Two Lessons: An Inspection on the Culture of Fail on the Internet
December 8, 2008 by Jayvee Fernandez
Filed under Computers
The next few paragraphs is an attempt to shed some light on the apparent fascination on the culture of failure on the Internet.
Phail. Fail! FailBlog. PWNED. LOL. These are but some of the iterations of the concept of Failure, and by itself has become something celebrated over the Internet either as a cult following or a niche topic on its own. Why does the Internet revel failure? Why is it archived into blogs – and more importantly – why is there so much FAIL in today’s society?
Behind the fascination for failure is an engaging community. Take for instance FailBlog. I noticed that within a 10 second refresh of a page, comments jump from 50 reactions to 76 reactions. It varies per blog post, but the lesson is obvious: there really is an engaging community fascinated by the failure of others. And the quality of the comments aren’t limited to a simple “LOL that was funny!” but these were probably the wittiest one liners I’ve ever read in a humor blog.
So again, again, again .. what is it with us folks and failure?
Jason Calacanis talked about this in one episode of TWiT – this isn’t a direct quote but the essence was that the culture of failure has to be celebrated because it is only through failure that we see the fruits of innovation. This is why the Internet of America chronicles failure as an aggregation of events that we shouldn’t be too ashamed of. I guess the culture of failure brings home two points to learn from:
Everyone, and absolutely everyone is capable of failure
FailBlog updates itself several times a day. There is just so much material to be published, found all over the world. Failure unites us in two ways – the fact that all of us can screw up whether we’re a foreign dignitary falling off a chair during an interview or a guy knocking himself out during a log throw.
At the end of the day, we can laugh together at failure and move on
Have you ever tripped in public? Embarrassing isn’t it? The next time it happens, right after tripping, look up and smile then say “Bet you couldn’t do that!” It lightens the mood and makes people laugh. And sometimes this is all we need to move on. As Heath Ledger’s Joker said, Why so serious?
“I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much… because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.
I had thought — I had been told — that a ‘funny’ thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn’t. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery . . . and a sharing… against pain and sorrow and defeat.”
Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein