The sweet smell of success
In a masterwork of procrastination, I spent the morning watching the video blog ‘RocketBoom’. This 3 minute daily short video discusses techhie issues with a wry, dry and oh-so-amusing spin. The presenter is super-hot, which doesn’t hurt.
Several of the pre-Christmas postings were about ‘memes’ – postings of images or, more recently, short videos - that have attracted gazillions of views and then gigazillions of parodies on video hosting sites – think some freak blubbing over Britney and you’re there.
That so many people could watch the image of somebody blubbing is the last word in the democratisation of celebrity in the internet age. Forget fame, you can now be infamous and you don’t even have to kill anyone to do it.
If you have a video camera and a PC you can have your own television show. If nobody watches it you can just pretend that it’s worthy like they do with ‘real’ telly. If everyone hates it you can feel misunderstood and plaster on the black mascara. So everyone can be sorta, kinda, famous, even if it means that the world doesn’t know your name, but rather calls you ‘blubbing guy’.
This diluting of being in, on or around the media seems to have a pretty profound effect on ‘grown-ups’, so I wonder what it’s like for adolescents? I wonder if the most popular girl in school has her own page or blog or youtube channel that acknowledges she is the most popular girl in school – or is that shot to buggery because ordinary girl has more pokes on facebook because she knows a hell of a lot about Star Trek.
Ordinary people are acting like celebrities by recording their own teevee programmes. Celebrities are acting like ordinary people by getting out of cars without any pants on – this means that here is only one real test of whether or not you are a real live celebrity – do you have your own fragrance?
Because it’s easy to lip-synch to ‘nothing compares to you’ while shaving your own head and so be that day’s hit on youtube, but it’s less easy to market the smell of you.
Which is why the most popular girl in school will always be the most popular girl in school – because if the most popular girl at my school when I was a teen had turned up and started flogging bottles of her own scent, there would be a queue of sweaty adolescents round the block ready to pay good money for a sniff of Jane.
Several of the pre-Christmas postings were about ‘memes’ – postings of images or, more recently, short videos - that have attracted gazillions of views and then gigazillions of parodies on video hosting sites – think some freak blubbing over Britney and you’re there.
That so many people could watch the image of somebody blubbing is the last word in the democratisation of celebrity in the internet age. Forget fame, you can now be infamous and you don’t even have to kill anyone to do it.
If you have a video camera and a PC you can have your own television show. If nobody watches it you can just pretend that it’s worthy like they do with ‘real’ telly. If everyone hates it you can feel misunderstood and plaster on the black mascara. So everyone can be sorta, kinda, famous, even if it means that the world doesn’t know your name, but rather calls you ‘blubbing guy’.
This diluting of being in, on or around the media seems to have a pretty profound effect on ‘grown-ups’, so I wonder what it’s like for adolescents? I wonder if the most popular girl in school has her own page or blog or youtube channel that acknowledges she is the most popular girl in school – or is that shot to buggery because ordinary girl has more pokes on facebook because she knows a hell of a lot about Star Trek.
Ordinary people are acting like celebrities by recording their own teevee programmes. Celebrities are acting like ordinary people by getting out of cars without any pants on – this means that here is only one real test of whether or not you are a real live celebrity – do you have your own fragrance?
Because it’s easy to lip-synch to ‘nothing compares to you’ while shaving your own head and so be that day’s hit on youtube, but it’s less easy to market the smell of you.
Which is why the most popular girl in school will always be the most popular girl in school – because if the most popular girl at my school when I was a teen had turned up and started flogging bottles of her own scent, there would be a queue of sweaty adolescents round the block ready to pay good money for a sniff of Jane.
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