Not really doing anything at work (whoops) so I thought I'd post an email I wrote to my professor after she asked me my opinions on the UNC Pit Breakup video.
After reading some of the articles (http://www.jeffpidgeon.com/labels/video.html)
and watching the video the whole way through, I think it's pretty
definite the "Pit Breakup" video was staged at least a little. I find
it very hard to believe that Burke could post a message on his Facebook
promoting a "bad public breakup" without Mindy Moorman knowing about
it. I think it's really interesting you brought up the word
"celebrity" to describe this situation. American youth right now have
grown up with "reality" television, a genre that ranges from glorified
game show to more traditional documentaries. As reality becomes more
fictionalized ("Laguna Beach") and fiction becomes reality (the
documentary aesthetics of "The Office," Borat, LonelyGirl15), I do
think we're headed toward some bizarre blurring of art and life where
every social situation is played out on at least a semi-public media
platform, open to commentary and interpretation like any work of art.
Everyone is going to be their own publicist, manager, stylist...like
media literacy, self promotion is going to be an essential tool in
succeeding socially, professionally, etc.
I posted a New York magazine article on the blog that talked about
the generation gap, and I think that's a very valid argument. The baby
boomers saw the power of television and organized marches, concerts,
and fashions that captured a television audience, and a similar
revolution is happening right now. I personally am bothered by all the
attention to the self - Myspace, Youtube, the iPod. For a technology
based all around networking, it seems like people need to justify their
own self worth before joining a larger community. Of course, these are
all American websites. I remember the NY Times had a good article
comparing Myspace to the Japanese social network site Mixi. I can't
find the link right now, but the basic point was that Mixi was much
more about a person's network rather than the person itself,
functioning as a reflection of Japanese culture. And remember the
Korean Youtube guitar player (
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8)? You can't even see his face, and I can't imagine an American teenager shying away from his or her 15 minutes of fame...
Anyway, sorry this is kind of disorganized. I personally find it
VERY hard to stay on one central topic when I'm discussing Internet
society, and I've noticed that issue in both our class and the
cyberspace class I took in Australia. Of course, I guess that's just a
reflection of the decentralized nature of the Web itself.
It's true, I can never stay on topic when talking about this stuff. I'm thinking for my honors thesis I'm going to have to turn in one big hyperlinked digital document. Can I make a wiki? Cool.
This weekend was....interesting. Every year after Mohua's birthday I get oodles of boy drama, and this year was no exception. I'm okay, but my stomach is killing me. Apparently Mercury is in retrograde?
I saw Of Montreal on Saturday, which would have been better except for the aforementioned stomachache. My mom just emailed me to tell me that my Ted Leo concert doco Dirty Old Town came in the mail. So in celebration of his imminent arrival in 33 days, you get a Youtube clip.
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