Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Article: The Unequivocal Connection Between Social Media and Myths, Fairy Tales, & Fantasy

 A succinct little article at Forbes explaining why and how, in the age of social media, fairy tales are necessary.
To know why we need Snow White or “Once Upon a Time,” we should quickly understand what social media does to us, explore what myths provide us, and what to do (next) about it.
The solution, according to Todd Wilms?

Fairy Tales Connects Us

I agree (and I finally understand why infographics are all the rage).

You can read the whole article - very quickly* - HERE.

The gorgeous fairy tale infographics on "The Good and Bad in Fairy Tales" (only available in Israeli as far as I can find) are by Jenny Lumelsky. You can see a couple more on her Behance page HERE. I would dearly love it if an English translation were available.

*So smart to write it this way. Even the I-only-have-5-minutes-thanks-to-my-social-media-wiring minded people he mentions will be able to get the gist. :)

5 comments:

  1. Fairy tales are object-oriented, swappable, scalable, meme-rich, hyper-textual, and have broad cross-platform compatibility.

    Socially speaking, they're good eating.

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  2. For anyone interested in a translation of the Hebrew:

    [The font on most of these are tiny and blurred and impossible to read. Is there any way to get a better quality version?]

    Down both the sides it says 'hayo haya pa'am' which means 'Once upon a time'. Next to that in parenthesis you have 'tov' [good] on the first one, and 'rah' [bad] on the second one.

    At the bottom, over the animals, it says 'ma'd gova' [height meter].

    The small red letters on the top say "Chosen qualities that identify the good/bad character in fairy tales".

    In the bottom corner next to the animal height meter it says: "Based on the tales of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson".

    After that, everything else is a bit harder to read.
    What I can make out is:
    -The arrow pointing to the hair in the 'good' picture says "hair color" [next to it are different colors and lines that mark how popular each is].
    -The arrow pointing to the eyes in the 'good' picture says "eye color" and once again there are colors and amounts.
    - The arrow pointing to the plants in the 'good' picture seems to say 'surroundings'

    You could probably guess the others by looking at the small pictures under the words.
    I assume that the same thing is written on the 'bad' picture's arrows, but it's harder to read that one.

    I hoped this helped!

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  3. Ok, I found a clearer image at http://jennylumelsky.com/filter/graphic/Fairy-tale-Infographics so here's the rest of the translation:

    Most things are the same on both pictures:

    The three rows of lines at the top say [in condescending order]: Strength, Bravery, and Energy.


    The three rectangles say 'height' and three circles say 'weight'.

    On the side under the big letters there is a key which explains that the tiny circles of color represent the color of each thing and the diamonds represent the material they are made out of [from top to bottom: plants, gold, silver, pottery, magic, glass, other], the measurements for the weight and the height in meters and kilograms, and a list of the images she created the infographics from.
    -The arrow pointing to the crown/hat says: Headwear.
    -The arrow pointing to the skirt in for 'bad' and the shoulder for 'good' says : Clothing.
    -The arrow pointing to the wings says: Wing Type.
    -The arrow pointing to 'good''s elbow says: What she collects.
    -The arrow pointing to the shoes says: Footwear.
    -The arrow pointing to 'bad''s broom says: Broomstick- speed meter.

    The creatures on the height meter are:
    [from shortest to tallest]
    -Fairy
    -Rabbit
    -Dwarf
    -Puss in Boots
    -Fawn
    -Child
    -Bear
    -Pegasus

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    Replies
    1. Oops, when I said pottery, it's really 'cloth'. Sorry!

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  4. @Josh - Nice summary! I agree with much of that.

    @Anonymous - you rock! Thank you. That makes things a lot clearer. Really appreciate the time and effort you took in the comments!

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