Ridolfo & DeVoss- 9.12

Recomposing

• Perhaps we can discuss in class more about what Ridolfo and DeVoss meant when they use telos “...a concern for telos”.

“Composing for recomposing”

This phrase made me imagine that all the initial writers of any one thing- or any producer of a medium such as videos on the internet- now have to consider far more than what they used to in order to make their message heard in the world or have a purpose in the world.

This article made me wonder if we now, as writers, have to take extra care during the writing process of making a webtext because recomposing a writer’s work is so easily done in today’s world because of the internet.

• Do Ridolfo and DeVoss suggest that writers and other creators need to do more work before publishing their text or videos in order to decrease the chances of having their messages either diluted or taken out of context in a way that would escalate a situation? If so, then this sounds like it might take time and thought away from the creator’s original intentions because then they are held back by having to think of all the ways someone could change their story with a copy and paste here, but a deleted sentence there. Or to save a Shared video but cut out 30 seconds of something in the middle….
• Or are Ridolfo and DeVoss  simply asking that there be a “branch” in rhetoric that is dedicated to studying this phenomena, thinking about it theoretically, and teaching others’ of ways that they could strategically compose their work for the potential (and inevitable) changes that third-parties will make on their work?
• If these writers suggest that there be application, does this mean writers would need to “over pack” their work with information to prevent their work from being whittled away at so quickly and to such a degree that their information is almost non-existant?

Either way, their article made me think of all the times I have seen an article- whether it was news or ‘fun, wacky’ stuff that are more than likely untrue, but are just a really entertaining read- or a video and sorta ask myself “Is that all there is to it?” or I have to remind myself that only “supposedly such and such happened”, or “apparently when you do […..] [this] happens in your body”. I have to constantly remind myself that things aren’t what they are at first read or view because so much of that read or this video could have been snipped, fudged, chopped…..etc. Plus I don’t want to look like a person that believes everything she reads or sees on the internet…..

Additionally I have the sense that recomposing a creator’s work is like putting more responsibility on them after his/her work has started to circulate. For example: a writer posts his article someplace and person A reads it and shares the article (without making changes to his/her status about this article), then person B sees A’s post, reads it, disagrees with it and so, in their status on their Social Media account, they begin to rant and skip out on sharing with their friends or followers all the issues that the article addressed and instead blindly yells out on their account about how “‘stupid’ this thing was”. As more and more people read only half of the person’s post and then only a quarter of the writer’s article, the writer’s words/message is going to start shrinking. Then the real fun begins/keeps going: people are Commenting now on these Shared posts, saying hateful things and sometimes these hateful things are directed at the writer or for whichever company the writer represents and they are the ones who get blamed. Not persons A or B or ……..The writer is…. Doesn’t this train of thought kinda pile all the responsibility to the writer? (Not that the writer will or should take on that responsibility.)

With this in mind, some of the examples that I can think of are mostly politics and the video/”reports” of police officers’ bad behavior. There are countless videos circulating the internet about an officer’s wrongdoings to a man/woman that he/she is trying to talk to or arrest. And then the video is swept away and carried all over. And then people are given the opportunity to take out chunks of a video to best suit them (the person sharing the video) at whichever point of this work’s ‘journey across the internet’. Out of curiousity, I start reading the Comments section. I read a lot of hateful things being directed at both the officer and the person that is supposed to be getting arrested, and there are just so  many awful things that I just can’t read anymore. But I wonder then, do these people ever stop to think (before they gloss their fingers across a phone screen or keyboard) that this might not be the whole story? That there could have been 30 seconds chopped from here or there? There are a lot of variables that should be considered but does this mean that the original producer, the writer or the person who first posted the video ‘un-cut’ (if that actually happened), should be the ones who have to pre-plan for people to do that?

On a slightly lesser note, this concept also reminds me on the videos I have seen of small dogs with the ability to walk on their back 2 legs. It’s cute and cool and you get to see some with purses, pink glasses and sometimes flowery hats surrounding a dog that walks on two legs! I’ve seen a compilation of dogs that can do that. And then I saw another video much, much later of the process behind getting dogs to walk on their back legs: the dogs are sometimes smacked in the face with flip flops if they fail to walk on just their back legs.They are pulled up to a vertical position of standing and if they fall down to 4 legs, they are smacked in the face. Some of the footage was from the video clip on the former mentioned video but then again…..you never really know anymore.

As I wrote the rough draft of m y response, the final thought that came to me was: this recomposing of composed webtext (and other stuff) is like people showing one idea/story when there are in fact 2, or 3 or 4 or…..I get that this doesn’t sound like a flashy realization (because it’s fairly obvious that there is always more than 1 side) but with the concepts of recomposing, digital space, and the recomposing in the digital space, the consequences of that felt greater to me.   

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