Few years ago there was all that hype about Second Life. Second Life was a virtual reality. It was not a game – you did not play there but you would go in and create your avatar the way you like it, build your house, meet new people, go to rock concerts, etc. It was what the name said – a second, or a parallel, life. Many companies invested money to be represented in Second Life. Adidas created special SL shoes, Coca-Cola was in, IBM, Ford . Many people spent hours there, many spent dollars there, and some even earned a little fortune there. Thank God, the Second Life craze eased (or is it just that I don’t follow the news on interactive topics since I left Ogilvy?) but we immediately found a substitute. Within few months, Facebook turned into Second Life, just a bit creepier – because in SL you invented your avatar. In Facebook you are yourself – but (trying to be) funnier, sexier, cooler. And you constantly feed the world with the newest update about how you are feeling, what you are doing, whom you are meeting, how you are looking. I notice that we are slowly becoming seriously addicted to this possibility of a virtual projection of our lives to the world. Yes, Facebook has good sides – like me finding my first boyfriend who is now in Thailand and whom I would have otherwise never found. On the other hand, I am wondering if Facebook will soon turn into some weird second reality which will slowly take up a life of its own. Imagine one day the Facebook “us” started rebelling and decided to mess up our real lives. With all that information and trust, easily done….
Archive for December, 2008
Facebook Horror
Monday, December 8th, 2008Jonathan
Sunday, December 7th, 2008“I believe in re-birth of wonder.” Jonathan Carroll
Argh!
Thursday, December 4th, 2008I feel very frustrated today. I found out I will receive 60€ for an article in a very respectful magazine. If I wrote an article about handbags or about Britney fucking her body guard for a gossip magazine, I could earn four times as much.
I am organising a round table about sexual harassment together Croatian government’s office for equality of sexes and I will probably not get paid at all. If I organised a swingers party with loads of drugs, I am sure I could earn a lot.
For writing a book, I get less then half of a middle management’s monthly pay. Today, you can only be well off if you sell people stuff they don’t need and that turn them dumber then they are. This is the beginning of the end of a civilisation.
Are we becoming prude?
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008I just read an article by a Croatian writer saying that paparazzi pictures showing Kate Moss’ underpants as she is exiting a car prove how our society is becoming more and more prude. She claims that we watch paparazzi pictures of drunk, half naked or messed up celebrities because we are shocked about their behaviour. I see it opposite. We look at paparazzi pics not because they shock us but because they calm us. The world of celebrities went so far to become a parallel, virtual universe. Through plastic surgery, private fitness trainers and Photoshop, the celebrities look too perfect, even plastic. Never in the history have actors and celebrities earned such amounts of money. And lately, they also manage to have perfect families. The pictures of Kate Moss’ underwear and drunk Britney help us remember (or realise) that they too are only human. So first one part of media earns by making them seem über-human, then the other part of media earns by showing that they are human after all. That makes double profit. And we are the idiots who gladly pay for all of that. And then we also pay for plastic surgery and designer clothes, hoping that we too can look the part…
And as for the prude, just look at a few videos on MTV or a few ads in magazines. You can also go to galleries and see what sells as art. No, we are far from becoming prude.
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Saturday, December 6th, 2008Tags: Capitalism, Commentary, Crisis, Media
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