The World of Cyberspace: Who Really Lives There?

Lauren Voelkel

English 2123

Video Response

October 5, 2007

The World of Cyberspace: Who Really Lives There?

The concept of “camming,” as it is frequently referred to in cyberspace, is a growing epidemic in today’s culture which depends heavily on technological advances. A webcam can be purchased for a very reasonable price resulting on many owners using them for many different reasons. Sara Tucker claims that webcams are used for four different purposes: as a public service, a new type of exhibitionism, a mode of passive advertisement, and as a self-disciplinary device. These are broad categories that indeed have an unfathomable amount of subcategories beneath them. Other categories that need to be considered when analyzing a video from a webcam or an online broadcast of some sort is the method, message, and medium of which it is delivered.

I found a video from www.youtube.com entitled “Chihuahua Tunnel.” It was posted by a user whose username is soybomb89, and his profile states that he is twenty-nine years old and lives in the United States. In the video he is wearing a baggy hooded sweatshirt that had a hood covering his head. He introduces the video saying, “Hello and welcome to ‘Games to Play with your Dog.’ This is episode one, entitled ‘Chihuahua Tunnel.’ I’m Jack (points to himself) and this is Balu (points to the dog he is holding). Let’s get started!” (soybomb89). Then the camera cuts off and a new scene begins. This tells the video-viewers out in “cyberspace” that this webcam is not on automatic pilot as the webcam on the website jennicam.com (Atwan 159). The remainder of the video his showing a game that he plays with his dog (it doesn’t look like a real Chihuahua to me because I have one and his dog seems really big for the breed and must be a mix of some kind). He has Balu’s toy frog and angles the camera down towards the floor where we can only see Jack from the waist down. He makes the dog run in and out between his legs trying to grab the toy frog. He switches angles to show off his backside for more comedic effect.

Since the video changes scenes, there is an introduction and a fade out at the end. We know that the ‘method’ of this video is not a webcam left on in his living room on automatic pilot. This video was taken, and edited and his actions and speech were well planned and executed with specific intent to pretend to give a “how to” type of exhibiting Jack’s talents and spreading his knowledge of how to play Chihuahua Tunnel with his dog to the world of cyberspace so that viewers can play the game with their small or medium sized dogs (as stated in the description of the video).

Jack’s satirical expression and sarcastic language throughout the two-minute long video suggests that under Sara Tucker’s terms, this video is a type of exhibitionism. No one can say for sure why Jack wants to broadcast himself and his dog on the internet unless someone contacted him and asked, but part of his ‘message’ actually states that it is indeed a staged video. However, a viewer can speculate that he did it to humor people he knew that would watch the video, as well as to humor random people like myself who search youtube.com for entertaining and random videos. Viewers have a general idea that the video is supposed to be funny is that it is categorized under the “comedy” category. The whole purpose of the video is to mock a how-to infomercial by giving guidelines on how to play a specific game with your dog. Jack uses dry humor by commenting about the way he is making his dog run back and forth between his legs while he is kneeling on the floor by saying, “while it may look like I’m wiping my ass with the frog (dog toy), I assure you I’m not. My ass is extremely clean.” (soybomb89).

Jack or soybomb89 may or may not be aware of just how many doors he opened when he posted his video on youtube.com. The ‘medium’ of which this video is being broadcasted is through that of cyberspace. Of course he is aware of the physical equipment he used in producing the video himself: a computer, a webcam, internet access, a video editing program or software, a youtube.com account etc. However, the other connotation of what defines ‘medium’ is the channel in which it is displayed or broadcasted. The medium for Jack’s video, “Chihuahua Tunnel” is best defined by a term William Gibson coined as “cyberspace.” Lawrence Lessing describes this concept:

“Cyberspace is a place. People live there. They experience all sorts of things that they experience in real space, there…While they are in that place, cyberspace, they are also here. They are at a terminal screen, eating chips, ignoring the phone. They are downstairs on the computer, late at night, while their husbands are asleep. They are at work, or at cyber cafes, or in a computer lab. They live this life there, while here. And then at some point in the day, they jack out, and are only here. They step up from the machine, in a bit of a daze; they turn around. They have returned.” (Lessing 1403).

Lessing describes the medium of which videos such as Jack’s ‘Chihuahua Tunnel’ is portrayed. It is an excerpt in time of Jack’s life available for viewers to live along with him over and over again if they choose. Cyberspace is another place, an alternate world that people visit in spurts while also co-existing in our current world as we know it.

In today’s world, many businesses, schools, organizations, and even social contacts are managed and done through technology and the internet. The internet opens the doors for cyberspace which is an alternate universe of which everyone can belong. While in this alternate space, people zone out what is going on around them. If a survey was taken of people with a home computer and internet access, it could be easily proven that at one point or another, we have all found ourselves lost in time while participating in cyberspace. This new cultural wave is foreign older generation and opens new potential opportunities to future generations. An old cliché states how one cannot be “in two places at once,” but now in cyberspace, everyone with internet access can do just that.

Bibliography

Atwan, Robert. (2005). Convergences: Message Method Medium. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Lessig, Lawrence. (1996, May). The Zones of Cyberspace. Stanford Law Review. 48. 1403-1411. Retrieved October 1, 2007, from JSTOR database.

Soybomb89. (April 29, 2007). Chihuahua Tunnel!. Retrieved October 1, 2007, from http://youtube.com/watch?v=iM4EwBPiUm0