Claus.com is a children’s site that focuses on Christmas and Christmas activities.
Over time, Christmas is becoming more and more commercialized. The internet, through websites like claus.com, is furthering this in such a way that we have less and less control over it.
Through this commercialization, the fundamental values behind a holiday like Christmas are being lost. These fundamentals are things such as loving your fellow man, giving and sharing, helping those less fortunate, showing loved ones you care, etc.
Claus.com has a section of the site that is a top 10 list of ways to make the nice list. Most of the things listed on it support the fundamentals of Christmas that I listed above. The rest of the site, however, seems to appeal to the more selfish side of Christmas that has been growing from the commercialization of the holiday.
The activities on the site seem to encourage the gift aspect of Christmas. While I understand that any child finds that part to be one of the most important parts of Christmas, I think you could make a website that focuses more on the fundamentals of Christmas while still being a fun visit for children.
The website also has ways of advertising that are strictly targeted at the children in hopes that the child will ask their parent to look into and/or buy the product advertised. The company who runs the website, from what I can gather online, is a plastic/electronic type manufacturing company (who I’m sure makes a lot of money at Christmas when toys and whatnot are selling well). One of their main supporters on the website who gets to advertise there too is actually a company that looks like it is on the same street as the site’s main company and probably gets parts for their product from the main company.
I think that selfishness carries on into their future. It doesn’t stop just at Christmas. If someone can’t love and share with and be kind to others on one day out of the year, how can we expect them to love and share and be kind year-round?
Claus.com is available on the Internet year-round. Some sections of the site are disabled such as email Santa or the Santa spotter, but most everything else is only a click away. If the site were to uphold the true values of Christmas, it could even encourage the values year-round in this sense.
With the site being available online, it makes it even more difficult for parents to keep their children on or off the site. Parents would have to watch over their child’s shoulder constantly. Also, because of the way the website is designed, a parent would have to pour through pages of games and information to realize the site is so focused on the more selfish aspects of Christmas. I didn’t even myself realize this until I started looking at the site again as a 20 year-old.
This is all well and good, but i think your project will work better if you focus on a clearer stake.
It seems that you’ve got two directions and you’re trying to stretch out towards both of them at once. One direction is the moral/ethical dilemma of how it is we think about or relate to the Christmas holiday. It’s an interesting way to go, though it is a little fraught: you refer to the “fundamental” values of the holiday without regard for the possibility that others may think of the season differently.
The other direction is more concerned with how it possibly restructures the “agents” using it: hence, your concerns over unsupervised or easily led children. The perils here are related to the ethical concerns above, but to try to discuss both at once is too much of a stretch: the project would stop being about the analysis and start being about the link (which is tenuous at best) between the ethics of the holiday season and the behavior of the younger generation.
Finally, take note of your next to last paragraph: don’t indulge in “what ifs.” Deal with the site as it is, not as what it could be.
I feel like you just stepped on my favorite Easter egg.
However, that also means that your project carries weight and impacts others to create such a visceral response. I love that you are revisiting a Web site from childhood and looking at it in a new, realistic way that says, “this is how it really is” compared to “this is how children view it.” The very idea of creating Web sites and blogs is to put ourselves out there with these starting points and see who we can connect with. But looking at the very root of the situation and recognizing it as “selfish” is a great way to look at new media from a different angle.
For sources, you might want to consult some of the articles we have previously read.
Rutherford’s “Thoughts on Facebook and Identity” directly relates to your rhetoric on the selfish nature of a Web site aimed at being “the merriest place on cyberspace.” You can explore how people use the Internet as a place for self-promotion, placing egoism over altruism. This is a big part of your argument.
Concerning how the design is aimed at children, looking at Kress’s “Reading Images” has a strong link to your project. Especially look at the sections where he focuses on how children interpret images, text and the relationship between the two.
You may also want to look at Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” article because it directly explores how the medium influences the message. Does the fact that this site is aimed at children but wants to reach their parents bank accounts have a large impact on the structure of the interactive Web site? Is it structured so children find things that they want with every mouse click? Just some thoughts on what you might want to look at.
Job well done and I look forward to your final project!
After reading over your paper, I have a few suggestions regarding your argument.
You make a lot of great, linking points about the layout and the website and how, according to Ulmer, it allows for rhizomatic affordances (especially concerning children). I would like to see a stronger connection between how the layout is constructed by Claus.com out of selfish reasons. Rather than a childrens winter wonderland on cyberspace, Claus.com is really more about turning a profit. You mention this elsewhere, but I think it should be explored further in discussion with layout.
Is your main focus the selfish nature of the website in relation to children, good old commercialism, or both? I think you can work with both by giving each equal attention, so make sure you link your arguments and provide strong paragraph transitions.
While you work with Englebart’s discourse on organization, you also briefly mention his discussion of how we are actively increasing through new media. A great connection to make would be Carr’s information sickness idea: are we too old in the world of new media to fall for Claus.com, still?