What happens when the YouTube game--comprised of uploads, comments, response videos, subscribers, shares, etc.--makes a turn for the worse?  This podcast traces the journey of a former YouTube personality who experienced an incredibly potent dose of cyberbullying.  Listen to find out how (and if) she survived the online hate game.

The YouTube Game

[Produced for Cynthia Haynes' RCID 8130 PhD course]

This song performs fragments from the philosophies of Martin Heidegger, Helene Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Kenneth Burke, Diane Davis, Luce Irigaray, and the Bible.  Parenthetical asides indicate these references.

Are You a Poet? (Heidegger)
Or a Hypnotizer? (The Medusa myth)
Who's lulled me to sleep
Made me feel I'm the wiser. (Logos)

Who are You? (Derrida: "What do I love when I love my God?")
An all-consuming flame? (Hebrews 12:29)
Who are You?
Please tell me who to blame.  (Burke's scapegoat)

Is this Your gravity
drawing me to the wide Open? ("What Are Poets For?")
Or secret promises (Derrida and Zusage)
Just waiting to be spoken? (Diane Davis)

Who are You?
The nameless Sage?  Or . . . (Irigaray: "Plato's Hystera")
Who are You?
A trace of the Savior? (Davis and Derrida)

Known and unknown:
justice and mercy.  (Micah 6:8)
Encompassed in love
or trapped in a binary?

We're trapped in a binary.
Let's break up the Binary.

A Trace

[Produced for RCID 8020]

This song is a love letter to Helene Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa," as well as the teachings of Victor Vitanza.

Lyrics:
Medusa, Medusa
Please turn me to stone.
No, don't let him hurt you
or make you feel alone.

Just laugh till your heart breaks.
Laugh till your eyes fade.
Laugh till the love gives more
much more than it takes.

Tell both of your sisters
to write of your name
not tales of the Gorgon (no)
that had to be slain.

Just laugh at the word games.
Laugh at the blank page.
Laugh even when they use
their dead sister's fame.

Come, King Logic, ready your sword.
Cut me to pieces to gather your reward.
I'm not afraid to lose my head.
Are you?

Medusa

Lyrics:

At night, she sings to me
the sweetest melody
that bids my body go
to find a place I know.

We walk through dreams
of things I've seen
over and over.

She lifts me high above the fray
and tells me I'm okay.

But when my body wakes
it thinks of my mistakes
and finds me all alone
with sins I must atone.

The child of night
stays up to fight
and grows older.

I hear those songs she sang to me
as distant melodies.

"Go back to sleep," I hear her say.
"Take mental stills of better days
before they fade away."

Remember.
Go back.

Shauna Chung

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