I have noticed a trend which seems to me to have begun mostly in the last year, although it may have roots earlier than that which I didn't notice at the time. The trend consists of cartoons which are made to argue specific political issues, and are typically calls to activism of some kind.
I'm not talking about serial web comics, which of course occasionally make political points; I'm referring to a separate phenomenon. These are one-offs, with often childish art, with bright primary colors and whimsical in design, striving for a particular kind of amateur hand-drawn look; and above all else, incredibly long - much, much vertical scrolling required to read the whole thing because the text content is delivered in bite-sized quips or chunks, separated widely by visual errata.
They often contain factual errors (occasionally glaring ones), the odd logical fallacy, and rarely any kind of attribution for the specific facts they give. The language is casual adult in content, although everything else about these comics seems to indicate they were designed to appeal to young children (or adults who the creator seems to believe think like children). They also occasionally contain caricatures of opposition opinion-holders, whom of course can be made to say whatever silliness the creator wants them to say.
Such problems aren't special to this format of argument, of course; however, I have to say that I've lately found this particular format of argument-making to be rather...annoying. It's difficult to explain precisely why. Even the ones that support ideas I believe in leave a bad taste in my mouth; the general look of the whole tends to feel a bit patronizing. It's an unappealing style of argument-making to me; but more and more often I'm encountering links to them, and I have a habit of disappointing the link-givers because after I'm finished reading one, all I can find myself interested in doing is pointing out the glaring errors, which the link-giver in turn finds to be an annoying distraction from the point they were trying to make.
There is a similar type of argument that has a like effect on me - a video analogue to the above in some ways. It is, by all rights, merely an audio file of a person giving a short (or long) lecture - this is most typically on some kind of sociological issue, rather than a political one like the above comics. The audio file is played over no supportive imagery, but rather some animation consisting solely of the words being spoken by the speaker appearing on the screen, as they're being spoken. Much of the time they appear animated as if being written in real time, occasionally accompanied by an animated writing "hand", and the odd mostly-irrelevant basic doodle; other times they will appear in printed fonts, with the occasional font change or certain words or blocks of text swinging or turning about this way or that, or arranged oddly to break up the sheer visual monotony; aside from this sole feature of a kind of stylistic closed captioning, the video offers quite literally nothing of visual import or interest relative to the content of the lecture itself.
As I said before, I'm not sure exactly why these sorts of videos (and cartoons) irk me - I can't point to any specific element and say "this is the thing I don't like"; they just do. They annoy me enough that even when I'm linked to one whose argument I could probably get behind, I can't bring myself to pass them on or link them to friends as examples or primers, which is of course what their function is intended to be.
How do others feel about these new constructs? Do you find them effective? Do you find them annoying? Are there better or worse examples of the respective techniques?
I'm not talking about serial web comics, which of course occasionally make political points; I'm referring to a separate phenomenon. These are one-offs, with often childish art, with bright primary colors and whimsical in design, striving for a particular kind of amateur hand-drawn look; and above all else, incredibly long - much, much vertical scrolling required to read the whole thing because the text content is delivered in bite-sized quips or chunks, separated widely by visual errata.
They often contain factual errors (occasionally glaring ones), the odd logical fallacy, and rarely any kind of attribution for the specific facts they give. The language is casual adult in content, although everything else about these comics seems to indicate they were designed to appeal to young children (or adults who the creator seems to believe think like children). They also occasionally contain caricatures of opposition opinion-holders, whom of course can be made to say whatever silliness the creator wants them to say.
Such problems aren't special to this format of argument, of course; however, I have to say that I've lately found this particular format of argument-making to be rather...annoying. It's difficult to explain precisely why. Even the ones that support ideas I believe in leave a bad taste in my mouth; the general look of the whole tends to feel a bit patronizing. It's an unappealing style of argument-making to me; but more and more often I'm encountering links to them, and I have a habit of disappointing the link-givers because after I'm finished reading one, all I can find myself interested in doing is pointing out the glaring errors, which the link-giver in turn finds to be an annoying distraction from the point they were trying to make.
There is a similar type of argument that has a like effect on me - a video analogue to the above in some ways. It is, by all rights, merely an audio file of a person giving a short (or long) lecture - this is most typically on some kind of sociological issue, rather than a political one like the above comics. The audio file is played over no supportive imagery, but rather some animation consisting solely of the words being spoken by the speaker appearing on the screen, as they're being spoken. Much of the time they appear animated as if being written in real time, occasionally accompanied by an animated writing "hand", and the odd mostly-irrelevant basic doodle; other times they will appear in printed fonts, with the occasional font change or certain words or blocks of text swinging or turning about this way or that, or arranged oddly to break up the sheer visual monotony; aside from this sole feature of a kind of stylistic closed captioning, the video offers quite literally nothing of visual import or interest relative to the content of the lecture itself.
As I said before, I'm not sure exactly why these sorts of videos (and cartoons) irk me - I can't point to any specific element and say "this is the thing I don't like"; they just do. They annoy me enough that even when I'm linked to one whose argument I could probably get behind, I can't bring myself to pass them on or link them to friends as examples or primers, which is of course what their function is intended to be.
How do others feel about these new constructs? Do you find them effective? Do you find them annoying? Are there better or worse examples of the respective techniques?
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=269035&goto=newpost
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