Afraid to Dive

It is obvious that the internet has long been neither a means nor even a tool, but an extension of real life: the whole virtual world is at hand and in the blink of an eye. Indeed, the internet, if not dramatically changed, but at least affected almost all spheres of life, from economics and social interactions to culture. The latter, apparently, is of particular interest to this blog, and I would like to address this issue again, especially because, in a sense, this is my final work on web culture. No Boundaries Before realizing what weblore is, it is necessary first to understand the history of folklore and culture as such. Folklore is known to be an oral folk art characteristic of a traditional society. Thus, folklore belongs to folk culture, usually classified along with high and mass culture. Urbanization has brought what the Russian folklore researcher Sergei Neklyudov calls post-folklore . Virtually, it is "folklore" born in an urban environment: songs, urban leg...

Is it?

In the first half of the 80's, the developers started adding level editors to their games (Lode Runner, Excitebike, Mind Strike, and others). They are based on the philosophy of the intervention, where the player acts not as a passive gameplay participant (who takes action, but is also limited by certain boundaries), but as an absolute creator, the architect of game reality. Nowadays, when game development is accessible as never before, and fan content weighs a lot, official game editors and SDKs are not a surprise. Often they offer an effective tool for creating own levels, distinctive and authentic. However, the point of custom levels is that they, unlike mods, expand the already available mechanics or put them at a different angle. Sometimes such editors exist separately from the game, which allows players to explore the mechanics way deeply, vanishing borders between custom levels and mods. If video games could be art, then the fan levels may have an artistic value, too. ...

What can tell the history of a town or a city in a nutshell? Not people, not local museums, and not even historical areas with its architecture, but something on the surface; literally at the entrance. Of course, I am speaking about welcome signs. Usually, in North America and Europe, cities are limited to simple, road signs, rarely with a some kind of bas-relief, and even more rarely, the real monuments. However, in the post-Soviet countries the welcome signs have been realized as a full part of monumental art. The need to define the boundaries of settlements originated with the advent of the first cities, as there is a plenty of archaeological evidence for this. For example, the widely known Boundary Stelae of Akhenaten, a group of stelae carved in the cliffs around the self-titled ancient Egyptian city. Also, one cannot forget to mention the Mayan king Chan Imix Kʼawiil who set up the stelae around the Copán area. It is noteworthy that those structures served not only as mark...

The Internet is truly an astonishing place. There is an unthinkable variety of subcultures, some of which have migrated from the real life, acquiring new forms and rooting their ideas in the digital environment. However, a plenty of "native" web communities, or "microcultures" have been arising, too. Undoubtedly, every subculture is unique and distinctive, having its personal atmosphere, art, and even ideology. The whole set of subjectively beautiful forms produced by these subcultures is the modern web aesthetics. It can appear in many forms of art: traditional and digital art, pixel art, collages, 3D modeling, photography, music, and even fashion, forming the single and unique image of a subculture. Over the last decade, a big amount of such communities have been spawned, and all of them share common features. Of course, I mean the music subcultures like Outrun (often called Retrowave but that is primarily a music term), Seapunk, Vaporwave, and others. The las...

No doubt that Slavs have one of the richest traditional cultures in the world. Due to its kind of apartness it has saved many original features, remaining unique in its own way, especially among the East Slavs. However, over time, formations and lifestyles had been changing, the regimes and society conditions were replacing each another, while traditions, though remained unchanged, still mutated imperceptibly. In the late postmodernity, where all the types of culture merged into the mass culture, and accepted divisions on "high", "low", "pop", etc. became only the nominal verges of one omnibus culture, the "traditional" one ceased to exist in its original sense. Moreover, the traditions themselves have died. Now traditional culture is an ephemeral part of modern "folk" culture which is the verge of the mass culture itself. In fact, it is a mere blurry view of ancestors' life, in other words, a simulacrum, an attempt to imitate ...