The Internet Is Real Life

We often speak of a divide between online and offline cultures, despite growing recognition that the two are intertwined. Here, folklorist Anthony Bak Buccitelli challenges the idea of any divide at all in contemporary American culture. He argues that digital communications and behaviors are already deeply embedded in everyday expressive life and therefore are also already implicated in a variety of ways in the embodied performance and transmission of folklore. In other words, in contemporary American society, folklore seamlessly integrates online and offline.

By treating the digital interface as a site at which embodied performance can take shape rather than just a point of contact with the online, Buccitelli argues for a critical renewal of core folkloristic concepts to meet the challenges of understanding modern networked life.