system that emerges in their traditional games. Remember playing house? The selection process for who gets to be parents and who has to be kids (or pets!) is always interesting, as is the way in which roles are easily dismissed after being fought for. We can see in children’s traditional games a reflection of their perception of adult life—the roles, the rules, and the social expectations into which they’re going to have to assimilate at some point. The really cool thing is how those expectations are just as often obliterated by children’s folklore as they are upheld. We grown-ups could probably learn something from that.
Children are always doing things in ways that mystify adults—the world assumes one course of action and children regularly take another. This is exemplified in children’s material culture—the ways that children play with their toys. Folklorist Jeannie Thomas has studied the things that children do with their Barbie dolls—not only the expected (and commercially supported) activities of dressing them up and playing with their official accessories (houses, cars, companions, etc.), but the real things that real children actually do, like rename them, undress them, remove their heads (the toilet seems to be a typical repository for dolls and doll heads), hack off their hair, cross-dress them, combine them with toys from unrelated toy lines, and so on. One of Thomas’s informants has a specific type of favorite Barbie play that involves Barbie getting into accidents over and over again—she is blown up, run over, or drowned.23 These are presumably not the typical situations that the designers of Barbie had in mind when they envisioned their impossibly feminine dolls being used by children, but it’s what many children actually do with them. There is a whole world of creative play with mass-produced toys that children engage in and learn from each other that has nothing to do with mass-produced goals or intentions—children’s folklore culture is a far weirder place than many popular representations acknowledge. This distinction between what the media portrays as children’s culture and what children’s culture is actually like makes for interesting analysis.24
Want to Know More?
Brian Sutton-Smith, Jay Mechling, Thomas W. Johnson, and Felicia R. McMahon, Children’s Folklore (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1999).
This interdisciplinary collection of essays and resources is a must for anyone interested in pursuing study of children’s culture. It provides a history of the study of children’s folklore, many examples of different genres of folklore, and a discussion of methods and approaches.
Iona Opie and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (New York: New York Review of Books Classics, 2000).
This is an older book (originally published in 1959), but it is still an amazing compilation of children’s folklore. You’ll find almost four hundred pages of riddles, pranks, rhymes, beliefs, rituals, superstitions, games, customs, taunts, nicknames, and more. Given the age of the book, the familiarity of many of the types of folklore included will help highlight the impressive consistency within this ever-evolving folk group.
Digital Folk Groups
Wait, what? “Digital” folklore? I know, I know—it seems strange to connect something like tradition to something like technology, but don’t let your preconceived notions about folklore outweigh what you now know to be true: folklore is informal traditional culture and has nothing to do with being old or quaint or rustic. These days, we do much of our informal daily socializing on our computers or phones and, quite unsurprisingly, folklore has shown up there, too.
In 2002, a guy named Mark Prensky coined the term digital native to describe everyone25 born after the year 1980.26 What he meant by this is that people born after that date have never lived in a world without digital technology—computers, cell phones, video games, and the like. The most interesting implication of this (for a folklorist, at least) is the basic suggestion that there is a digital culture out there that one can be native or nonnative to.27 Just as with any other linking factor, online interaction can be at the root of a folk group, and this particular type of folk group is a kind that more and more of us each year are increasingly affiliated with.
We should take the time to note that there are several different types of digital social interaction. There are offline folk groups that have an online presence—a family might share a blog or several blogs, a campus club might have a Facebook page, and a local group of young mothers might have a Web forum where they share Web links and post pictures. Of course, nonlocal moms might find that Web forum and want to join in, too. Or maybe there wasn’t ever a local, physical group that met in person—maybe the group was started online by a mom who felt isolated and wanted to seek out advice and camaraderie. This bridges us into another kind of digital folk group: the kind that exists only online. One isn’t better than the other, but a complete understanding of any group is going to require that you understand the extent of the group’s connections. If you lurk around a popular Web forum that is its members’ only way of connecting, then sure, you might be getting a picture of their entire cultural interaction.28 But if you’re lurking around a site that’s the digital component of an otherwise analog (offline) folk group, then you’re only getting a partial picture. Lots of students assume that digital fieldwork is going to be easier than traditional fieldwork because it can be done from home while in your PJs, but that’s not always the case.
When we look at what kind of folklore appears in digital settings, we often find that it’s just old folklore in a new guise, such as the urban legends or jokes that circulate via e-mail or as text messages. We tend not to see genres such as folktale or myth crop up in virtual settings (at least not in folk circulation—there are a lot of online repositories, however), but we do see things like folk speech (slang, abbreviations) and customs.
Digital culture has given us a whole new language to decipher—lol, rofl, ily, bff, imho, tptb, ftw, fwiw, icymi, etc.—and a whole new set of text-based “gestures” used to indicate tone and attitude.29 For digital natives, there’s a significant difference in the meanings of these three sentences:
Hope your day goes well :)
Hope your day goes well :/
Hope your day goes well ;)
In the first, a genuine well-wishing is taking place. In the second, there’s clearly some knowledge that the speaker has about the recipient’s upcoming day that compromises the possibility of the day going well—the speaker is offering support and acknowledging that there is a reason the day may be difficult. In the last example, there is again an unspoken understanding on the part of the speaker; this time the tone is playful or teasing, as if the speaker knows of a reason that the day might go especially well indeed. As with all folklore, there’s no guidebook for how to use these emoticons—it’s something you learn from observation and experience. You only have to send a winky-face to the wrong person once before you learn never to do it again.
When it comes to customary traditions online, we have things like the understanding that certain information belongs in a private message on Facebook rather than on someone’s timeline. One of the markers of someone being new to a social network like Facebook
is that he or she puts the wrong types of communications in the wrong places (like a generic “Hey, friend, long time no see, here’s what’s been going on, hope you’re doing well” greeting in the comment section for a specific photo or status update). Just as in the offline world, where people learn from experience and observation what kinds of things to bring up in public and what kinds of things to say in private, or what kind of things to bring up as a point of order at a meeting versus over drinks after work, our online social spaces require the same kind of folk cultural knowledge.30
Of course, not all forms of folklore on the Internet are forms that also exist IRL.31 Some forms of digital folklore are new genres altogether, ones that make use of the mixed media available through technology. Internet memes—images, phrases, or concepts that spread rapidly over the Internet32—are one great example. We have pictures, videos, and text, all being used together to create personal expressions that then are appropriated and adapted by others and put back out there for further re-creation. The qualities of variation and tradition are extremely easy to see in this form of digital folklore—some elements are notably conservative and some are notably dynamic. For as “new” as this kind of folklore may seem, it’s a great way to practice the basics of folklore identification. Consider the evolution of the “X all the Y” Internet meme, which began with this frame of a Web comic from the blog Hyperbole and a Half.33
The original Web comic was a reflection on the initial enthusiastic ambition one often feels to clean one’s house (followed by the inevitable dismay at realizing how many things there actually are to clean), and quickly got picked up by others who began altering the message. Here’s one inspired by the Beatles:
And one in honor of a popular NPR show:
One that clearly grew from the ever-popular theme of the zombie apocalypse:
One about the Internet’s favorite topic34:
And one made for a folklore class by one of my students:
The conservative elements let us know that all these images are part of the “same” tradition, but the dynamic elements express a variety of interests, themes, cultural trends, and affiliations.
Overall, one of the main things we find in digital folk culture is a blurring of the barriers between the levels of culture, so that we get mass-media techniques (film, photography, graphic editing, far-reaching broadcast, etc.) used in the creation and sharing of folklore. We also see a blurring between the genres of folklore, so that we have images and words and actions all coming together in a single form. Is an Internet meme something we say? Something we make? Something we do? Or all three? It’s still very much a folk process, just on a different (and generally intriguing and exciting) scale.
Want to Know More?
Trevor Blank, ed., Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009).
While a few individual articles and book chapters had come earlier, this is the first compilation of academic essays to directly address the topic of folklore on the Internet. Case studies span from familiar forms of folklore online to digital-only forms of cultural expression.
Trevor Blank, ed., Folk Culture in the Digital Age: The Emergent Dynamics of Human Interaction (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012).
This book, a follow-up to the previous volume, offers readers more case studies that show the interesting, important, and useful ideas that studying online folklore can reveal.
Nancy K. Baym, Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Malden, MA: Polity, 2010).
Baym’s book serves as a straightforward introduction to the idea that meaningful social and cultural interaction can take place through technologically mediated communication. Readers get some clear, theoretical concepts to help them think about the subject, and several historical and contemporary case studies to illustrate the social and cultural validity of online interaction.
Notes
1. Though the penalties for breaking the rules of official culture may be more specific than for breaking the rules of folk culture. Return to text.
2. This is, unfortunately, not true. Return to text.
3. And in truth, many of them may not even share folklore. There are innumerable potential folk groups created by this definition—women who wear a size 7 shoe, for example—that while they may exist nominally, do not actually interact exclusively enough to generate a definable folk culture. Make the link a rarer feature, though—say, women who wear a size 11 shoe—and perhaps that characteristic is rare enough that people who share it have sought each other out (to share tips on where to buy shoes, maybe). Just be aware of both the benefits and the limitations of this broad definition of folk group. Return to text.
4. This is one reason why folklorists have often chosen to study smaller groups rather than huge ones. Return to text.
5. They’d be classified as legends if told in the third person, and as “personal-experience narratives” if told in the first person—remember, folklore can be true! Return to text.
6. Applying the three-part structure of a rite of passage here is interesting: what happens in the pot, during the middle phase? The previous identity is stripped (along with clothing), but the new one hasn’t yet been put on. What a strange moment that must have been! Return to text.
7. Michael Owen Jones, “Why Folklore and Organization(s)?” Western Folklore 50, no. 1 (1991). Return to text.
8. This makes for a fun exercise. Think of the religious holidays that your family or your community celebrates, and consider what foods it simply wouldn’t be that holiday without. See if you can discover where the emphasis on that food came from, and whether or not it has any official connection to the theme or purpose of the holiday. Return to text.
9. In case you were wondering, the genre that folklorists use to describe food-based traditions is “foodways.” And also, the potatoes are sometimes called “cheesy potatoes.” Return to text.
10. If you doubt the localized importance of funeral potatoes to Utah Mormons—Google it. It has its own Wikipedia page. Return to text.
11. Isn’t it fun how ambiguous all the terminology used in folklore studies is? Return to text.
12. Not all folklorists are on board with the term “folk religion.” Check out the recommended reading by Leonard Primiano at the end of this section for a more nuanced discussion. Return to text.
13. A “memorate” is a first-person belief narrative. Basically, it’s a personal-experience narrative that’s told about a supernatural subject. If the same story were told in the third person, it would, of course, be a legend. Return to text.
14. Visit www.postmormon.org for information, if you’d like. Return to text.
15. And if the class is taught by a TA or grad student, you have to wait only ten minutes! Return to text.
16. Check it out on Snopes.com—they asked Prof. Bonk himself. Return to text.
17. Well, from a student’s perspective; ask the faculty and you’ll get a different story. Return to text.
18. It is interesting to consider when school officials choose to ignore unsanctioned campus traditions (like pranks, parties, rumors, unofficial holidays, etc.) and when they finally decide to take action. The fact that things usually have to get pretty bad before anything happens—students injured or property damaged—shows that school officials see the value in preserving folklore within their institutions. Return to text.
19. This is an incredibly ambiguous and subjective term, by the way. When does childhood start and end? At a particular age? Is it a particular stage in life, regardless of age? If the answer to these questions has changed over time (which it has), then how do we classify past “children’s” folklore? When children worked in coal mines, maybe coal mining folklore was actually a type of children’s folklore! It’s interesting to mull this one over. Return to text.
20. OMG, did you hear that it’s really about the Black Plague?! Sorry—it’s not. Return to text.
21. And this one’s abou
t child sacrifice during construction, right?! Sorry—nope. Return to text.
22. Of course, anthropologists—and yes, even folklorists—did this for quite some time. Return to text.
23. Jeannie Thomas, Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other forms of Visible Gender (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 155. Return to text.
24. If you’re in a folklore class and are thinking of collecting or studying children’s folklore, remember that there will likely be some sort of special permission involved. If your project is going to end up in an archive or anything, there surely will be. Return to text.
25. Well, more like everyone born in the developed West into a family with enough money to own a computer. Return to text.
26. Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” On the Horizon 9, no. 5 (2001). Return to text.
27. It is important to note that being “native” to a culture is not the same as blindly accepting all the generalizations that go along with it. As we noted before, not all Americans love apple pie and baseball, even though those are generalizations regularly made about them. Similarly, there are digital natives who love to write with fountain pens rather than type on a keyboard and who prefer to chat in person over coffee rather than online. Similarly, there are immigrants to digital culture who are way more adept at technology than younger, more native people—it’s not a simple either-you’re-in-or-you’re-out situation. Return to text.
28. Though you’d likely still be missing out on things like private messages, e-mails, and chats—one thing to remember about doing fieldwork online is that you often aren’t aware when you’re missing something. Unlike being with a group in person, where you can observe when two people pull away and start talking privately, you’ll never know when two forum members start to message each other privately. Only solid ethnographic work can help offset this disadvantage. Return to text.
Folklore Rules Page 11
