S1E9: Tell Me What You Remember (Defining Folklore)

May 8

Intro:
Welcome. You've got Digital Folklore.
[Sound of a mysterious voice swims into audibility]
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Easy does it. Easy does it. We're bringing you up now. He's going to be... Yep. Yep, there we go. Hello there. Don't panic. Don't try to move. It's going to be okay. Okay, stop squirming. You need to relax. Hello. You've been out for a while, but you're doing very well. Very well indeed.
Digby:
What?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
There we go.
Digby:
Where am I?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Don't worry about that quite yet. We've got some tests to run. Unfortunately for you, they require you to be awake and aware.
Digby:
Are you-
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Just a little bit of calibration so we can synchronize your-
Digby: (clearly agitated)
Why are there wires coming out of my head?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Hey. Hey. Slow down buddy. This isn't going to work if you're all riled up.
Digby:
Don't you buddy me. I just woke up strapped to a table with wires coming out of my head. Let me out of this place.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
You're going to have to trust me. You've been through a lot just now and one of the main things affected is your memory. Okay? Now I have a little series of test runs so that we can synchronize your neural activity and filter out some of the noise that is making you confused.
Digby:
The only noise confusing me right now is the bull hockey issuing from below your filthy mustache.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
My mustache is not filthy.
Digby:
I can smell it from here.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
And how do you know that's my mustache?
Digby:
You had a ham sandwich for lunch.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Lucky guess. You can't-
Digby:
Onions. Miracle Whip. Romaine lettuce with the middle bits cut out.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
You can't-
Digby:
Yellow store-brand mustard.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Okay, look-
Digby:
On rye.

[an uncomfortable silence/pause]
Dr. Sphynkyll:
I have tests to run, and the sooner you cooperate, the sooner you can get out of here. Okay?
Digby:
Now I'm hungry.
[Computer beeps… typing…]
Dr. Sphynkyll:

Now this isn't going to hurt per se, but it isn't exactly going to be comfortable. Lie back and talk me through what you experience when I do this.

[Mysterious transport swirling sound…]
Digby:
I'm sitting. I'm indoors, some kind of industrial apartment. It's big, but it's kind of difficult to tell exactly how big because there is just so much stuff in here. I'm sitting next to one of those big wooden spools, the ones that people think make a good rustic sheet kind of table. It's got microphones poking out of it on these duct tape-covered boom arms. I'm looking around a little bit more now. There's trash everywhere. I can't even make out the pattern on the carpet.
There's a huge tape machine kitty-cornered against the wall. It looks ancient. I think... Yeah, that's an Ampex 300-3, literally from the 1950s. I can see just kind of sitting on top of that tape deck, like a cheap Lenovo laptop and it looks like... Yeah, okay, the screen of the laptop is on and its running Minecraft. What a weird room.
Man. This place is trashed. Food wrappers, cardboard boxes, metal reels of tape, snipped off cable ends all over the floor. There are literal mountains of old electronics here, all busted open and disassembled for parts. The only thing here that looks organized is a bookshelf on the far wall, but it also looks like maybe it's never been touched. I think there are more rooms. I can see... The door, someone's opening the door. I've got to hide.
[Muffled talking slowly becomes more audible]
Perry Carpenter:
[inaudible 00:04:18] these kind of meetings like at a coffee shop or maybe go have lunch.
Mason Amadeus:
I like my home.
Perry Carpenter:
Maybe you could do a Zoom.
Mason Amadeus:
I feel comfortable here.
Perry Carpenter:
Google Meet.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't feel creative in those places and it's not the same over video call. It's just too much distraction.
Perry Carpenter:
And all these piles of junk? You get stuff constantly falling over. That's not distracting to you?
Mason Amadeus:
Not at all. It's kind of a reflection of what it's like inside my head…
[Perry and Mason’s conversation becomes muffled and inaudible again]
Digby:
They don't seem to have spotted me yet. I'm holding stock-still, pressed into a closet. Weirdly, it seems like the only place that isn't full of garbage. They're still blabbering away. I don't know exactly why I'm here, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm allowed to be here. I don't recognize these people. I'm watching them through a crack in the door now. They're moving into the middle of the room. They're headed towards that spool table.
[conversation back into focus]
Perry Carpenter:
... teachers and we want to be super clear that we're all also students here.
Mason Amadeus:
It's tricky because we're both doing so much offscreen learning too. And since it's all new information to us, I worry that we'll accidentally skip over something crucial or missed a mark.
Perry Carpenter:
One of our goals is to make sure that this study of folklore is super accessible. So I think the fact that we're not explicitly experts could be a net positive. And I feel like the crux of learning something new is these little aha moments that pop out here and there along the way. So as we're actively experiencing all these aha moments ourselves, we get to share those with the audience. We get to express those through the show and even if we miss the mark sometimes or end up covering the same topic from a few different angles, maybe those will be aha moments for somebody else who's listening.
Mason Amadeus:
I agree. That's a good point. I get caught up in wanting to do the best, most accurate presentation possible, and that's kind of hard when you're sharing your own journey of learning something new, on top of trying to make it immersive and fun and engaging. Plus, I feel a little bit like the more I learn about folklore, the more I realize how much I actually don't know about it. Which is true of anything, but I just don't usually make a podcast out of that process.
Perry Carpenter:
Here's where I am with it. I think we just have to try because we do have a ticking clock behind us right now. We said publicly that the first episode drops in January and that's coming up really fast.
Mason Amadeus:
It is coming up fast. I do have the episode one rough cut finished. I don't know, I just keep tinkering with it. And we have so much interview tape already. Something I just finished the other day. I cut up our interview with Jeana Jorgenson and I made some great clips that are direct definitions of some folklore concepts.
Perry Carpenter:
That interview was so good. She brought a lot to the discussion.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, and she's fantastic at explaining things. The clips are great. I just don't know exactly how to fit them into the episodes that we have planned.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay. What are we working with?
Mason Amadeus:
So the length varies quite a bit. I have the reel hooked up right now.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, why don't we just listen to those together and we can figure it out.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. So the first clip is just a really good take on defining what folklore is. It's just a little bit long. It's like five-ish minutes.
Perry Carpenter:
Maybe slim it down a bit.
Mason Amadeus:
I tried. I tried to cut out a lot, but literally every word in it is important and I don't think I can cut more out without losing context. I'll just roll it and see what you think.
Perry Carpenter:
Okay.

[Tape sound clicks on]
Dr. Jeana Jorgenson:
I really like the definition that my colleague Lynn McNeill gives a folklore in her book, Folklore Rules. Folklore is informally transmitted traditional culture, and we do have to break those parts down a little bit as well. So culture is everything that we have to know and learn and understand to thrive in a society and know its unspoken rules.
A couple of important facets of culture. Culture is transmitted rather than inherited. Nobody is born with culture. Nobody pops out of the womb knowing what's polite versus what's impolite. Culture is not in our genes. It is something we learn through human interaction from the moment we are brought into this world. Culture is also not universal. Culture is something, again, that is going to be really shaped by historical and geographical factors depending on where and when you are in the world. And culture is also maintained and enforced in different ways. At least in the modern West, We have a number of institutions that maintain culture. We have the government, we have education, we have medicine, we have the criminal justice system, all of these things that are responsible for enforcing norms and rules.
Now, in contrast to all of that, folklore is informal. Folklore is less institutional. If you decide to break the law for some reason, there might be severe consequences for that. If you tell a joke badly, there's maybe not severe consequences for that. I don't know. Maybe you just revealed that you're a bigot and that does have some consequences for you, but you're not going to land in jail for telling a joke the wrong way or messing up a proverb or whatever. So when we say that folklore is informally transmitted traditional culture, we're saying folklore is a very important part of culture, but it's not transmitted and maintained by institutions the same way that education is, the same way that medicine is, the same way that the law is.So folklore is informal. That's what that means.
We also mean that folklore is traditional, as in it is passed along intentionally rather than something that is completely new every single time. So tradition often has this connotation of being centuries old, or millennia old, and that is just not true. Traditions can be new, traditions can be emergent. But what traditions do have as some form of continuity or stability over time. You can point at dots on a line at different texts that we have collected and say, "That and that and that. Look at that. Those things are really similar. Those things are in the same type of thing. They're the same genre. Perhaps they're the same kind of urban legend or holiday custom," or whatever. So when we say that folklore is traditional, we really just mean it's been passed along for some period of time and we have documented that.
So my favorite definition, folklore is informally transmitted traditional culture. I also like a couple other definitions. Dan Benamoz says, "Artistic communication in small groups." So again, it's accessing that idea of groups of people who share something, share an identity, share values, share, again, some kind of linking factor. And the fact that it's artistic communication means it's marked off from other types of culture. It's marked off from other types of interaction. And we say instead, "Aha." when you say, "A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar," I am signaling with this linguistic framing, I'm not just going to tell you any old anecdote. This one is special. This one is a joke. This is going to be funny. Or if I say, "Once upon a time," again there's a marker or a formula that says, "We are shifting out of everyday conversation into something like magical, like a different realm."
One important note that I like to include along with these thoughts on what folklore is, is that none of these definitions include anything about truth value. The definition of folklore does not hinge on whether it's true or not. It hinges on how it's transmitted. The fact that it's more peer-to-peer than top-down forms of culture. There is community evaluation, but there's not straight-up gatekeeping, like Hollywood gatekeeps who can release movies and things of that nature.
So again, calling something folklore is more about how it is transmitted than what the content of it actually is. And so this is part of how we can link really disparate genres of folklore. What does it actually have in common when I say, "Quilting is a kind of folklore. Fairy tales are a kind of folklore. Folk medicine is a kind of folklore." These things look drastically different from one another. Quilting is a material thing that exists in the world that's made of fabric. Fairy tales are verbal artistry with lots of magic in them, and then so on. So even the genres of folklore, different examples of folklore might look very different than one another. What links them and what makes them all folklore is that they are transmitted in these informal ways and they are tapping into a tradition every time they are told.
[Sound of reel-to-reel stopping and spinning down]
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, that is extremely good. I see what you mean. It'd be hard to cut anything out there without losing something big.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
Perry Carpenter:
What are the other clips?
Mason Amadeus:
The second one is Jeana describing what folklore isn't.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, I remember that that was one of your questions, wasn't it?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I said something like, folklore is so much broader than I realized. So what's the delineation between any communication and folkloric communication. And I think what she said was really enlightening here.

[Mason presses play]
Dr. Jeana Jorgenson:
So I tend to use two criteria to determine if something is folklore, multiple existence and variation. So you need to document something existing in more than one time in place. And this goes back to tradition. Tradition is establishing continuity and stability of a thing existing. So if somebody tells me a really intriguing story, but that's the only version of it in existence, that's probably not folklore. Folklore needs to be transmitted within and by a folk group. So I need to see some kind of traditional existence, even if it's a very small group of people with this particular item of folklore. If it only exists in one place, ever told by one person, it may not be folklore. So it just failed the multiple existence test.
Variation is the other test. Tradition and variation are twin or pair concepts in folklore. So tradition is continuity and variation is novelty. And we see this because somebody could tell a joke and I could retell the same joke, and you'd be like, "Okay, that's recognizably the same joke." The priest and the rabbi walking into the bar, whatever, whatever. But I can mix up the words and still have the same meaning and hopefully still hit the punchline. So tradition and variation mean that you are conveying the same idea or the same traditional side of things, while variation gives you the freedom to put your own spin on it.
And we see this especially differentiating folklore from pop culture and the mass media because for the most part, once a movie has been filmed, it is the same text. It doesn't matter whether I see it in the movie theater or I watch it on Netflix or some other streaming service, I'm watching frame for frame, the same exact thing that everyone else is. Same thing with if you are publishing a newspaper article or a novel or something like that. No matter where you read it, read it on your Kindle, read it on a website, read it in print, you're probably reading the same word for word text, literally no matter which medium you're seeing it in. So those fail the variation test. So it is the same static text. There's no room to put your own spin on it. This has been mediated by gatekeepers rather than by the folk.
And of course, we do get interesting gray area case studies like fan fiction, which is where someone takes a pop culture text and says, "Well, I think so-and-so should have actually got together with this other character instead," and they write it or do whatever. That is more people putting their own variation on something that has been composed by someone else. So there are always going to be a couple of gray areas, I guess. Culture is inherently messy, and we like to have categories in academic studies, but it doesn't always pan out to the real world. But for the most part, if you are just new to the study of folklore, you're like, "Wow, is everything folklore?" The answer is probably no. Look for multiple existence and look for variation.

[Tape machine stops]
Mason Amadeus:
This clip really stuck in my brain, even though it's trying to define a negative. It really helped me.
Perry Carpenter:
Especially with a subject as expansive as this, it is helpful at the jump to have some clear guardrails. Something I'm noticing though is that we are talking about folklore in general. I know we talked to her specifically about digital folklore as well. Were you able to pull anything from that?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Actually, the next clip, second to last one, it's just a hair over two minutes. We asked her about how the internet has changed folklore, and she said this.

[Tape player starts]
Dr. Jeana Jorgenson:
I think the internet changed folklore in a handful of ways. It made communication more rapid and accessible for larger numbers of people than ever before in some ways. So it was a game changer. There are a number of small folk groups that existed prior to the internet that still exists, but we would have to find fellow science fiction fans and other little niche groups through newsletters and physically mailing out things to try to find your people and going to little conventions and gatherings and so on. So if you think about all of these niche hobby groups that do share folklore and are a folk group, suddenly you meet thousands of people worldwide and you can just all instantaneously be in touch with each other. So I would say one significant thing the internet has done is allowed folk groups to more rapidly reach each other and establish shared identity and values and create new shared folklore. So I guarantee you, for any niche hobby group or whatever, they've now got a Reddit page, they've got a Facebook page, they've got a whatever. They're sharing and making memes.
There are a number of folk groups that are inherently as well isolated, either because the groups themselves are very stigmatized, so people who are into more marginalized aspects of things such as LGBTQ identities, kink identities, non-monogamous identities and so on. It's easier to find each other using pseudonyms on the internet now, as well as people who are isolated for just more logistics reasons, like people who are disabled or perhaps immunocompromised. So the internet has been a major source of community and connection for a lot of these folk groups. So that's been pretty notable.
Technology adjacent to the internet as well has I think facilitated the creation of folklore. So could I draw a cat meme? I don't know. I could try. It wouldn't look too good. I'm not an artist, but I can use a click of something on a website. A few clicks later, and I've got a cat meme and it's been recaption the way I want it, or the Morpheus matrix meme or whatever. So in terms of making tools accessible to people, the fact that you can do voice recordings now, the fact that you can create a video using your phone rather than need to go out and buy a camcorder. So I think that there are a lot of ways in which the internet and its adjacent technologies have revolutionized the making and sharing of folklore and the connection of folk groups.

[Tape player stops]
Perry Carpenter:
Nice. That's excellent. I love the emphasis on folk groups and that the internet has enabled those to form more easily. I also think the mention of online tools and resources is super appropriate here.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, it's wicked cool. That bit was something that didn't really hit my brain until she said it, like how we have so many more ways not only to share and connect with each other, but also to create things more easily and quickly. I'm thinking of stuff like imgflip.com for making memes, or even Canva for graphic design, web apps like those that are really accessible without having a big learning curve, or even a lot of the free and open source software tools that are coming out, which actually, hold on a sec, I want to make a note.
Perry Carpenter:
Are you angling of doing a deep dive into the folklore concepts of open source coding?
Mason Amadeus:
Yes, that's exactly it. But I mean, probably not for season one, but I think it could be interesting.
Perry Carpenter:
We'd probably want to cover that in a way that doesn't require listeners to understand a similar language or C++ or Java or anything like that, but it could be fun. So think about that for season two.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, I'll tuck this in the back of my mind, maybe poke around for some ideas later. So we have just one more clip from the Jeana interview, at least out of all the stuff that I've cleaned up and cataloged. Honestly, the whole interview was really good. I think we should probably release it at some point in its entirety.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, I agree.
Mason Amadeus:
But one last clip. It's about two minutes long where Jeana talks about the value of studying folklore.
Perry Carpenter:
Cool.

[Mason presses play]
Dr. Jeana Jorgenson:
I would say there's a lot of value. I'd class it primarily at two levels to communicate to people. First is no matter what you enjoy in life, it is probably influenced by folklore on some level. If you are a foodie, well, what do you think people were doing before we could get mass market preserved foods and order foods? It was recipes in your family that were passed down folklorically. What did we do before refrigeration? It was preserving things, whether by canning or putting things in a cellar. That all came from folklore. That is traditionally passed along in formal modes of knowledge. So no matter what you enjoy, if you like Marvel movies, a lot of those stories connect to fairy tales, legends, and myths. So again, no matter what you like as a person, as a hobbyist, as someone who's into creative things, I guarantee you there's a connection to folklore somehow. So that would be my first bid for value.
My second bid for value is more scholarly in nature, and it's more about how humans interact with each other in the world. Perhaps you have a religion, maybe there's some family folklore that you have, maybe in your career there's a set of insider knowledge and jokes and things like that, that kind of folklore. So by looking at someone's multiple identities or folk groups, we can also start to see how people affiliate with one another and how we learn to communicate and share our value systems and things of that nature. So on a more serious note, folklore can not only be social glue in a positive, constructive way, but folklore can be the dark side of that as well.
Folklore is also found in stereotypes, in moral panics, in urban legends and conspiracy theories, in rumors, things of that nature that create barriers between self and other that delineate, we are the good protected class, those people are out to get us. So that's very much the dark side of folklore is that it can maintain and construct social identities in groups. It can also tear those down and create villains that then sometimes face real world consequences for being othered. So by studying folklore, we can tap into these processes, how they're happening, when and where, and maybe intervene.
[Tape player stops]
Perry Carpenter:
Such a great way to put that.
Mason Amadeus:
Agreed. It does encompass ideas from all of the other clips that I pulled, but I think it puts more weight on the fact that it's a field worth studying because of the real world impact on just about everything.
Perry Carpenter:
I also think that it's important as an idea to impart in our podcast as a whole.
Mason Amadeus:
No, definitely. Absolutely. The question just remains of where in the season do we put these?
Perry Carpenter:
Maybe we could do a folklore 101 episode at the very end of season one, or even two episodes, like nine and 10, covering various topics more directly like that, where we have that interview with Jeana. Maybe we can get somebody like Lynn McNeil to come talk to us and cover some of the basics of folklore, how that's evolved, and where digital folklore fits in, all that kind of stuff.
Mason Amadeus:
No, I think that's a good idea. We can just press forward and get some experience to….

[Mason’s voice strangely morphs into Dr. Sphynkyll’s voice]
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Both the season, but by tying together all of the things we learned along the way.
Perry Carpenter:
Exactly. Otherwise, we'll just sit and spin forever on this thing.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
I do have a habit of putting the cart before the horse and convincing myself I've invented the automobile.
Digby:
What? Okay, wait. No, no. Something's wrong.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
What?
Digby:
The younger dude, brown hair. All of a sudden he turned into you. [inaudible 00:23:55] a stinky mustache and everything.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
No, no, no, no, no.
Digby:
My hair guy didn't even seem to notice.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
No, that's bad. That's bad. I'm pulling you out
Dr. Sphynkyll:
You okay? We're going to-
[swirling vortex and mechanical sounds as Dr. Sphynkyll pulls Digby back]
Digby:
What was that?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
We're going to reset and try again.
Digby:
I feel like I don't know those people, but they seem weirdly familiar.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
I believe that was Perry and Mason. At least it should have been.
Digby:
Like that old TV show?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
No relation. But I bet they hear that a lot.
Digby:
Is that getting rebooted?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
No, I'm adjusting the parameters to-
Digby:
No, the show, Perry Mason. I'm pretty sure they just started releasing new episodes again.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Oh, no. I have no idea. I don't watch TV. Anyways, I think we are set for the next procedure. This time I shouldn't insert myself into your memories. I didn't realize it, but I was standing on one of the cables.
Digby:
Wait.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
They're very sensitive.
Digby:
One of the cables attached to my head?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Yes.
Digby:
Okay. If you're going to force me to go through this nonsense, I would appreciate it if you were at least just a little bit careful. Are these cables connected to my brain?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Yes, they are.
Digby:
Okay.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Directly, actually… Like plugged in. Plugged into… it. Well, hey, would you look at the time. We got to get moving. Try to stay as calm as you possibly can, okay?
Digby:
Stay calm? I don't even know what-
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Here we go.

[mechanical vortex sound as Digby gets drawn into another memory]

Dr. Sphynkyll:
You need to tell me what you see.
Digby:
[mumbling and mimicking Dr. Sphynkyll’s voice and phrases]
You need to tell me what you see…
Dr. Sphynkyll:
I'm serious. If you want to get out of there, you need to walk me through what you're experiencing.
Digby:
[still mimicking]
I'm serious. If you want to get out of there, you need to walk me through what you're experiencing.
…
Fine. Fine. I think I'm in the same places as before. I see the same disaster mess of a room, except I'm under a different table, a desk, and I'm holding two ends of a cable together. What? Oh, okay. I don't know how I know this, but Mason asked me to do this. I'm holding together the power cable for his computer. I had cut through it probably a few days before this moment.

This is weird. It's like little bits of context are flooding back now.

Mason said that he had an important Zoom call today with someone named GennaRose Nethercott. I’m pretty sure she works on that podcast, Lore. Ok, yeah… anyway… I'm back in that place carefully holding the bare ends of this live electrical wire together.

Hey, if I get hurt in this dream or whatever, do I get hurt in real life? Great. Thanks for being so helpful, doc. I can't exactly move. I can tell he is on the call right now. I think I'm just sort of stuck here. Ah, my nose itches!
[Mason’s voice fades into focus]
Mason Amadeus:
A thought that occurred to me, something that we get to do now because of the open nature of the majority of the internet is peek into other folk groups we don't necessarily belong to. Because, whereas with Oral Tradition, you would have your family folk group, your friends, whatever communities or hobbies or job or whatever you're around, and I feel like that's inherently different about the internet.
GennaRose Nethercott:
Yeah. And I mean, I think there's pros and cons to this, right? Where it's really exciting that for the first time, you're able to have really close-knit communities with their own language and tenets and belief systems that are not based on geographical location, so it allows for people to find their people. On the other hand, this is how QAnon happens, right?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
GennaRose Nethercott:
And I think that's the thing with folklore, in general, that is really worth discussing. It is often viewed, not just as antiquated, but as very quaint and cute. There's this cottage core energy to the way that people view folklore and that is sometimes true, but folklore is not a cutesy, innocuous thing. It is how you end up with incels, it is how you end up with QAnon, and it's always been that way. This isn't a new internet thing. Changelings are, one I referenced earlier, where the descriptions of changeling children in traditional stories, they almost exactly mirror descriptions of common birth defects and congenital disorders. For those unfamiliar, a changeling is, usually like a Scottish, Irish, English, Celtic folklore, it's when the ferries steal your baby and replace it with a fairy baby. Your baby's been taken off to fairy land and now you have this fairy baby in your house, which looks a lot like your baby, but you can tell it's not quite the same.
And so, it was this way for parents with a child with birth defect or a child who may be sickly in some way to say, "Oh, no, no, no, this isn't my baby. This is a fairy baby." So on the one hand, you have this way of, if a child is, maybe, passing away, for the parents to feel more peace with that, that their child is actually somewhere safe. But you also have this insidious other side of that where changeling stories always end with how to get rid of the changeling and get your own baby back, and that involves putting the change link in a fire or leaving the changeling at low tide and waiting for high tide to come in. And so, it's essentially a socially acceptable form of infanticide fueled by this story. There's a famous court case where a man convinced a whole town that his wife was a changeling and they killed her. And then in court, his argument was she was a changeling.
Mason Amadeus:
Really? I had not heard of that.
GennaRose Nethercott:
If you look at it on the surface, folklore, it is pretty and whimsical and that is its purpose. It's purpose is to take something that's too much to talk about without that whimsy and drape whimsy over it in a way to obscure it, both to allow people to address things, but also, sometimes, for harm.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. We're community creatures, and as you start to fall into this community and get to know these people, you feel an inherent desire to defend or take on some of the aspects of things and what they believe in, and particularly when there's stories that are pervasive and things like that, it really is an effective way to get into people's heads.
GennaRose Nethercott:
And it's like it feeds into itself. Which, I mean, that's one of the things about folklore and the folklore process that is so fascinating to me, is that it's almost alive on its own. It is this breathing thing that has a way of surviving and it feeds off our belief.
Mason Amadeus:
And there was, in Jeana Jorgensen's book, Folklore 101, I'm going to paraphrase this horribly. She said something along the lines of, folklore is a way to have a look into what is actually on people's minds and what they're keeping alive. And it's interesting how, currently, everything is such a conglomeration of older things and new things mashing up in this weird way.
GennaRose Nethercott:
This is the perfect segue to talk about this thing that I was really hoping we get to talk about. Have you guys ever heard of the Gutenberg Parenthesis?
Mason Amadeus:
No.
GennaRose Nethercott:
Oh my gosh. Strap in, you're going to love this. Okay, so there is a scholar named Thomas Pettitt, I think his name is pronounced, and I believe he coined this idea. I'm not... Oh no, Professor L.O Sauerberg of the University of Southern Denmark. That is who came up with this idea but it's being told by a number of people, I think Pettitt was one of them. But the concept of it is that before the invention of Gutenberg's printing press, oral communication was the predominant means of passing along information. So the folkloric process was the predominant means of communication. And what I mean by that is, with Oral Tradition, it is multi authored, not single authored, it is spoken, not written down, which means that it is transient, it's shifting, it is not static the way that literate culture is static, it is sort of transmitted from person to person to person and it shifts with each new transmission. That was the way most information and storytelling functioned before the printing press.
With the invention of the printing press, literate culture took over as being the predominant culture making, sort of, style, I guess. So suddenly, the predominant means of communication became static, written, single authored, and literate. Now that remained the case up until the internet. So, now that the internet is in full swing, suddenly we have gone back to a much more oral style of communication where we get our information from multiple authors, it's gotten to the people instead of to the elites that have this control and gate-keep of the information, it is constantly shifting, it is contributed to by many different people, many different sources. That's how something like Slenderman comes to be, is like you've got all these different contributors. And so, essentially, for the first time since before the invention of the printing press, the folkloric process has, once again, become the predominant means of communication.
However, the main difference between the original Oral Tradition and the internet version of that is, well, two things. One, it is incredibly expedited. So something that would've taken years to travel around the world, centuries even, now takes a matter of seconds. And two, there is kind of a paper trail. We can go back and find the very first Slenderman piece and find a single author who created it. So it's become this sort of hybridity between literate culture and oral culture with a bit of a lean toward the oral. So that is the Gutenberg Parenthesis.
Mason Amadeus:
So this is something that we've talked about a fair amount with different people that we've been interviewing, but I don't think it's ever quite been put in that context, and that is really a lot to chew on.
GennaRose Nethercott:
Sure. And I mean, I think it's sort of that same paradox that folklore collectors were grappling with in terms of collecting Oral Tradition, which is, as soon as you do collect those pieces and make them static, they are no longer in the form that made them folklore because you brought them into a literate form. I think that there is this movement to collect and preserve Oral Tradition, and I imagine that there will be a very similar movement to collect and preserve internet culture. And I know that at University of Indiana, Bloomington, for example, where they have one of the world's leading folklore graduate programs, a number of the students in that program are studying internet culture, so I think there's already movement to try and preserve these things. But I do also think that the very nature of a folkloric anything is that it's impossible to preserve all of it because there are infinite versions of every piece of information, and that's what makes it what it is.
Mason Amadeus:
I think it's an interesting byproduct of the hybridity of it, that it is both static and text-based and has a paper trail and also very changing that it's like that. And there is a lot of archiving effort. There's the big ones, like Know Your Meme and Internet Archive, but then there's also all sorts of... Whatever micro community you're in, you'll find people stashing away things on Google drives and passing around links to stuff that doesn't exist anymore.
GennaRose Nethercott:
And even so, it's still all digital, it's not actually a paper trail. If there's some sort of global catastrophe and just the internet doesn't exist anymore, that is lost.
Mason Amadeus:
The Gutenberg Parenthesis is something that's really interesting to me, that I've never thought of in that way, and I haven't ever heard of it, so I haven't had much time to chew on it, but the medium itself, and like you said, the hybridity between oral culture and static, printed literate culture, immediately my brain is spinning on parallels between disinformation and misinformation, botting and astroturfing, those kinds of things that happen to try and create what feels like a fake upswell of support for something. But I imagine that always happened.
GennaRose Nethercott:
Yeah. I mean, propaganda has always existed, in Oral Tradition and in literate. And I mean, the thing is, too, with the parenthesis, it's not like folklore went away during the era of the printing press and in the pre-internet post Gutenberg time, but I just find it a really interesting thing to think about, especially in terms of internet culture, like how it's shifting the predominant way that we communicate with each other and how, so often, folklore is viewed as this form that exists in antiquity when it really is very, very similar to this incredibly modern means of communication.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, that's something that we've...

[Mason’s voice fades out of focus as Digby can only think about the itch]
Digby:
Oh man, oh man, I swear to every god ever, I am going to lose my mind if this itch doesn't go away. Hey doc, can you hear me? Does your weird brain torture box have a setting to make my nose stop itching, or is that too much to ask? Okay, I can do this. Just turn my head slowly, focus on my hands, don't...
[Electric shock and vortex sound]
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Ooh, big oof. That is not ideal, huh?
Digby:
Did I just die?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Oh, no, no, no. I think you just scared yourself out of the memory,
Digby:
But I just got big shocked.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Oh yeah, you did. And you must have before.
Digby:
What?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Like IRL, whenever this happened in the past.
Digby:
Can you please just answer one question for me?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Yes.
Digby:
When you hit that switch...
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Ooh, sorry pal. That was your one question. You said, "Can you please just answer one question?"
Digby:
You are a child.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Hey, come on.
Digby:
You are a giant child with a bad mustache.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
I tried to make things light and fun around here. You don't have to be mean.
Digby:
When you hit that switch and I am suddenly transported somewhere else, what...
I am suddenly transported somewhere else. What is happening exactly?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Yes. Basically, we're redirecting your sensory input and connecting it directly to different subsections of your hippocampus. So basically, we're wiring up your consciousness to different memories and you're reliving them in as much detail as possible. I bet it feels really cool.
Digby:
It doesn't feel cool. What is the point of this? Why me?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
We have to calibrate your new implant. Otherwise, it won't be able to understand anything except the present moment. And that would be very confusing for you.
Digby:
My new implant?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
It'll all make sense. Don't worry. One more test.
[Vortex sound]
Digby:
Every time, it's like having your brain folded inside out. Hey, I'm somewhere different this time. It's dark and I can see some light peeking through up ahead. I think I'm inside a ceiling. It's extremely dusty. I'm making my way towards that light. Okay, nevermind. It's those two again. Yep, I'm definitely in a ceiling. The light was just a hole above the big tape machine. I can see them sitting at that ugly table. I think they're having a meeting.

[Mason and Perry’s conversation swims into focus]
Mason Amadeus:
... and doing a lot of networking and marketing. You've been doing most of the networking and marketing. I've kept my head down, buried in the writing and editing and sound design part.
Perry Carpenter:
But honestly, though, it's impressive what you've been able to pull off editing on physical tape.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, I've gotten pretty good with an Exacto knife.
Perry Carpenter:
Numbers wise, we're doing really well for a brand new show that doesn't have celebrity hosts or any of that. I'm really happy with the community on Discord. They're all welcoming and fun to talk to. Growing our Patreon, not a lot yet, but that's all right. We're only four episodes deep at this point. We've got a feed with Cautionary Tales coming up, one of our favorite shows. And this next episode, I was thinking about pivoting to a new idea.
Mason Amadeus:
Oh. Next episode, episode five, which is Deep Dive on Urban Legends, specifically. Right?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, but I had a thought.
Mason Amadeus:
What's the thought?
Perry Carpenter:
I actually just realized I don't want to tell you.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay.
Perry Carpenter:
I think it would be better as a surprise.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't. I'm already lagging behind on trimming down the backlog of interviews. I don't want a surprise.
Perry Carpenter:
It'll be fun.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay. So now, episode five is going to be a surprise, a surprise to me, me, the person who edits the show.
Perry Carpenter:
You'll like it. Plus, it's the halfway point of the season, so it's perfect time to shake things up a little bit, narratively.
Mason Amadeus:
Right. I'm well aware that there's absolutely nothing I can say that will persuade you otherwise. So, cool. I guess I'll just be along for the ride, but if we're going to talk about shaking things up a little bit, I wanted to talk about the format of the show.
Perry Carpenter:
The overall format of the show?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, because it's weird.
Perry Carpenter:
It is, but that's part of the fun of it, right?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, I agree. I like that it's weird. I think it's more interesting to be weird, but I feel like I'm, I don't know, I feel like I'm building invisible walls around how an episode could or should sound, which is something I feel like I always do when I work on projects, trying to make a system that the show operates inside of, but I was just stewing on the fact that episode one is so different from all of the other episodes so far.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, it's a totally different style. That's the first one that we put together. It was at the very, very early stages. And I remember it took a really long time, as well.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, it did, for sure, but I don't know, I wonder if we should experiment more with the way we present the show, not necessarily in a way that makes each episode take more time to produce, but just, I don't know, switch it up a little bit, see what people like.
Perry Carpenter:
What are you thinking?
Mason Amadeus:
Nothing specific, really, just the idea that we have an infinite playground. With the way that digital folklore is set up, I feel like we could try on a lot of different styles and ideas.
Perry Carpenter:
As in always keep the format changing and shifting? I would worry a little bit that the listeners might not know what to expect.
Mason Amadeus:
I guess I was thinking more we would experiment early on and just see what worked best, what people liked the most, and then stick with it. But actually, I like that idea, keeping it fluid all the time. I think that could be really fun, but also, it could be pretty easy for us to get lost in the weeds.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, no, it's important that we make sure that we're always delivering on the premise of the show.
Mason Amadeus:
100%, for sure.
Perry Carpenter:
People are coming for the information, but the framing and the style should be the hook. Actually, I think that the information that we're delivering should inform and dictate the style or the frame of the episode.
Mason Amadeus:
But also, it could be fun if it didn't and we just presented stuff in a different way. I've always wanted to make a film noir episode of a podcast, but what you said about people not knowing what to expect, I think that's something that's tricky because I know we've gotten some feedback that our format isn't everyone's cup of tea and the show, itself, is inherently hard to describe. I've actually started telling people that it's kind of like Scooby-Doo if Scooby-Doo was also a documentary.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, I've done similar. I've said that it's kind of like MythBusters, but if MythBusters were on the history channel.
Mason Amadeus:
I like that.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. It's all trying to find the right analogy so that people get what we're going for and the semi-cartoonish nature of it all.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, and it's just trying to make sure that people know what they're getting into. But also, I want to feel out what the audience likes in terms of presentation.
Perry Carpenter:
Part of the problem comes back to that it's really difficult to get feedback in podcasting. There are reviews on Apple Podcasts, but it's a big extra step for somebody to leave feedback there. And the feedback that they do leave has naturally motivated us. It's going to be the people that were motivated enough to do something and so it's all positive or it's all negative. There's no in between.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, we've had some mean reviews come in.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, we also had a lot of really nice ones, ones that we can hang onto and really know that we're doing the right thing and building the right kind of audience.
Mason Amadeus:
That's true. Maybe something we could do is encourage people to email us and let us know what they think or maybe we could do a survey or something at the end of each season. We could do it with the people in our Discord server or something like a Google form that we link to.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, or a Survey Monkey. I don't think that's a bad idea. We could ask questions like which episodes are people's favorites, what they think about the various formats, what topics are most interesting, stuff like that.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
Perry Carpenter:
Somewhat related, I've been kicking around the idea of doing a Q&A episode where we get folklore-related questions from our listeners and we reach out to some of the experts that we've met to get some answers.
Mason Amadeus:
People could email us or send in voice memos and then that'd be a cool way to get our community involved directly. I can try and set up a way to organize that on the back end and then we could tell people probably also at the end of the season, along with the survey.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, I think that makes sense. We could maybe do the Q&A episode between seasons. We'll have to figure out the timing and when we can get everything together, but I think it's something that the listeners would really enjoy.
Mason Amadeus:
I like that idea a lot.
Perry Carpenter:
Oh, and also, if we do that survey, we could ask listeners a really, really important question. On the scale of one to 10, what's their opinion of Digby?
Mason Amadeus:
Okay. Yep. No, I don't think that's necessary, Perry. Digby is the only thing people tweet about the show.
Perry Carpenter:
It's not the only thing.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't think we should take him for granted.
Perry Carpenter:
Where is he, anyway?
Mason Amadeus:
I don't know. He's around here somewhere, probably sleeping. He was up all night reorganizing the tape bin.
Perry Carpenter:
It's a miracle you guys get anything done.
Mason Amadeus:
I'm telling you, man. Digby's pretty smart. Anyways, it's only been a few months and we're doing really well.

[Super strange swirly vortex sound… ending with something like a microwave or an Easy Bake Oven timer going off]
Digby:
Hey, what was that? I felt that ding, like it was inside my ...
Dr. Sphynkyll:
You're done.
Digby:
Every time.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
You're all set.
Digby:
I swear, I will get a lawyer.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
We'll get you all disconnected and you'll be free to go.
Digby:
What? I can leave?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Yep. See, the little green bar is all filled up on the screen and then there's a little smiley face, like a little happy emoji.
Digby:
That's great.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
I can go make a call to arrange you to be picked up and then I'll pop back in here, get those plugs out, and you'll be on your way.
Digby:
Okay.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
You'll probably want to take it easy for the rest of the day. Drink a lot of water, and I mean a lot. And just take a nap. You should feel 100% in about three days.
Digby:
Right. Hey, Doc.
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Yes.
Digby:
When you call, can you do me a little favor?
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Sure thing. What's that?
Digby:
Tell Mason it's Digby with a Y.

[Theme music begins as Dr. Sphynkyll reads the end credits]
Dr. Sphynkyll:
Thank you for listening to Digital Folklore. I'm Dr. Sphynkyll. You should join the Digital Folklore Discord. There's a link in the show notes and the people there are great. If you love this podcast, consider supporting it on Patreon at patreon.com/digitalfolklore. Special thanks this episode to Jeana Jorgenson and GennaRose Nethercott for providing their insight and expertise. You'll definitely be hearing more from them soon and you can find links to their work in the show notes.
Thank you, as well, to our voice actors this episode. I mean myself, Dr. Sphynkyll, and played by Tucker Betez from PodCube, and Digby was played by Brooke Jennett from Thirteen. You can find more about all of us and the links to our other works in the show notes. Digital Folklore is a production of 8th Layer Media and distributed by Roan. You should join the Digital Folklore Discord. There's a motorcycle outside.
Click to download a fully formatted PDF version of this episode’s transcript.

Tell Me What You Remember (Defining Folklore)

We relive unseen events from earlier this season through the eyes of a mysterious patient and a rather insufferable doctor. It's a recap of what we've learned this season, without actually 're-capping' anything!

In this episode: