journal 2

The two real world examples I have to blend Bitzer and Edbauer's theories both have to do with Kanye West. One form on the internet, and one form in concert. Edbauer talked about the idea of place when it comes to the rhetorical situation and how situs of "situation" means "closely tied to the originary position of objects." We all know that rhetoric involves an audience and a person(s) addressing that same audience. There are two versions of Kanye West that exist here. There's the internet Kanye using Twitter to interact with fans, and there's the concert Kanye that people pay money to see live. We'll start with concert Kanye.

Concert Kanye is well known for being a great performer with an infamous style. Kanye refused to hold press conferences regarding essentially update involved in his life. Instead, he would devote about 30 minutes of each of his live shows to give what he calls a "visionary stream of consciousness." Most people liked this because it was like sitting in a room receiving the first wave of news. Kanye announced shoe deals. Kanye started beef with other rappers. Kanye told everyone he loved them. Kanye used this platform to address essentially anything that was on his mind at that exact moment. He infamously performed 4 hours late at Bonnaroo 2008 due to unfit production demands and encores from other artists at the festival. At Bonnaroo 2014, he addressed that incident even after all of the custom signs and t-shirts people made stating "FUCK KANYE."

People reported that Kanye had an awful performance the second time around. Stated that the crowd was booing him and people were leaving as soon as he started talking because the fans wanted to hear the hits, not his speech. The strange thing is, everybody in the closer half of the crowd enjoyed it and had no complaints or heckles to give. The audience and situation had different proximities that shared different opinions based on their actual positions. People wanted Kanye to speak. Other people wanted him to shut the fuck up and just play "Gold Digger" already (he didn't). People hated Kanye, but people also loved Kanye.

Twitter Kanye is the same exact thing, but ON THE INTERNET! Fans will follow Kanye and even go as far as get his tweets sent directly to their mobile devices (guilty). The people who hate Kanye will see his tweets get retweeted and posted on different social networks. They will hate it because they don't like Kanye. They aren't choosing for Kanye to be in their faces, so it makes them upset. If somebody wants Kanye in their lives, they'll follow him. Once again, it's the situation of the audience.

Audience is audience.