There are currently huge riots happening in the virtual world of EVE online, a science fiction massively multiplayer online game, after the publisher changed the in-game currency, making clothes for players' avatars cost 20-25 USD a piece and space monocles cost 68 dollars. Also, the game has a parliament that meets in Iceland. woah!

Sorry if this comes up twice, I've been having internet connection issues. This is a really great article about an artist who made a pixellated version of a Miles Davis photograph for his chiptune tribute.  The photographer sued him and the artist lost.  It's just really important to ask ourselves where the line between copy and transformative work should be drawn and the artist (who wrote the article) provides several examples of items for sale that he finds to be similar to his work, yet appear unchallenged.

Building an online community and culture around words, phrases, and tropes -> looks at twitter hashtags, 

Hey, sorry I didn't see this comment sooner! I'm on a few google groups about memes so I get a lot of articles through them, as well as following twitter accounts of academics studying the lulz. This one, I think I just found it on google scholar while looking for sources for my final project.

A paper on smart mobs (a group centered around an online social network, unified by a cause or goal, who have a time frame to accomplish said goal) and social capital and authority gets established and transferred

This is an article about Anonymous, a group that stemmed from the website 4chan, and how they went from posting silly cat videos to organizing scientology protests and taking down sites that refused to support WikiLeaks after last year's scandal.  It also looks at power and authority structures within the nameless group

Last summer, a news report appeared on local tv in Huntsville Alabama that was so over the top, someone thought to put it up on YouTube.  Someone thought they could autotune it and turn it into a song.  a few weeks later, Antoine Dodson had the #3 song on the iTunes R&B chart.  There are dozens of covers of the song, which the Gregory Brothers (the autotuners) encourage at the end of the video.  How has social media changed what we think about fame? Antoine, like Rebecca Black, ended up doing national TV appearances, and eventually made enough money from selling his song to buy his family a house.  

 Rebecca Black's song Friday is popular for all the wrong reasons.  Filmed for the sole purpose of having someone see it and having her earn actual fame for her talent (a la Bieber), it was shared via social media so much for how bad it was that it blew up.  Her internet famo turned into television appearances and actual fame.  But is this an actual trend? I'm going to post another link in a second...

Why Google should be afraid of Facebook -- what I really got out of this article was that Google guesses what people like / want / need based on what they search -- Facebook knows because the user enters it, from people posting on each other's pages to what "like" buttons they click (making interests pages instead of just search terms was a huge change since now companies that own a product people like can now interact with their users on a way more personal basis.)

The internet is big enough for all sorts of companies, but in a competition to figure out your customer base as quickly and as detailed as possible, Facebook definitely has an edge that Google is lacking right now. Well, outside of scanning your Gmail for keywords to apply to the ads they show you...haha

Really great working paper on trolling in a feminist forum -- what do communities do when outsiders attempt to derail conversation by intentionally trying to start arguements and cause rifts in the community.  A case study of two incidents within the same message board.

Oh rad! I was thinking about focusing on trolling specifically for my project. I've actually done a little research on Anonymous/4chan too if you ever want to share sources!