Internet meme: Conspiracy Keanu

Adam N. Walko

Rhetoric of Criticism

The meme to which I have chosen for this class is the Keanu Reeves meme where he plays as Ted in "Bill and Ted's excellent Adventure". The reason being is that it is quite ambiguous and can be recognized in this generation as a very nostalgic source considering the time frame of the social media people involved. My primary source is the meme presented here. It incorporates the "tin foil hat" aspect of the consperacy theorists but simultaneously adds humor to it.

I believe that the origin of this meme which is simply a perplexed California looking individual, lays in the fact that since the beginning of his career and until The Matrix, Keanu has been tight casted as a West Coast stoner moron with the catch phrase even included in The Matrix "Woah". Considering the fact that he is stereotyped as consistently being fact blasted and "flabbergasted", without even engaging in reading the context of any of his memes he seems to set the agenda of "What's going on?" or "That just blew my mind".

There is a constant on all of the Keanu Reeves memes that is consistent in being "mind blown" or "Woah". However, he can appeal to every genre of viewer, and no matter how stupid the context it still appeals to a general audience. For instance this meme you already associate that he is either confused or perplexed in whatever you are about to observe it is still up to the verbiage to corner in on the receiver of that message. In the first example The correlation of Walter White in breaking bad is plausible, it is clearly not intended which makes the meme funny. However if one was to really sit down and think, it would indeed be a possibility. That would be the low-brow approach to this meme being as that it would apply to people that watch too much television. But on the other side, given the second meme there is a same conspiracy theme associated with the exact same prospective "idiot" which can be stapled to string theory in which is by far more complex and beyond provable. This is what brought my intention to the meme in the first place because I enjoy playful thought and felt it appropriate to our project.

How can one simple frame in time be able to send such a diverse message? It is fascinating how someone so mundane and irrelevant to all of these messages from over a decade ago can bring forth such dialogue in 2015. Perhaps it's the Matrix, perhaps it's the goofy face that he's making, most likely it's the new generation's parents making children watch "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in order to learn at least one thing about our media history. Regardless the application is absolutely ambiguous and has been embedded as "get ready to have your mind blown". Of all of the memes I would not necessarily put this in the category of the "tin foil hat" arena but it's quite close. It's attracted people's attention on the mere fact that once you see this you know you're going to question your current knowledge and will keep you asking for more.

Agenda Setting Theory

With the snowballing increase in technology and news availability few things go unnoticed these days, this can be not only viewed as a blessing but also a curse. There was once a time where people had to wait until the morning newspaper to find out what happened the previous day and that was considered groundbreaking. Now everything from NFL football injuries to congress passing a bill to some routine traffic stop gone bad can be found out almost instantaneously in todays society.

I remember not too long ago when there was an asteroid heading towards earth and they discovered that it would breach the atmosphere somewhere above Russia that it would be really neat to see the footage of the event but it was almost 13,000 miles away and we would have to wait a while for the news to filter what we should and should not see. Amazingly, almost as soon as I found out the destination of where it was going to land videos began popping up all over the internet! It was a great way to globally dominate everyone's attention to one incredible event.

But with the good always comes someone that can capitalize people's attention and drive to flock towards certain media, and interestingly enough it seems that most people are more attracted to scandalous activity than disaster lately. Last year at the always classy Music Television Video Awards an extremely low-brow performer decided to engage in an age-old stripper technique recently coined as "twerking". This was a cheap and typical way of the new generation bringing back an old public relations technique called "Hucksterism" in which the policy is "any publicity is good publicity".

As obnoxious and beaten to death this topic is it was actually effective and proves that we seemingly are going to be amused the same way people used to with this technique (fake taxidermy mermaids and 3 headed dogs). But the part that interests me is what was actually happening at the same time that this blanket story was thrown over the media. Behind the scenes of all of this adolescent cry for help lies a whisper of the executive order that has been brewing for months prior, an executive order about drones and whether or not they should or should not be imposing on our civil liberties. Nearly every class that I was taking that semester would ask how we felt about the VMA's and nothing to do with the huge imposition on civil liberties that was being under-reported right under our noses (which when I mentioned it none of the students had any idea what I was talking about).

Where this all comes together is just a symphony of the agenda setting theory. The media deliberately seems to lean more towards the easy news rather than the complex news because either no-one wants to spend the time to know why things are going on with politics or they're too occupied trying to guess what the Kardashian's favorite flavor of flan is. This can be seen almost everywhere, you check out at a supermarket for instance and look at the magazines, almost all of it is gossip about people who 99% of us will never meet, and the closest thing that informs you about foreign policy is maybe Time magazine at best. I'm not going down the avenue of saying that all of this is just more than convenient timing between the two events, however, when it comes to the metaphorical cannon of news, they're aiming it.

Jan 31

In 2011 a person owning a Glock 9mm pistol with a high capacity magazine felt as though it was his destiny to go out with a "bang". Jared Loughner came up to Arizona's congresswoman and opened fire. The gun can is loaded with something called a "magazine" which is an interchangeable container of bullets regularly holding 10 bullets before a reload. The magazine or "slide" during this assault is what is known as an extended magazine containing nearly three times the amount of ammunition of a normal pistol.
      Clearly this was a premeditated operation and there is no question that the Jared went out with the intention to injure as many people as possible; but the response to this tries to take yet another bite out of the constitution in a manor which probably isn't in the best interest of "we the people".
      Yes the really is no practical reason to have 18+ rounds in a magazine for a hand gun but to propose a magazine have a limited number of bullets is absolutely intrusive. The 2nd amendment to the constitution establishes that there are several functions for owning a firearm. The article that I found on the huffington post seems to be as liberal as most of the articles on the internet talking about how guns are either for hunting or self defense. Where in reality there is a third purpose and that is to overthrow the government and re-establish a congress. The articles fail to state any of this and no real examples defending fire arms came up during the time period because it happened during a streak of ongoing incidents involving inappropriate gun wielding and shootings. There are numerous reasons why there should never be a restriction on any sort of magazine limit or even general firearms in general, if you take away the guns from all of the innocent people only the bad people will have guns! This can be proven looking at England; which has an insane crime rate. Additionally if you look geographically the Russia has a significantly higher crime rate and violence rate then the United States. And when it comes to the continental US the places that are known for having more guns per household have far less (if any) crime whatsoever, you can almost think of it as being dumb enough to rob a gun store. but the farther you go from the Midwestern states (Baltimore being a tremendous example) the less the firepower that you are "allowed" to have in your house, the more the crime rate! The article states "No one is arguing that a high-capacity magazine ban would have prevented our colleague Gabrielle Giffords from being shot -- but it might have spared the victims who were struck by bullets 11 through 31". This is an ignorant statement because it holds no water. From professional experience I can say that firing an extended magazine hitting several targets with accuracy is far more difficult than a standard mag. The only real prevention you can apply is to monitor how well people train and what their intentions are and that is intrusive and none of anyone's business because if trained properly you can do almost equal damage with a standard magazine. The point being of all of this is if you allow them to strop one of your firearms or the accessories from your availability but allow them to have it you create an injustice and an unequal playing field. Last time I checked gun murders were a minor fraction of the cause of death that alcohol was; and I cant remember the last person that said they felt safe and protected because they had alcohol in the house.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-frank-lautenberg/post_1905_b_845590.html

Research

In taking a step back and looking at communications and how the media has a tremendous impact on the future of industries and even mediums. In looking at all of these mediums it was interesting to find that aside from the tremendous amount of potential they allowed in advertising, every one has one hidden factor that helps the medium succeed, the adult industry. I feel as though it would be fascinating to investigate how this industry that hides behind the curtain and is never out in plain site would have the power to control whether or not a device is used. I recently discovered the fascinating fact that the only reason VHS was chosen as the successful platform over the technologically superior beta-max was because the adult industry chose it as their static platform and slammed overwhelming demand for tapes crushing the competition. This 8 billion dollar annual industry has a huge history of spreading behind the scenes of the devices that we've all grown to love over the years and yet there is almost zero money invested in advertising. I would like to investigate how this is even possible in a world where advertising is the only way to generate a product's revenue, perhaps lying somewhere is a key subliminal way of advertising that we could take advantage of for other every day products or companies.

I chose to investigate the area of Public relations crisis and response strategies because this is the field that I'm heavily interested in because of it's ability to maintain any company's existence regardless of it's size.
This article discusses a man named Coombs who came up with a theory of handling scenarios that have or had the potential to spiral out of control called the Situational Crisis communication theory (SCCT). In this he states the article mentions his explanation of this "damage control" as follows :

‘‘the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes’’

I feel this to be extremely valid in the sense that the only reason that your business is still afloat is because people can relate to your product or company or have a degree of loyalty because historically they know that in the end, you as the company have the clients best interest in mind. The last time that I saw a huge PR flop was when the Iphone 4 came out. Apple did a terrible job product testing the phone and in an effort to consolidate the chipset of the phone, put the antenna in the bottom left-hand corner. Upon the release date people (especially left-handed) complained about dropped calls because the users hand would interfere with the cell signal and the call would drop. Whether Steve Jobs at the time was lacking a PR person or just didn't care he called in a press conference in response to this problem saying basically "just don't hold the phone that way". This was followed by a huge upset and the company eventually gave in by avoiding a recall (considering it was one of the fastest selling phones in history) and giving out a free phone case worth pennies to satisfy upset customers. Long story short, the day this "don't hold the phone that way" response was released, Apple's stock took a serious dive and drove the need to satisfy not only the customer but the stockholders. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that had there been a more sympathetic approach to the sloppiness of the original release of this phone through a trained crisis management firm would have saved Apple the blow that they took during the first two weeks of their release of the Iphone 4.

Coombs also touches in one of his concepts about the diminished posture which as I've noticed has been the hail Mary approach where salvaging the organization is no longer an option. For instance I forget which oil spill (so the approach clearly worked) but there was a tanker that had an accident and spilled oil all over the gulf I believe, the gas company tried to clean up the mess with little success and their stockholders began to give up on them. When out of nowhere the PR group of the company gave them the last stand option of simply changing the name of the company. Since people easily forget tragedies and are caught up with current events, the old company name would be forgotten and remembered as horrible people where the same exact company under a new name would have a clean slate. This is absolutely brilliant and seems to work time and time again.

Another juggernaut tactic that is mentioned in this article is the art of manipulation. This is probably the most prevalent among companies in order to save face when certain things hit the fan. They mention scapegoating which seems to be almost a basic human response to being caught red-handed. In the example given they discuss how the university had to cut classes because of a lack of funding rather than owning up to the responsibility of not functioning properly and thus losing funding. It's original and has been around since people have been playing in sandboxes; it wasn't me. It goes on to discuss a lot more practical and empathetic approaches such as justification, apologizing and reminding which again, all depend on the severity of the problem being mopped up.

I feel as though this article gives a tremendous insight on the world of Public Relations and how fun and challenging it can be. I find the field exciting and full of mystery and it's difficult sometimes to describe the job to people and I feel this article hits the nail on the head. It not only explains in a brief article the demand of the field but also most of the primary tactics that come almost natural to some people and how to apply them to the business world. It also informs the reader that since you're representing a company or maybe even a corporation that your investors and customers are going to be hanging on your every word so choose them carefully and when you speak to have a spice rack of vocabulary and emotion at your fingertips to keep your audience loyal. In this field, especially how impersonal it is, it is absolutly essential to convince your target audience that you (the company) are genuinely sorry for the problem and will take every measure to correct it; especially in this era where competition is absolutely everywhere.

Hopefully this works this time

The difference in the validity between quantitative and qualitative research is rather significant. I feel as though when it comes to publishing a valid study that can be used to conclusively support or deny a hypothesis a quantitative research method should be used. The most important part of an experiment or a study when you're looking for an answer is that the experiment can be replicated over and over and over again and yield the same results, I feel that this is only possible in quantitative research. There is an argument of course that there could for instance in the discussion we had in class about the senator who was winning the polls in I believe Kentucky, the numbers were in his favor across the board, he was ahead and every poll predicted his victory when out of nowhere he says something foolish and smears his public relations and his reputation with the voters and the next poll shows him plummet so yes in this instance it's not something that stays constant. In math and science however it is essential that the results remain consistent in order to formulate a law, or in the field of medicine the effectiveness of a certain drug in a general population.

On the other hand there are certain environments where qualitative research would provide a more accurate description and explanation for certain things, mainly in fields like sociology and psychology. Although yes you could sit there and involve numbers in terms of how many people reacted this way and conclude that a certain object when experienced by a bystander yielded a conclusion, qualitative is more concerned with why things are happening, by observing and not formulating an opinion. Qualitative is a much more hands on approach by getting down to business and getting  your hands dirty, last semester I took a Russian history class and we were assigned a book to read where the author put themselves in a poor Russian village and documented their culture. The only problem that I saw with this method of observation (just like we discussed about different news programs on TV) was that the entire book was at the mercy of the authors interpretation, and it was very obvious at certain points where she looked down on their traditions and would exaggerate certain things. The book had a translators critique at the end of each chapter and he would discuss that yes, certain things seemed bizarre to the author but that was because she was a pampered middle-upper class citizen whereas this village was filled with serfs who followed traditions from thousands of years ago to keep their morale up. With this kind of research you can skew anything to your liking and most people will take your word for it because you appear credible because say for instance you're on TV or you wrote a book. The other way of using qualitative research is to become the group that you're studying. Say for instance you wanted to write a report on how military personnel are treated you could request to observe the lifestyle for a few months and what have you, but since you requested it they're only going to let you observe the star performers and they'll put on a show for you. Or you preform a covert study (which is probably illegal to publish) and sign up for an enlistment and record all of the behind the scenes action. It goes with the old saying about integrity where you're character is judged by what you do when no one's watching.