It is a rising trend in the press now; it was even in Sunday's NYT, how Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, Four Square and all of this instant mobile connectivity is making celebrities of us all. Everyone can see that the barrier to fame and notoriety is pretty low. Look at the Kardashians, or Snooky, and many other of our recent phenoms. All you have to do is be willing to sacrifice most of your dignity, and keep pushing it out there.
My girl Sarah (Palin) is one of the best examples. It seems more and more that all she cares about is keeping her name in the news and making money on it. She doesn't care what she says as long as she get coverage. How much you wanna bet that six months after she decides not to run for President she gets at least $1,000,000 to show it off in Playboy.
And why not. Two years ago a saw a fifteen year-old girl in treatment who had been devastated because her boyfriend had persuaded her to "sext" him a picture of her topless. Two months later they broke-up and everyone in school was talking about it. Devastated.
Now, I know that happens all the time, and most of the girls don't seem to give a shit. "Hey those are my tits and I'm proud of 'em."
In some ways it's awful, shocking, demoralizing and demeaning. But in others ways it's liberating, equalizing, and can give the power back to the women.
These technologies are rapidly changing the way people relate. They are changing how we communicate, our vocabulary, what we read, if we read, what we think, how we think, and how our brains work. It's changing our goals and standards of behavior.
Yes, there are many professors, psychologists even, who are writing lots of books and articles about how the world is going to hell, and it certainly is. But it always has been. Genghis Khan, The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, The American Civil War, WWI, not good times for humanity either.
If you watch TV, it's more and more about the trash in people's lives. Murder, divorce, bizarre happenings. Who would have wanted to be on TV the day after your 8 year-old daughter has been eaten by a shark, abducted by a pervert, lies in a coma for three months, now it's expected.
Sympathetic Host: "Mr. and Mrs. T, how do you feel after you 11 year-old son broke 27 bones imitating what he saw on Jack Ass?
" Well, we're kind of upset." But at least we're on TV!!
The technology is everywhere, immediately, and we all want our 15 minutes of fame, even though now it's down to six.
Not me. I just want to write about it here in my blog. For years and years I kept a journal that I wrote in every Sunday night. But you know what -- no one ever read it.
That's not true, my wife read a lot of it once. Afterwards she said:
"It sounds a lot like you."
Now that's true of so many of us --" A SuperStar in our own Minds!"
3 comments:
My father is a member of the Silent Generation, so he's a bit older than most fathers of people my age.
I noticed he's always obsessed with becoming wealthy. My generation tends to be fixated on success. While the current generation is far more interested in fame.
It would be nice if there was a middle way.
I like how Allen Carr did it:
Write a book on how to quit whatever and
Get rich - check
Get successful - check
Get famous - at least among addicts of various sorts - check
Help tons of people - check
But, lets face it, not everyone can do something like that in that scale.
May be the secret is to be happy with what one can achieve within their framework.
My dad (born 1913 of parents just off the farm) was also interested in "getting rich." Maybe he missed out on some of the other things life had to offer, but I've gotta say--he built a foundation for the middle-class lives the rest of us now lead. That's not so bad,
I love this, such a valid point :)
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