Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2009 Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World Trevor J. Blank [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the Computer Sciences Commons, and the Folklore Commons Recommended Citation Blank, T. J. (2009). Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular expression in a digital world. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Folklore and the Internet Vernacular Expression in a Digital World Folklore and the Internet Vernacular Expression in a Digital World Edited by Trevor J. Blank Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright © 2009 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7800 USUPress.org ISBN: 978-0-87421-750-6 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-87421-751-3 (e-book) Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free, recycled paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Folklore and the internet : vernacular expression in a digital world / edited by Trevor J. Blank. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87421-750-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-87421-751-3 (e-book) 1. Folklore and the Internet. 2. Folklore--Computer network resources. 3. Digital communications. I. Blank, Trevor J. GR44.E43F65 2009 398.02854678--dc22 2009026813 To Charley Camp, friend and mentor Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Study of Folklore and the Internet 1 Trevor J. Blank Chapter 1 Digitizing and Virtualizing Folklore 21 Simon J. Bronner Chapter 2 Guardians of the Living: Characterization of Missing Women on the Internet 67 Elizabeth Tucker Chapter 3 The End of the Internet: A Folk Response to the Provision of Infinite Choice 80 Lynne S. McNeill Chapter 4 The Forward as Folklore: Studying E-Mailed Humor 98 Russell Frank Chapter 5 Epistemology, the Sociology of Knowledge, and the Wikipedia Userbox Controversy 123 William Westerman Chapter 6 Crusading on the Vernacular Web: The Folk Beliefs and Practices of Online Spiritual Warfare 159 Robert Glenn Howard Chapter 7 Ghosts in the Machine: Mourning the MySpace Dead 175 Robert Dobler Chapter 8 Public Folklore in Cyberspace 194 Gregory Hansen Appendix Webography of Public Folklore Resources 213 compiled by Gregory Hansen References 231 About the Contributors 254 Index 257 Acknowledgments First and foremost, thanks are due to the incredible staff at the Utah State University Press for their unwavering support, enthusiasm, and dedication to this project from its inception. I am indebted, in particular, to John Alley, executive editor of the Utah State University Press, for his ongoing correspondence, guidance, and suggestions throughout the project’s lifespan. I wish to also thank the American Folklore Society (AFS), which hosted early versions of several essays contained in this book at annual conferences as well as on AFS discussion forums. As the most prominent folklore organization in America, the society has been a tremendous partner in testing out ideas, sharing information amongst scholars, and garnering support for the project. I am also thankful for the camaraderie and sharing of ideas that have taken place at the annual meetings of the Hoosier Folklore Society, Pioneer America Society: Association for the Preservation of Artifacts and Landscapes, and the Western States Folklore Society, whose conferences have greatly contributed to the growing awareness of the possibilities for the collaborative study of folklore and the Internet in recent years. Numerous people have provided stimulating discussion and postu- lations, often suggesting helpful approaches to managing the book proj- ect and its content. I am especially grateful to Donald Allport Bird, Simon Bronner, John Dorst, Bill Ellis, Gregory Hansen, Robert Glenn Howard, Lydia Fish, Jay Mechling, Elizabeth Tucker, and William Westerman for their insights. And particularly to Charley Camp, to whom this book is dedicated; I am most appreciative of his nurturing mentorship, friend- ship, and encouragement in influencing my decision to join the folklore discipline. He is both a scholar and a gentleman, and I am indebted to him for all of his support over the years. Of course, many colleagues, friends, and family offered incredible amounts of support throughout the book’s production. To my parents, Bruce and Anita, and my sister Natalie, I am grateful for the chats that have helped to get my mind off of the never-ending piles of papers that ix x inhabit my living space. I am also fortunate to have worked with my esteemed colleagues at the Department of American Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; in particular I would like to thank Warren Belasco, Kathy Bryan, Jason Loviglio, and Ed Orser for their mentorship and friendship. At Indiana University’s Folklore Institute a special thanks are in order for my colleagues Inta Carpenter, Henry Glassie, Jason Baird Jackson, Jon Kay, John McDowell, and Pravina Shukla; in the department of History, Ellen Dwyer, Matt Guterl, Ed Linenthal, and Eric Sandweiss; and in the School of Education, Dionne Danns, Andrea Walton, and Donald Warren. The staff at Folklore Forum, especially Curtis Ashton, Kate Schramm, Kristiana Willsey, and Ed Wolf are owed a thank-you for their encouragement and work on the impor- tant volume 37 of the journal, which was the special issue dedicated to the Internet. I am also indebted to my friends Ronald L. Baker, Dawn Bowen, Ginny Buckner, Rebekah Burchfield, Susan Eckelmann, Gary Alan Fine, Katherine Forgacs, Laura Garcia-Houser, Angelina Sanfilippo, Rebecca Geitz, Aaron Glatt, Ryan Gray, John Heflin, Angela Johnson, Artimus Keiffer, Jimmy Kerner, Mike “Cleg” Kapp, Kara Lairson, Justin Levy, Mark Liechty, Dane McConnell, Nan McEntire, Lynwood Montell, Mark Montgomery, Selina Morales, Chris Mulé, Dorothy Noyes, Chris Post, Scott Roper, Jim Seaver, Wayne Smith, Michael Stuckey, Michael Symonds, Sabra Weber, Priscilla Wysong, Rebecca Yingling, and Adam Zolkover for their support, suggestions, and friendship. Last, but certainly not least, all of the contributors to this volume are due tremendous credit for their diligence in meeting our tight deadlines, revisions, and production goals. All were true professionals and have made this experience very rewarding. Introduction Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Study of Folklore and the Internet Trevor J. Blank In his essay “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context,” Dan Ben- Amos asserts: “If the initial assumption of folklore research is based on the disappearance of its subject matter, there is no way to prevent the sci- ence from following the same road” (1971, 14). In similar fashion, Alan Dundes began his presidential plenary address to the American Folklore Society in 2004 with a grim outlook on the future of the discipline by con- tending that the “state of folkloristics at the beginning of the twenty-first century is depressingly worrisome” (2005, 385). Such alarm-sounding statements merit our attention, but the fact remains that this has been a recurring assertion within this academic discipline for some time (Oring 1998). Richard Dorson lamented in 1972 that in “a few more years, there will be no more folklore, and ergo, no need for any folklorists” (41); but as Dorson “responded by looking elsewhere and [subsequently] found folklore in the media and a folk in the city” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, 302), we too must respond by looking elsewhere when such feelings of impending doom surface in folklore scholarship. Folklore is a self-conscious discipline, and speculation on the future of folkloristics—the academic study of folklore—has been pessimistic at best. In a similar vein, Richard Bauman and Charles L. Briggs note that tradition “has been reportedly on the verge of dying for more than three centuries, [yet] . continues to provide useful means of producing and legitimizing new modernist projects, sets of legislators, and schemes of social inequality” (Bauman and Briggs 2003, 306). Despite all of the 1 2 Trevor J. Blank doom and gloom, folklore “continues to be alive and well in the modern world, due in part to increased transmission via e-mail and the Internet” (Dundes 2005, 406). It is time that folklorists look to the Internet, not only to expand our scholastic horizons but also to carry our discipline into the digital age. The formulation of the World Wide Web network has its roots in the Cold War tensions of the mid-twentieth century. The earliest incarna- tions were spawned in the form of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), created mainly in response to the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik. Beginning in 1958, ARPANET served the military and academic researchers as a means of communication and as a command tool for defense operations. E-mail technology was created in 1970, and by the 1980s people were interacting online through bulletin boards (discussion groups), MUDs (multiuser dungeons), and the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), a social network composed of Internet users from across the globe; later, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) followed (Hafner and Lyon 1998).1 The modern Internet emerged with the creation of the World Wide Web in 1989 by English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee. The development of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and web browser technology allowed the Internet to expand from an exclusive academic forum into the worldwide phenomenon it is today. In 1992, the Internet was opened to the public domain. At the beginning of the 1990s there took place a fundamental trans- formation of the Internet . as the web became the center of the Internet and web browsers became the most common way of access- ing it, transformations in the communication processes established over the Internet also took place due to the specific characteristic of the web and its browsers.