Conservapedia

While looking up more information about Wikipedia, I found something really interesting called Conservapedia. This may not be new to some of you, but I personally had no idea this was out there. As defined by Wikipedia, Conserapedia is "a wiki-based web encyclopedia project written from a socially conservative, Conservative Christian, and American viewpoint." It was started in November 2006, by a lawyer and history teacher. They felt that "the open-source web encyclopedia Wikipedia had a liberal, anti-Christian, and anti-American bias," and thus they needed to provide a conservative perspective. On the site, they include daily news stories, and Bible verses. It is actually quite interesting to see how it differs form Wikipedia. I even found a Comedy Central Youtube video about Conservapedia, which is pretty funny.

"Bert is Evil" Convergence

I was surprised and interested in the "Bert is Evil" example in the reading form last week, so I decided to take a better look at it. I went to YouTube and searched "Bert is Evil." There were quite a few videos pertaining to the Bert is Evil pictures, but I found one particularly interesting. This one is a mock movie premiere, which uses scenes and pokes fun of the film "Vantage Point." It is pretty professional looking, especially compared to the other clips. Its interesting how the "Bert is Evil" campaign has progressed, starting with photography, integrating the internet and now video. If we are going to look at this in terms of cultural convergence, rather than technological, as Jenkins says, then what can we say about the culture? Maybe we can say culture is now focusing on the transition from consumer to producer, and that youtube is just another mode for that transition.