Fame’s to Blame

In one of my earlier posts I talked about how the majority of young people want to be famous more than anything, and attributed this trend to broken homes and neglect. This obviously isn’t the only reason that someone would want to be famous. Today’s celebrities are professional athletes, actors, and musicians. These people command armies of fans as well as incredibly large bank accounts. Money and power are always desirable assets in a capitalist society.

Part of the reason that kids want to be famous now is the unprecedented ability to do so. People like Tay Zonday have acheive world-wide recognition and financial success over the course of a few weeks thanks to websites like Youtube and 4chan. If he can acheive success by posting a video and becoming famous, why shouldn’t everybody?

Elise, an American college student, now knows how it feels to be famous. Unfortunately, she was not able to get any of the perks related to celebrity status. People like Tom Green can embarass themselves and become wealthy if they know how to market themselves, but when a friend catches you at your worst and decides to share it with the world, the result is your own personal hell.

The internet is a great method to gain fame, but nobody wants to be known as the Dog Shit Girl.

Zombies Make Everything Better

Umberto Eco probably wasn’t talking about fake movie trailers when he spoke out to the masses, telling them to ‘control the message and its multiple possibilities of interpretation,’ the the fact remains that these often humorous parodies are subverting corporate content and attaching their own messages to it.

In this mashup, Clates does a superb editing job in combining footage from the Beatle’s a Hard Days night and Zac Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead. These movies were made decades apart, and yet they are merged flawlessly into a single picture that I imagine would be one of my favorites, if it existed.

This is a very lighthearted example, but the same editing magic is used to create startling messages in more serious films, or even to make fake political ads. This is just one of the many ways in which new media can be used to shift the balance of power in the world.

Sadistic Tendencies Rule!

Admit it, you enjoy watching people suffer.

I don’t mean Guantanimo Bay suffering, I mean watching someone walk into a window too clean to see, or idiots hurting themselves on the latest episode of Jackass. It is nothing to be ashamed of, we all enjoy watching someone else’s misery simply because it isn’t happening to us.

This is what makes this video so enjoyable.

This camwhore is faced with very unfortunate circumstances, but we can all laugh at her to a certain extent because she should know better than to strip in front of a camera while her parents are in the house. There is little more satisfying than seeing someone get what they deserve, which is why the villain is almost always foiled in some ironic way at the movies.

This is not a new revalation at all, philosophers have been explaining sadistic tendencies for centuries. The most famous sadist of all is the man who gave it a name: Marquis de Sade. According to his philosophy, we all enjoy observing the suffering of others, whether we know it or not. Many people feel conflicted about sadistic tendencies, but this is only part of the rush.

So go ahead, laugh, a dead guy said it was ok.

Metal Meme Mayhem

One of the most interesting phenomena to have been aided by the world wide web is the incredible growth in the transmition of ‘memes.’ A meme is a cultural idea or element transmitted from person to person through gestures, speech, or images. Memes are by no means a new idea, it is a concept created by the ancient greeks, and perhaps perfected by your grandfather doing his best Jackie Gleason impression.

But thanks to the massive connective abilities of Internet 2.0, memes can be shared and mimicked almost simultaneously by millions of fans.

Jim Gillette (of Nitro fame) is a hair metal god who created educational videos in vocal performance. A short clip of his outrageous four octave scream was released on Youtube, and has inspired a seemingly endless chain of fans creating videos immitating (often to hilarious outcomes) the amazing scream.

Ascribing to these memes is often seen as an attempt to latch on to the temporary fame being offered, but when people are making obviously futile attempts at recreating such a vocal feat, it seems more like good natured fun.

Youtube One-ups TV?!

Ever since the silicon valley bubble burst in the late 90s, most television broadcasters or advertisers don’t think that the internet is a viable form of competition. The online business models are (with a few major exceptions) not able to match the revenue of Tv networks, but even if this were to change, Big TV maintains that their higher quality programming will be their ace in the hole.

Well Youtube may have just played a straight-flush.

With today’s relatively inexpensive high-definition cam-corders and editing software, it is possible for just about anyone to create a professional quality video file. All that remains is a little creativity with sets and costumes, as well as a strong writer, and you have content that can rival most hit tv shows.

Here we see the Time Machine my Chad Matt and Rob. These guys have managed to put together an incredibly high quality video that actually goes beyond the boundaries of TV by creating a choose your own adventure story. I know I’ve used Larry Lessig’s speeches before, but this once again brings up the infamous competition between ASCAP and BMI recording companies.

The Time Machine won’t shut down NBC or Fox, but maybe it’s the first step in a trend that could create a new balance in conent creation and distribution.

Shorter Attention Sp… Whatever

Psychologists Lissman and  Boehnlein have attributed Internet use to shorter attention spans… I think. I couldn’t get through the whole article, it was pretty humdrum. Anyways, people’s attention spans may be getting shorter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be entertained!

Today I watched 20 movies in just over a minute today. Thanks to the geniuses at 5secondfilms.com, a new trend has arisen in which people are creating entire movies (sometimes with a beginning, middle, AND end) that last for around 5 seconds. Most of them use word play or shock value in order to induce laughter in such a short amount of time.

Here’s a collection of some 5secondfilms. If you can’t find the humor, then just think about their motto, “wasting your time, but not very much.”

Misery Loves Company… and Mages

The most common negative stereotype surrounding the computer gamer is a lonely, heavy, acne-ridden boy who needs to use the internet to find friends. While 99% of internet connected people do not fall into this category, there are people who find companionship online. One of the most tightly knit and frighteningly complex online communities belongs to the World of Warcraft.

Friends that play together stay together.

WoW has almost 12 million monthly subscribers, and claims the vast majority of massive multiplayer online role-playing games. Most of these players belong to dedicated guilds that play simultaneously in order to achieve mutual goals and ensure security through numbers.

If the above description sounded familiar, it it likely because the same description could be applied to families in the real world.

Business and communications researcher Anil Ananthaswamy says that these online communities are more than simple escapism, they are a mutually constructed reality which can be more liberating and satisfying than the real thing.

It’s Not Cool to be Cool

There is nothing less cool than someone who says that they are cool. Popular, but not quite mainstream, underground cultures are one of the few things which can be consistently called ‘cool.’  People desire to be a part of these cool cultures, and so they are commercialized and become mainstream — the opposite of cool.

As the PBS documentary, Frontline: the Merchants of Cool, teaches us, “Cool is by nature self destructive. A trend is started, too many people join, and the original trendsetters move on to the next big thing.” Nothing showcases this transition better than the hottest new social networking site.

Trying too hard.

Twitter allows for new levels of transparency. As Prof Luppicini of the University of Ottawa puts it, “now I can go online and see what Ben Mulroney had for lunch, it’s a beautiful [sarcastic tone] thing.” While this is a very interesting and novel concept, and it was fun to follow President Obama’s campaign step by step over the internet.

However, it seems that Twitter’s popularity grew far too quickly. While comedian’s such as Raine Wilson keep their own Twitter profiles up to date and entertain fans, many celebrities hire PR people to seem tech savvy.

Point: Martha Stewart has a Twitter. Not Cool.

Face to Face, No Matter the Place

The next best thing, except better.

Early chatrooms were very lowtech and offered little to nothing in the way of expression beyond the text itself. ‘Netiquette ‘ introduced new slang and emoticons in order become more personal and expressive; basically substitutes for face to face contact.

But with new services like BlogTV and Stickam, it is possible to have ‘face to face’ conversations with multiple people. Communications researcher Jonathan Cummings writes that online relationships are of a lesser value than offline relationships, and should only act as a substitute.

While I can appreciate that in 2002 this statement may have been closer to the truth, today more sophisticated software, cameras, and data streaming capabilities allow for a nearly flawless conversation. I can speak from personal experience that I have built a few good friendships with people I have never met in person, but that I see on a regular basis. While I cannot speak for the entire online community, it would seem that most research has become dated.

Cam4: the New Sex

It is not exactly a secret that pornography and cybersex account for a fairly large portion of internet use. New media has made sexuality a virtually non-issue while also helping to innovate sexuality and pornography in often disturbing ways.  However, not every facet of online sexuality has led to perversion – though an open mind is needed.

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Cam4 is a social networking networking site dedicated to live and pre-recorded video broadcasting. For various reasons including a somewhat more lax set of rules than most other networking sites, Cam4 became dedicated almost exclusively to sex shows. As long as it is not an illegal act, anything goes.

Many view this practice as perverse or desperate, but it can have many positive aspects, as well.  Recent statistics say that 1 in 5 Americans currently have a Sexually Transmitted Disease. Cam4 provides a way for adults to explore their sexuality and participate in exhibitionism without endangering themselves.

Media researcher Nichola Doring also suggests that online sex shows can be very empowering to people who are unconfident and have body issues.

Under the right circumstances, the internet may actually be the safest and best place to explore one’s sexuality, as long as proper sexual education and caution is exercised.

Also, stay away from 4chan…