Internet Folklore Final

Habitus

internalized sense of how to behave

Cultural Capital

Non-economic assets that signal social class

Folkloresque

Media that evokes folklore tradition or folk culture without necessarily being traditional folklore itself

Cottagecore

Internet based aesthetic that romanticizes rural life, simplicity, and nature-centered living

Textual poaching

refers to the active, sometime subversive, way that fans appropriate mass media texts to create their own cultural meanings

Fanfic

Fan created fiction utilizing characters, settings, and plots poached from popular cultural texts

Fanzine

DIY magazines, often handmade, photocopied, and distributed through the mail often for no profit

Slashfic

Fanfic focusing on character relationships and pairings either non-existent or underemphasized in popular cultural texts, often exploring same sex romantic pairings

Bronies

Young adult and adult male fans of My Little Pony Friendship is MAgic

Herobrine

Mysterious white eyed character who often destroys other players creations and is not coded into the game by creators

Legends

Narratives about strange or uncanny events that are potentially true and often are presented as true

Ostension

The enactment of a legend

Mod

Fan made alteration of a game

Ludology

the study of games and gamers

Magic Circle

the “sealed frame” that bounds the game experience- it separates game from not game

spontaneous shrine

a memorial that appears suddenly and anonymously at the site of a tragic event

Assemblage

the materials that accrue at the site of a spontaneous shrine including flowers, letters, stuffed animals, photos, etc

Turing test

measure of a machines ability to successfully mimic human thought

Generative

the capacity to combine features of two separate concepts to form something new

LLMs

Large language machines. Process data, isolating units of meaning and recognizing patterns in syntax, creating context to generate responses

Black box problem

the inability to see exactly how AI systems work