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Nam Le

Nam Le’s short story deals with the burden of representation that Asian Americans in creative arts. In this story, Nam the character, faces the issue of telling ethic stories of his father’s trauma. Despite knowing how hard he worked on it, support of people around him telling him write on something from his ethnicity, I think he shouldn’t have written on his father. I know the creative process is a strainful one, but even with strained relations you shouldn’t share the stories from those that don’t want it. If he had written on his relationship with his father and his own struggles, that would have been fine without controversy. The reading is a more ideal story than which he was originally planning to publish, which is probably done on purpose. I think Nam the author’s story works in very well as Asian American literature in the sense it’s embodies one of the main issues of Asian Americans, generational conflict. Thinking back to today I think WongFu Productions are really help pave ...
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Boyd/Dominguez (and a history of memes)

Andrew Boyd’s “Truth is a Virus: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)”, talks about using viral nature of memes to spread truth and start discussion about an issue. He alter talks about drawbacks from using memes to share a message as the meme’s meaning can be lost due to constant changes. Personally, I disagree with Boyd on the idea of using memes as an effective way to spread a message. I believe most memes start due to as form of dark humor more than a political story. The entire article reminded me of a podcast with George “Filthy Frank” Miller (starter of the Harlem Shake craze) on the NeedleDrop that had talked about the “Meme Machine”, the concept that memes spawn at nearly the same rate they die. Memes reach “death” status after they appear on mainstream media (Ellen) or begin to be policed by netizens. I feel as though many people don’t care enough to find the origins of a meme, but original creators, not those who repost, show their care because the effort...
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6/6 Boyd & Dominguez

In the article “truth is a Virus: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)” Andrew Boyd discusses the “meme warfare”, which refers to media viruses that spread out information to the population online. Andrew also talks about how does meme is dealing with politics and culture resistance. I agree with that meme is an effective way of culture resistance because many people still not realize it. This relates to the article “electronic disturbance: an interview” written by Ricardo Dominguez. Ricardo believes that electronic methods of protest become more important because more and more people start to do more things online. In the beginning of the article, he talks about the political consciousness and popular culture context by explaining his own experience in Las Vegas. I agree with his opinion about creating protest electronic method such as meme because it can reach out to the huge population and make more people to get acknowledge about that. Electroni...
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MEME War

In the article, it mentions meme war which is heavily used for political and activist purposes.  However, memes are heavily used to minimize the level of intensity of most situations.  I find memes to be very problematic because it shadows the whole information of a movement.  In addition, it addresses information in a really short way which influence audience to look at situation in a small matter.  For instance, when people make serious issue into a laughing matter, it is really a disrespect to that matter.  I come across a lot of Asian memes that heavily plays on Asian American stereotypes.  These Asian memes are used to redefine what it means to be Asian American.  However, I feel like it continues to perpetuate the stereotypes that are placed upon Asians.
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6/6

Boyd’s and Dominguez’s articles discuss the use affects of internet memes. Most people use memes for laughter and entertainment but turns out memes can be used as a form of activism and protest. Memes spread like a virus and information within the memes spread exponentially. My Facebook newsfeed has more memes than pictures of my friends and families. I get tagged in memes more than I get tagged in statuses and photos. In fact, I don’t read news articles or watch the news on TV but I am still relatively up to date with current events. Memes bring a lot of information to the table. For example, whatever Donald Trump does will obviously be written about in a news article. To read the news article you would have to click on the link and do some reading but some meme lord out there will turn it into a meme and suddenly everyone will know about it. I feel like when I was in high school I didn’t care much about political issues because I just didn’t really understand what was going on but ...
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6/6 Boyd & Dominguez

            Both Ricardo Dominguez and Andrew Boyd’s readings discuss methods in which the Internet can serve as a site for cultural resistance. Acknowledging the world’s recent technological advance, Dominguez co-founded an electronic activism company, called Electronic Disturbance Theater, that tries to get their message across by organizing nonviolent “electronic disturbances.” I’ve never been familiar with this term, but Dominguez’ idea makes sense considering how much of an influence the Internet and its growing traffic will only continue to grow in our world. The cyberspace is a great and strategic tool to deliver messages that can be easily be reached by billions of people across the globe. In relation to this, Boyd’s article focuses on the this recent “meme warfare” that also serves as a culture of resistance. Boyd notes that these online memes tell a certain truth about a specific and popular topic. Because the younger generation comprise of a lar...
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6/6 Boyd

Technology can be harmful and helpful; it all depends on who is using it. A young person can use it as a distraction like being on Instagram but there are other young people who use it in order to reach out to others for a positive cause. Dominguez’s and Boyd’s speak about the forms of protest through electronics. The mainly focus on memes, which gives any person a laugh. They compare technology to a virus because it spreads so quickly. This can be good in order to give information to those who need it but it can also be harmful because people don’t weigh articles to look if there is just a bias, they would just read the first article or post they see and believe it. But this article isn’t focusing so much on articles but memes. Everywhere we log in to, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter we see memes. These are for laughter but can be switched around to bring awareness. Some of my favorite memes are the ones that say something about inequity and it makes you giggle, but then you say “oh sh*...
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