Category Archives: Uncategorized

The best way to browse this site:

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This WordPress site uses a blog format, but I recommend navigating through the set of ten numbered categories (on the right, scroll down a bit) rather than just scrolling through the entries on the main page. The About the Project link above provides a broad overview of our aims and methods.

While each of the links on the right will show only the 5-7 videos chosen by the students authoring that category, I have tagged each video with other categories that might also describe it. So if you click on one of the tags that appear under each video, you can see a larger set of videos related to that concept from our canon.

Message to Scientology

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Uploaded: Jan 21, 2008

View count (Apr 2013): 5,024,144

Released by the leaderless internet-based ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous, this video was released in response to the Church of Scientology’s attempts to remove a video of Scientologist Tom Cruise from the internet. Although originally released as a troll, this video eventually became a rallying cry for both online and offline protests against the Church of Scientology and censorship. Although hackers and trolls have existed for a while, this video was a precipitating factor in uniting them and giving the “underground” of the internet a somewhat united activist voice.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/JCbKv9yiLiQ[/youtube]

The Boxing Cats (Prof. Welton’s)

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Uploaded: Mar 26, 2009

View count (Apr 2013): 99,059

“Boxing Cats” is (incorrectly) regarded across the internet as the “oldest cat video of all time.”[i] The 1894 film by Thomas Edison was shot using a kinetoscope just one year before the Lumière brothers premiered Exiting the Factory, which is largely considered to be the first film. “Boxing Cats,” uploaded to the public on the Library of Congress’s YouTube channel, questions many aspects of the internet cat trend. Perhaps YouTube’s recent influx of cat videos isn’t a recent influx at all. On the other hand, claims that this is the “oldest cat video of all time” also represent an interpretation of old media through the lens of new media trends. No matter where you stand, “Boxing Cats” is an important piece of this chicken-or-the-egg debate.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/6qre61opE_g[/youtube]

[i] Kasia Cieplak-Mayr, Von Baldegg. “The Oldest Cat Video of All Time?.” The Atlantic, February 15, 2012. http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/02/the-oldest-cat-video-of-all-time/253134/ (accessed April 19, 2013).