Essay 1: Plurk

When I was trying to explain to my brother that I would not actually be turning anything in all quarter for my English class and that all my assignments would be in blog form and in the context of some new mysterious website called plurk, his first question was how would my writing improve? His rationale, which was valid, was that when one blogs, one tends to spew. One’s thoughts don’t necessarily have to be well organized or punctuated or even thoroughly examined. So how could one expect a student to write anything or worth in such a lackadaisical setting? Applying this theory to plurk; how can one effectively present ones ideas if one only has 140 characters to do so and is doing it in a chat-room set up? My response: exactly.

Plurk is the literary form of the nanotechnology we have read about in The Ticket that Exploded, Ribofunk, Postsingular, The Filth and many others. In the same way nanotechnology uses the small to wield big power, plurk forces one to write as minimally as possible while still packing the same kind of punch into what one has to say. I draw your attention to my blog entitled “The Power of the Small”. Here I argue that the power of the English language lies in the word. Each word carries with it a plethora of meanings and memories and innuendoes the one reading it attaches to it; subconsciously or not. Being able to wield as few words or images together to make a multi-layered statement is the power one gets from plurk. One is forced to boil ones thoughts down and express them in words that will carry the most weight.

An example of powerful plurking is the last plurk by nanotext on March 12, 2009. The plurk was a simple “bye” that ended the quarter and the class session. This single word plurk was powerful because of its informality. There was no heart-felt speech or long and drawn out goodbye. It was done in a medium and context that was familiar to the audience making it accessible. Nanotext had a deep sense of how the audience felt in relation to the class, even shared their attachment, thus giving him the knowledge that a short and simple farewell would leave the audience with a wealth of unexposed emotion. This method was much more effective than say a long and drawn out speech in which all the emotions and thoughts and feelings were exposed because it left every member with their own individual perception of the class and the last words of the professor.

Knowing one’s audience is important in the manipulation of the English language. Of course this is achieved in a completely new and different way on plurk. What I find so attractive about online profiles and mediums such as plurk, is that it offers a space where I can calculate how those who will read my posts will perceive me. Is that not what we, as a culture, enjoy about presenting ourselves on the internet? It is by no means a candid portrayal but instead a well calculated and prepared one.

By this same token there is a strange comfort to talking to a name and not a face. The lack of physical presence on plurk is somewhat refreshing because one then has the ability to present oneself and ones ideas in a creative and attractive way: one that can be tweeked and changed to be perceived in the exact way the plurker intends it to be. This goes back to the perception of oneself being carefully calculated as well.

The human body can be rather intimidating. Having to present oneself to another human with the probability that ones thoughts may not be well received or agreed with is nerve-racking, at least in some small way. This is where plurk comes in. We, as students, do not have to worry about offending another person to their face. We can hide behind the anonymity of whatever clever nickname we carefully plan for ourselves and hope the one we offend does not match our profile picture to us in class.

This same kind of faceless comfort is what emboldens the fugitive in The Invention or Morel. As he becomes more and more aware of his inexistence to the others on the island he becomes more courageous in his love for Faustine. I have to speculate that he would not have yelled that he loved her to Faustine had he not been confident that neither she nor any of her companions would here him. It is this anonymity offered by plurk that makes us bold enough to say what we want. Plurk is a branch of technology that makes those too shy to speak out in class able to contribute.

Plurk forces one to write small by thinking big. It creates a kind of reality in which the small carries the most weight. Nanotechnology showcases this same principle in that the smallest technology can and does and will create the most havoc. As seen in Postsingular, the nants and the orphids are small individually but have the potential to radically change the way human beings live their lives: the power is in the small. By expanding ones thoughts and examining the power of the individual word within the English language, one applies the theory of small strength in nanotechnology to expression through language. For our class, plurk was the application of the theories of power in nanotechnology to literary expression.