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WHAT IS ALTERTAINMENT?

Surprisingly with all the overuse of "alt" this and that in our culture, I don't think "altertainment" has ever been used much. So I'm going to see if I can put it to use. Let's start with a definition of entertainment:

ENTERTAINMENT

1. amusement or diversion provided especially by performers
2. something diverting or engaging: as (1): a public performance (2): a usually light comic or adventure novel.

This is a definition about one-way, mass culture -- what I (and a whole bunch of Gen X and Y'ers) grew up with.  The idea of "creation" was like religion, a proviince of a special priesthood.  And now everything's different because of the Internet and many, many IP-enabled applications; and all kinds of digital technologies; and cheap(er) manufacturing of just about everything and the worldwide swap of information over the intertubes.  What we used to only receive, most of us now engage with by not only receiving, but creating, critiquing, collaborating, collaging (I'm running out of "c" words here); well hopefully you get the idea.

For the last several years, I've been the proprietor of a site called ComixTalk (Comixpedia in its earliest days).  Webcomics drew me in not only for the fact that the wide open nature of putting comics on the web allowed for a whole bunch of new and inventive creators to get comics out to the world, but because it is so participatory.  And I think it was key that comics on the whole hasn't been successful enough in recent years to put huge walls between the creative end of the medium and the readership.  There's always been a strong tradition of do-it-yourself in comics and it's only gotten stronger as the web has further democratized the publication and readership of comics.

Especially this year, I've realized that all of this is a subject I want to write about without limiting myself to the confines of comics.  While I'm leaving room to figure out just what this new site will ultimately be about, for now I think this subject is best described as "participatory culture" which in my mind is simply the new world of altertainment we all increasingly live in.

- Xaviar Xerexes
September 2008

P.S. At various times in the past, altertainment.net has forwarded to ComixTalk -- try changing the URL to comixtalk.com/.... to get to ComixTalk content.

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