Isn’t that the motivation for much of what we call oversharing, online? Ours is the age of nanocelebrity: broadcasts created by us and, too often, for us and us alone. How many YouTube videos and blog posts and Flickr sets languish, their discussion threads registering a melancholy zero comments, their feature attractions playing to a spellbound audience of one? We’re all Norma Desmond, ready for our close-up. In the age of reality TV and Paris Hilton, American Idol and YouTube (which has the power, if your video goes viral, to turn you into a global celebrity, even if you’re just some guitar geek shredding Pachelbel’s Canon), we see fame as our Warholian birthright. In his book, Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction, Jake Halpern notes that 30% of American teenagers believe they’re destined to be famous. The middle-school students he surveyed seemed to see becoming famous as a goal unto itself, rather than a by-product of doing something that merited renown. Thus, we’re increasingly comfortable with the disappearance of privacy and the prying media eye, not only because it affords a few minutes of Warholian fame but because, like the characters in White Noise, we only feel that we truly exist when we see ourselves reflected in the media eye, because that’s where the real reality is, these days: on the other side of the screen. As ever, the visionary sci-fi novelist J.G. Ballard was prescient. In 1996, he said, “Nothing is real until you put it in the VCR.” Our blithe acceptance of the Death of Privacy makes Foucault’s portentous ruminations on life in surveillance culture seem like so much twitchy-eyed paranoia; in the age of YouTube and Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, we’ve learned to stop worrying and love the panopticon.
Interesting read VIA Riley Dog. And yes, blogging about it is funny I guess but I'd put forth that I use a blog in the classic sense. As in a a web log, such as it was based on a ships log back in the day. A log of one's travels and what one finds interesting. I blog so I can find things again so I can remind myself or read up on them again. It's what I like to find so I put it someplace where I can find it again. If someone stumbles along and finds this poor little site, so be it.