Brown Article: Community vs. Individual Identity

In his article, “Evil Bert Laden: ViRaL Texts, Community, and Collision,” James J. Brown, Jr. analyzes the definition of “community” through the aftermath of the Bert Laden photo scandal. Brown emphasizes that our interpretation of community and practices of interpretation must change “as we are forced to deal with ViRaL texts in a globalized, networked world” (Brown).

Brown argues that when we try so hard to interpret what something shocking or confusing means, we miss some of the importance of the event itself. In other words, when we try to interpret something like the Bert Laden photo being printed on controversial protest posters, we need to recognize the significance of our interpretation of the event, not just try to figure out what the photo means for our culture. “When a ViRaL text is interpreted only in the interest of coherent meaning and intention, we miss an opportunity to re-examine the roots of the interpretive impulse” (Brown). It turns out that the photo did not purposely mean anything, or rather, it was not an intentional attempt to provide symbolic commentary on Western culture; it was just a product of a “hasty Google search by a company printing posters” (Brown). The real significance of such an event is not the photo, but the fact that our culture is so globalized and connected that something like this could happen by chance. “In addition to seeking out a particular meaning behind this kind of text, we might also recognize the importance of the very possibility that Bert and bin Laden can collide and collude on the Web. The Web’s structure sets up a situation in which Bert and bin Laden can be in-community with one another, regardless of any choice on the part of Easterners or Westerners” (Brown). Because of the Internet, many more people are interacting on the same platform whether they realize it or not and this changes our whole notion of what community means. “Traditionally, “community” has been understood in terms of collaboration and the conscious efforts of a group to “get together.” However, the circulation of the Bert Laden image gives us a paradigmatic example of how such conceptions of community and collaboration can be expanded when we examine what is happening on the Web” (Brown).

I thought it was particularly interesting when Brown was describing the notion of the “unchosen community” and what it is comprised of in this modern age of connectedness. Brown suggests that community on the Web is an unconscious occurrence, something that “happens to us” (Brown) instead of something that we consciously do. “When we think of collaboration, we might envision a cohesive group that slowly works toward a common goal. Yet, the Web allows for collaboration across space and time, collaboration that happens amongst people with different (and sometimes competing) agendas, and collaboration amongst those who never intended to be working together” (Brown). Brown goes further to explain that conscious communities only form because of unconscious ones. “…It is the collisions that remind us that such conscious collaboration and coalescing happens only in response to our constant predicament of being in-community with a broad range of others” (Brown). This convergence culture has significant implications on our traditional interactions with each other and our notion of identity.

Most people currently have a clear idea of who they are, what culture they belong to, and what that culture represents, but with so much mixing and interacting through the Internet, the idea can become hazy. “For this reason, “the degree of autonomy of each culture is significantly reduced as a consequence of the global information network, and at the same time, the task of constructing a planetary culture is posed” (2006:9)” (Brown). A planetary culture, in Brown’s opinion, could lead to an “opening” towards peace because of the rise in collaboration between people of differing backgrounds. What would we, as individuals, be like in a planetary culture, or how would we change (assuming we do change)? Would we begin to have stronger bonds to communities far away from us geographically in comparison to the communities we are already involved in offline? Would our sense of self change, with a change in cultural ties?

My Political Communication class has called my attention to the many symbols, texts, and ideologies that have power over us as Americans. Most of them we unconsciously respect because they have been engrained in our heads from birth, like not letting an American flag touch the ground, tipping servers, or taking your hat off in class as a sign of respect. The many cultures we are interacting with through the Web have their own characteristics that create a sense of loose unity and identity between individuals, different from our own characteristics. But what happens when there actually is no separation between “us” and “them”? Would we still take pride in the things that hold us together as a national culture? (Not that tipping servers holds us together as a national culture, it’s just an example of one of the things we unconsciously do that other cultures may not necessarily- like Great Britain).