Reading Blog #3

Quote: “How do we as consumers use the texts and artifacts that surround us? And the answer, [de Certeau] suggested, was ‘tactically.’ That is, in far more creative and rebellious ways than had previously been imagined. . . . An existential aesthetic. An aesthetic of poaching, tricking, reading, speaking, strolling, shopping, desiring. Clever tricks, the hunter’s cunning, maneuvers, polymorphic situations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.”

I think the most interesting part of this article is towards the end when they discuss where the internet is heading. As in the early internet days are significantly different then the internet in the 2010's, Which is when I began having access to the internet. When referring to the article “The ABC of Tactical Media” they talk about how the internet will become more tactical (quoted above). This prediction has a direct tie to click-baiting which was the most prevalent in the 2010's when Buzzfeed and youtube were at their peak in the lime light. Articles and videos were clickbait in order to receive clicks in the attention economy of the internet that some were completely false. Although clickbait is less common and now it is still a huge tactic of scammers and businesses specifically in ads. Websites that are filled with ads have a lot of flashing "click here for free xyz" or fear-mongering new ads.

Another thought provoking piece in the article was the art piece

www.potatoland.org/shredder which was made in 1998 during the end of the Web page art pieces in which they had to be bold to grab attention. I looked this one up out of curiosity and found it was still up and running. The page takes the code of a website and shreds it and puts it all across the screen. Which is very chaotic and definitely requires the right kind of audience. I think the web art from the time is so far removed from current internet art I've seen but it's very impressive that some of the art was able to be preserve considering the dramatic changes the internet has had since.