ZOMGDEL.ICIO.US

Booyahkashaw.

For some reason, one of my links in there isn't showing up, so pretend this comes up in there.

Soooooo, here are the methods behind the madness:

The Bench - Ok, so this one's kinda weird, and the link doesn't actually go to The Bench project itself, because that site doesn't seem to be up anyway. The Bench was an experiment held by the guys who create the webcomic Penny Arcade in which they provided their readers with a bunch of pre-drawn materials, specifically images of a guy, a squirrel, speech bubbles, and a park bench setting, and told them to create their own comics with them. All of the submissions were posted on the project's website and a few of the better comics were presented as Penny Arcade strips. This is one of the oldest examples of participatory culture that I can think of and one that I got alot of enjoyment out of. I don't remember if the comic in this link was made by a fan or by the Penny Arcade guys, but it exemplifies the type of stuff that could be found there.

Overheard in New York - This site has provided some of the most quotable material ever because you literally can't make this shit up. People submit funny, interesting, horrifying, disgusting, all of the above, and more quips that they overhear in New York and the site editors post their favorites with snarky and often hilarious comments in the form of titles. This has spawned Overheard at the Beach, Overheard in the Office, and Overheard Everywhere spinoffs, not to mentions countless Overheard at X Facebook groups. I'm not sure how old this is, but definitely one of the older PC things out there. For some reason though, I always seem to find the original funnier than the others.

Wikipedia: Participatory Culture - Ooooh, this is soooo meta. I absolutely adore wikipedia as a resource. It's so damn fast and almost always has exactly what I'm looking for. It's probably responsible for most of my music trivia knowledge. While its merits and pitfalls can be argued all day, I definitely the that the whole wiki concept is fascinating and definitely here to stay. It's speed and ease of use are astounding, and unless Stephen Colbert is involved, it's usually pretty reliable (though I do recall reading that, apparently, Killswitch Engage is a "Gaycore" band from "Gayville, USA").

Flickr - Yay, easy photo sharing! This photo and flickr set were posted on Boing Boing, and I just find it really cool that somebody's (great) vacation photos can get attention like this. That photo is a complete marvel, but not too long ago, it would've been doomed to obscurity in someone's physical photo album.

Ze Frank - The man who pretty much defines both Videoblogging and Participatory Culture for me. Every weekday for a year, Ze posted a video he made of himself offering biting and hilarious political commentary, silly skits making fun of himself, poignant thoughts and philosophies on life, and scientific debasings of stupid things. Better yet, he got the audience involved, from challenging them to make an Earth Sandwich (placing a piece of bread on exact opposite sides of the earth), to playing a game of chess against them as a collective, to letting them collectively write an episode of the show. I might have a slight man-crush on him.

LonelyGirl15 - I never actually watched LonelyGirl15, even after the cat got out of the bag that it wasn't a real girl, but I thought it was a really incredible idea. Then I stumbled upon this video while looking for something else and just kinda had my mind blown about where the whole thing had gone. It began as what appeared to be a cute, kinda nerdy girl posting videos of herself talking about her life and whatever was on her mind. She became something of a YouTube celebrity for her frequently amusing videos and witty insight. People began writing to her because they totally identified with her and the things she said. Then, after some creative use of Google caching, a MySpace featuring photos of said girl with a different name was unearthed. As it turned out, the whole thing was staged, and was in fact a media experiment. LonelyGirl15 was an actress reading lines, and someone else had been writing all those blog posts and responding to those e-mails. But the show didn't end. And apparently went into some serious high drama shit, told entirely through YouTube videos. What this could possibly say for entertainment in the future is pretty heavy.

SongFight! - Another of my old stomping grounds. It's changed a little since I was on it (less titles, more time to make the final product) but it's still at least doing its thing. The site editors post a song title or tiles and you have a week to write, record, and submit a song based on that title. The submissions get posted on the front page and anyone who visits can vote on their favorite. Alot of the submissions are unpolished, weird, or just downright bad, but I've found some absolutely phenomenal music here.

XKCD - Not inherently participatory (though it is one of my favorite webcomics ever), XKCD did something really interesting in this strip. The coordinates in the comic turned out to be a field outside of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fans of the comic gathered there on the date in the comic for a giant XKCD party, where the fans modified the entire surrounding area to be XKCD themed, changing street signs and erecting references to the comic. XKCD has also done a couple of PC projects since then, like WetRiffs.com, meant to be a play on niche genre porn, and an IRC-bot that only allows original conversation, punishing people for making statements that they've made before.