#also most of the current information is in english and it's not accessible unless you're fluent
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my two cents are that people outside of finland (and even the more left-leaning circles in finland) are not really taking into account that an average person here doesn’t know jack shit about israel or palestine. the first and only time either of them got mentioned in my 12 years of schooling (i’m a few years younger than jere) was an optional history course focusing on post-ww2 history in my final year of high shcool. jere went to vocational school and they don’t teach history at all there so he’s relying on his junior high education which isn’t saying much considering he’s said multiple times he didn’t pay attention at school.
it doesn’t help that the mainstream reporting (which he’s forced to rely on since he doesn’t speak fluent enough english) about the palestinian genocide has been frustratingly neutral and both-sides-y here in finland. obviously some of that is due to journalistic ethics and responsibilities because our news medias can’t get their reporters within gaza’s borders and they can’t report on things unless the information comes from a reputable source or they can fact check them.
all this is to say that i'm willing to bet actual money he doesn’t even know the definition of genocide in finnish, not to mention IDF or zionism or even judaism. those things are simply not taught here and the idea of him being a zionist is laughable. i studied anthropology at university and the amount of times i’ve had to explain fairly simple concepts like colonialism or genocide to people, even highly-educated ones, is staggering. and i didn’t really understand those things either before i went to university. finland used to love to rave about our PISA scores but the truth is that the level of basic education here has been really poor for decades.
#käärijä#i’ve seen people wish he’d get educated on the matter which is fair and valid#but i can’t help but wonder how exactly given how poor the basis of his education likely is#he’s not going to be able to get through a book or even an article unless he has someone there to explain things to him#in any case you can't educate people by getting aggressive when they don’t know things#also most of the current information is in english and it's not accessible unless you're fluent#and in case it wasn't clear i'm not trying to excuse his actions cause this definitely wasn't his brightest moment#just offering some perspective here#also i specifically mention history because i think knowing how israel became a nation is crucial to understanding the current situation
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Casual Geographic: Scientific Communication and Cultural Representation
Self-proclaimed “animal nerd” and “internet zoologist” Mamadou Ndiaye is the man behind, and in front of, “Casual Geographic.” Beginning the channel during the 2020 New York lockdowns, Ndiaye began creating videos shortly before the pandemic cost him his environmental management job. Luckily, Ndiaye’s video “Animals That Are BIGGER Than You Think” went viral a short time later. Since then Ndiaye’s video releases continue to go viral, netting him a cool 3.39 million followers on YouTube and 16.1 million followers on TikTok. In this essay we will examine how the work of Casual Geographic is an influence towards more diverse, inclusive, and equitable science communication.
As a science communicator, Ndiaye embraces his connection to Black culture. His style of humor often uses references to current events, parody of clichés, and uses terms and references originating in Black American culture. Statements such as, “Cape buffalos stand on business…” and, “No orca alive shall prosper… And that’s on pod.” This makes the way he combines comedy and science in his videos representative of Black voices in zoology in a way many zoological forums lack due to the formality of scientific communication norms.
By entering the formal scientific space with a less formal, culturally inclusive brand of humor and communication, Ndiaye’s work counters the stereotypical image of Black men in the mainstream American zeitgeist. The image of a young Black man achieving intellectual success without abandoning his cultural uses the evidential perception of the camera to promote a new image of Black culture. As Debora Willis demonstrates in her article “Picturing Us”, photographic evidence of peoples and cultures offers evidence of their existence. In this capacity, Ndiaye’s work serves to demonstrate how Black dialectal patterns are no less effective in the realm of science communication than any formal dialect of English. Ndiaye’s presence in a space dominated by educated White people makes him stand out. He’s representative of what is possible if educational spaces were more open to Black communicators.
Ndiaye’s use of a Black dialect is also significant as it disqualifies some degree of “evidence” for Black exceptionalism. Exceptionalism is the belief a minority person must be the exception to the rule if they attain success. In essence, they’re “one of the good [insert minority group here].” Black people with clear cultural ties are often seen to be incapable of certain forms or degrees of success, unless they distance themselves from “the hood” or abandon certain cultural markers. By communicating without a formal dialect, Ndiaye creates evidence to counter the notion a person with a Black dialect is definitively less intelligent or less educated than those with a culturally white dialect. Instead he demonstrates how educational integrity is simply an unwavering commitment to accuracy, which anyone can achieve if it is important to them, regardless of dialect.
With his humor and commitment both to his culture and scientific accuracy, Mamadou Ndiaye provides evidence to contradict generations of stereotypes. This, coupled with his ability to communicate scientific information effectively within his own cultural dialect gives him a broader reach, and opens new doors to the world of scientific communication for those who desire access.
Works Cited:
Casual Geographic. Animals with the Most Generational Beef. YouTube. Accessed 20th Apr 2024
youtube
---. Animals with the Most Black Air Force Energy. YouTube. Accessed 20th Apr 2024
youtube
---. Meet the White Panther! YouTube. Accessed 20th Apr 2024.
Johnson, Ariana. “Viral TikTok Start and Self-Proclaimed “Internet Zoologist” Mamadou Ndiaye Just Released a Book About Terrifying Animals. Forbes Online. Accessed 20th Apr 2024 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ariannajohnson/2022/07/20/viral-tiktok-star-and-self-proclaimed-internet-zoologist-mamadou-ndiaye-just-released-a-book-about-terrifying-animals/?sh=565049bc2d75
Willis, Debora. Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography. The New York Press, 1994
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on the subject of nintendo hype, i also miss pokemon hype pre XY (which are already 11 years old, wow !), which i know is : 1- oddly specific 2- really old ? i'm talking about basically, back in 2006-2007. now, while i was pretty much a kid back then, i remember that the internet was only useful for three things for me back then : 1 cartoon/anime openings (the dragonball Z op was the first thing i ever searched for on youtube) 2 videogame help and 3 pokemon. whenever i had access to the internet, i'd look for stupid fan art of pokemon fusions, fanfics shipping a variety of the characters from the series and news on the games.
the reason why i specified before XY is because Pokemon X/Y were the first episodes of the series to be announced globally.
on tuesday 8th of january 2013, pokemon xy was announced. i remember running home from school at 12 to open my laptop (that i had left on in the morning so i wouldn't waste a single second) to see the trailer
you have to understand that before, the games were first announced in japan, released there and then eventually announced for the rest of the world (europe, usa) and released. this was a BIG event. but prior to xy, unless you could speak japanese and lived there, you were practically left in the dark about the most recent pokemon news/events. "why not watch the trailer in japanese then and quit dramatizing past events lol ? "
the reason is that back then, a trailer was the culmination of months and months of mystery and hype. you didn't get the trailer first. rumors would circulate from "insiders" and so called trust worthy leakers from japanese and american image boards that a game was in the works (and these rumors would usually start 6-9 months after the release of the most recent mainline game), then speculations about the region, thematic, features would start; i remember how each gen we had someone saying "this time, we'll be able to explore ALL regions !" or "this is going to be open-world in 3d on the TV console !".
remember : the internet was a much more decentralized entity back in the mid/late 00's. information did not drip down from a single verified source on 3-4 social media accounts ; it spread unevenly, gathering misinformation, theories and the interpretation of the relayer along the way. you're probably going to ask "well, if you didn't get it from the official twitter/facebook (this is 2008), where did you get the info from ?"
we got it the old fashioned way. i present to you, the corocoro magazine
the magazine, launched in 1977 is a children's mag that advertised a variety of manga and most importantly video games to a younger audience. and you would not believe how dependant the online pokemon community was on this magazine : any info concerning a new game, teasers, shadows for the shapes of starters would be there. mind you, google trad was not as developped as it is today : you couldn't just up and whip out your phone to translate the text from your computer screen. you had to wait for translators to do so; and boy, was it exciting. i remember how on the french pokemon bubble, it was a race between various websites to translate the info first ; either from the english translation, or directly from the source, if they could comprehend japanese.
source : japanese TV show "Pokemon Sunday" circa 2010-11
and since i mentionned shadows, here is a tradition that sadly disappeared : shadows of the new gen starters as a teaser. surely, i don't have to name or even show you the starters on the picture above for you to recognize them. instead, let us see how creative such teasers got the community :
(i'm too lazy to currently fire up the wayback machine and get some of the fan designs which i remembered to be quite interesting back then)
and so it went on: drip fed teasers, leaks and speculations about info that we take for granted now, like the very names of the new pokemon in english, of the rival and the game's evil team, new or returning mechanics, etc. the hype would go on, info would become clear as we near the japanese release, then once it does, we all sit behind our screens jealous at the lucky ones who either lived in japan or uhm, accidentally received an online package containing a rip of the game's file (jokes aside to avoid getting censored, if this was the case, the games would have safety patches that didn't allow it to be read by the current firmware of jailbroken consoles).
the lucky ones would document their adventure, some try to prepare guides in advance for the international release, others cook-up fan translations ; and at that point, theories have begun. all before we even get the game !
to be honest, i did not expect this to be this long, but as i wrote, i remembered more and more, and like an old sailor, got to recall why i was so excited for pokemon back then. i lived for the hype : play pokemon, next game gets announced, get on the hype train, write theories, debate with other fans on forums, convince people that we're not getting a 3rd gen remake on the Nintendo DS, game releases, rinse, wash and repeat.
to me, this entire topic is an interesting look at the aspect of a bigger topic; the centralization of the internet over the years and the controlled spread of information. of course, i won't get into this here or now, but i'll also add that whatever i put down does somewhat apply to not only nintendo but also games from japanese manufacturers as well : even more obscure light novels on ps4 are getting releases in various languages now. before, you needed a japanese console to play japanese games, a german game would not work on an american console, etc. i am not necessarily nostalgic for this - it was annoying, and some of us missed many games because of it. but i will admit that the absence of teasers and hype when you can just datamine or immediately get the info on twitter from a game dev is saddening. i shall leave you, dear reader, with this trailer for pokemon black and white 2 that had me excited for a month :
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It's really surprising that you're so well versed in older fandoms and yet participate in new popular ones (that cdrama, kpop) is this by design? Im in my twenties and my interest turnover is already way slower than it used to be
You know, that’s a really interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s by design exactly in that I do tend to just follow what strikes my fancy, and I can’t force myself to want to write fic for just anything. (I find it easier to like reading fic without serious involuntary emotional investment, but writing takes more. Vidding I can do on command most of the time, but I don’t usually bother unless I have a lot of feels or I’m fulfilling someone’s prompt.)
However, me getting into BTS was 100% due to me wanting to understand BTS enough to explain to people who weren’t very interested but wanted to know what was going on in fandom lately. Under normal circumstances, I run the dance party at Escapade, the oldest extant slash con. We borrowed vividcon’s thing of playing fanvids on the wall--all of them set to dance music--as the soundtrack for the dance party. This means I’m creating a 3-hour mixtape of fannishness, which has amazing potential to make people feel in the know about Fandom Today... and equal potential to make them feel alienated if nothing they care about shows up. Only about 100-150 people attend the con, so it really is possible to make a playlist that feels inclusive yet informative--it just takes a huge amount of work.
Every year, I do a lot of research on which fandoms are getting big and look for vids from vidders people won’t have heard of, so there is an element of consciously trying to keep up with things. Generally, I only get into these fandoms myself if I had no idea what they were and then suddenly, oops, they’re my kryptonite, like the buddy cop android plot in Detroit: Become Human, which sucked me in hard for like 6 months on the basis of a vid.
(So if you’re into cross-fandom meta and associated stuff as one of your fannish interests, you tend to have broader knowledge of different fandoms, old and new, than if you’re just looking for the next place you’ll read fic. It’s also easier to love vids for unfamiliar things than fic.)
But though I was only looking for a basic primer on BTS, BTS has 7 members with multiple names and no clear juggernaut pairing, not to mention that AU that runs through the music videos and lots of other context to explain. The barrier to understanding WTF was going on at all was high enough that to know enough to explain, I had to be thoroughly exposed... And once I was over that hurdle, oops, I had a fandom.
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In terms of old vs. new, here’s the thing: kpop fandoms in English and c-drama fandoms in English right now feel a lot like anime fandom in English did in the early 00s. I had a Buddy Cops of the 70s phase in the middle, but my current fannishness is actually a return to my older fannishness in many ways.
What do I mean about them being similar?
Yes, I know some wanker will show up to say I think China, Korea, and Japan are indistinguishable, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that I used to routinely meet Italian and French and German fans, Argentinian and Mexican, Malaysian and Indonesian and Filipino too. English-language fandom of SPN or MCU may have all those fans from all those countries, but it feels very American most of the time. English-language fandom of a non-English-language canon is more overtly about using English as a lingua franca.
It also tends to attract people who as a sideline to their fannishness are getting into language learning and translation, which are my other passion in life after fanworks fandom. (I speak only English and Spanish and a bit of Japanese, but I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Old English, and now Korean.)
Nerds arguing about methods of language learning and which textbooks are good and why is my jam. This is all over the place in English-language fandoms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean media. Those fandoms also tend to be full of speakers coming from a Germanic or Romance languages background who face similar hurdles in learning these languages. (In other words, if you’re a native Japanese speaker trying to learn Korean, the parts that will be hard for you are different than if you’re an English speaker, but you’re also usually not doing fandom in English.)
There’s also an element of scarcity and difficulty of access and a communal attempt to construct a canon (in the other sense) of stuff from that country that pertains to one’s fannishness. So, for example, a primer explaining the genre of xianxia is highly relevant to being a n00b Untamed fan, but just any old thing about China is not. A c-drama adapted from a danmei webnovel is perhaps part of the new pantheon of Chinese shit we’re all getting into, but just any old drama from decades ago is probably not... unless it’s a genre precursor to something else we care about. Another aspect here is that while Stuff I Can Access As A N00b Who Doesn’t Speak The Language may be relatively scarce, there’s a vast, vast wealth of stuff that exists.
This is what it felt like to be an anime fan in the US in 2000. As translation got more commercial and more crappy series were licensed and dumped onto an already glutted market, the vibe changed. No longer were fans desperately trying to learn enough of the language to translate or spending their time cataloguing what existed or making fanworks about a show they stuck with for a bit: the overall community focus turned to an endless race of consumption to keep up with all of the latest releases. That’s a perfectly valid way of being fannish, but if I wanted that, I’d binge US television 24/7.
Anime fandom got bigger, but what I liked about anime fandom in English died, and I moved on. (Okay, I first moved on to Onmyouji, which is a live action Japanese thing, but still.)
Hardcore weeaboos and now fans of Chinese and Korean stuff don’t stop at language: people get excited about cooking, my other other great passion. Times a thousand if the canon is something like The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which is full of loving shots of food preparation. People get excited about history! Mandarin and Japanese may share almost nothing in terms of grammar or phonology, but all of East Asia has influence from specific Chinese power centers historically, and there are commonalities to historical architecture and clothing that I love.
I fell out of love with the popular anime art styles as they changed, and I’m not that into animation in general these days. (I still own a shitton of manga in art styles I like, like Okano Reiko’s Onmyouji series.) I’ve become a filmmaker over the last decade, and I’m very excited about beautiful cinematography and editing. With one thing and another, I’m probably not going to get back into anime fandom, but it’s lovely to revisit the cultural aspects I enjoyed about it via live-action media.
BTS surprised me too, to be honest. I really dislike that early 90s R&B ballad style that infests idol music (not just Korean--believe me, I resisted many rounds of “But Johnny’s Entertainment though!” back in the day). While I like some of the dance pop, I just don’t care. But OH NO, BTS turn out to be massive conscious hip hop fanboys, and their music sounds different. I have some tl;dr about my reactions in the meta I wrote about one of my fanvids, which you can find on Dreamwidth here.
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But back to your comment about turnover: I know fans from the 70s who’ve had one great fannish love and that’s it and more who were like that but eventually moved on to a second or third. They’re... really fannishly monogamous in a way I find hard to comprehend. It was the norm long ago, but even by the 90s when far more people were getting into fandom, it was seen as a little weird. By now, with exponentially more people in fandom, it’s almost unheard of. I think those fans still exist, even as new people joining, but we don’t notice them. They were always rare, but in the past, only people like that had the stamina to get over the barriers to entry and actually become the people who made zines or were willing to be visibly into fanfic in eras when that was seen as really weird. On top of that, there’s an element of me, us, judging the past by what’s left: only people with an intense and often single passion are visible because other people either drifted away or have seamlessly disappeared into some modern fandom. They don’t say they’re 80 or 60 or 40 instead of 20, so nobody knows.
In general, I’m a small fandoms and rare ships person. My brain will do its best to thwart me by liking whatever has no fic even in a big fic fandom... (Except BTS because there is literally fic for any combination of them, like even more than for the likes of MCU. Wow. Best fandom evar!) So I have an incentive to not get complacent and just stick with one fandom because I would very soon have no ability to be in fandom at all.
My appetite for Consuming All The Things has slowed way down, but it also goes in waves, and a lot of what I’m consuming is what I did back in 2000: journal articles and the limited range of English-language books on the history of m/m sex and romance in East Asia. It’s not so much that I have a million fandoms as that I’m watching a few shows as an expression of my interest in East Asian costume dramas and East Asian history generally.
I do like to sit with one thing and experience it deeply rather than moving on quickly, but the surface expression of this has changed depending on whether I’m more into writing fic or more into doing research or something else.
But yes, I do do a certain amount of trying to stay current, often as a part of research for fandom meta or to help other people know what’s going on. Having a sense of what’s big doesn’t automatically mean getting into all those things, but I think some fans who are older-in-fandom and/or older-in-years stop being open to even hearing what’s new. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll never know if you might have liked it.
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