The Volgbrothers really stand as a testament to everything this chapter spoke about, so i will essentially use them as a case study for the purposes of relating this response to the readings. When discussing convergence culture in general you have two brothers who communicate solely through video blogs while allowing thousands of people in on their conversations. This eliminated the conventional phone call. John green (one half of the VB) is an award winning author, and often uses YouTube as a venue to discuss literature, authorship, and the characters in his books. This one channel has capitalized on how they use their new media to merge and find new avenues for technologies that have been in existence for hundreds of years.
Chapter one of convergence culture greatly interested me when discussing online communities and their requirements for acceptance into their communities. There are countless examples of this on YouTube with channels that have developed a strong subscriber base based on the fact their communities have guidelines and restrictions and slash or like minded followers that assume a group persona slash identity.
When speaking to the collective identity and knowledge, the VB's have developed a mass following of "nerdfighters" that can accomplish globally just about anything. Once a year their channel "highjacks" Youtube by having the project for awesome in where a vast majority of subscribers all create videos about their favorite charities and then (as directed by one of the two brothers) rush to each video and comment, rate, and subscribe, until that video appears on the top list of all the charts on youtube. They ensure that every video has the same thumbnail, thus taking over the first couple pages of ever category on YouTube.
They also pose questions to the nerdfighters on how to reduce "world suck," and globally this committee sniffs out ways to take on a certain problem in the world whether that be world hunger, malaria, or education. This collective whole has this scouring power that when directed for good has produced some amazing results. This provides an answer to Granger's question of online activism that excludes politics as well.
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