Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Produsage: the wonders of "Kid falls over lolol remix remix remix of a remix dubstep trance techno remix"

Produsage can be a wonderful thing. It allows a user to take a great piece of media, be it a film, a picture or even concept such as Star Wars, and then build on it in different ways than what the original creator had imagined. The Star Wars film series has managed to develop and blossom far beyond the scope of George Lucas thanks to the viewers at home writing their own fan fiction within the universe, and even making their own films (such as the hilarious and only slightly on topic: star wars kid)
This concept can be a pretty darn good idea when it comes down to it. A film gets released and is exposed to its target audience, such as the film "Downfall" being released to Germans, and the world war two minded. A hilarious youtuber then got their hands on a section of the film where Hitler has a hissy fit, and then subtitles about how much the new Halo game sucked. The films exposure has now exploded thanks to curious youtubers wondering what exactly it is that curious mustached fellow was saying to begin with.
So, old ideas are being reenergized and reused, and at the same time, people without access to a full film studio or publisher, are able to pimp their own creative additions to the already existing universes.

Which is totally awesome, until somebody manages to MAKE SEINFELD NOT FUNNY AND SERIOUS AND SAD, thank you very much, CollegeHumor.com.
Wikipedia is also a great example of produsage. The original content is there: The event, and information is slowly added and improved with the more people that visit the page that have worthy information. However, this free exchange of ideas and information can also lead to data being smudged with spam or bogus data. For instance, I knew a person who altered every word "Jew" in the Mountain Jews webpage, to "Dew" which to a high school kid was positively hilarious. A wonderful example of produsage.

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