Last Tuesday I went to 3rd Ward for the Meme Factory event.  I’d love to see an auditorium full of librarians grit their teeth and sit through the Meme Factory presentation and its brutally pornographic, racist, twisted moments and struggle to understand the idea that the internet can be about *attention* and not *content*.  It is a huge leap for those of us who have long been in the business of providing information content, the kind of leap that makes you squirm in your seat, no doubt.  Because I’m incessantly making the case that public librarians ought to be leaders in public technology training and social media cultural training, I think its worth familiarizing oneself with the landscape (if you have the stomach for it).  Its sort of like familiarizing yourself with things like Pirate’s Bay.  Hopefully librarians don’t know about it because they love to steal, instead they are aware of it because it exists and like it or not it is a formative, driving force in the information world.  To not acknowledge it is like closing your eyes and believing that means other people can’t see you.  Most readers are probably familiar with lolcats, but does everyone know about advice dog, inspirational posters, gentlemen, or ytmnd?  I’m not going to link directly from the PLA Blog to image boards or any of the internet meme world.  Again, internet meme culture is all about exploiting *any* content that can channel mass attention so it immediately gets into material that would offend a LOT of people, myself included.

If we are going to make the case that there shouldn’t be filters on public library computers, doesn’t it seem like its our responsibility to be familiar with this stuff, even if we find it icky and uncomfortable?

Oh- btw- try to find me doing my best sturgeon face!