Gawker
Breaking: Young people are more used to being filmed than earlier generations! And in fact they feel obligated to share their stories on video, so much so that they've "blurred the lines between reality and 'reality,'" according to Newsweek's new trend piece. The changes come because everyone has a camera now, as well as blogs and MySpaces to turn temporary emotions into permanent records. Good news for reality show producers, great news for Media Studies majors, but fantastic news for young people destined to become famous (and we all are totes gonna be famous, dude).
Despite giving the generation a stupid name (The Look At Me's), Newsweek concedes that obsession with documentation isn't entirely a generational phenomenon. But the Internet does qualitatively change our view of recording life. MySpace and camera phones document things that would previously remain secret or temporary.
If Ashley Alexandra Dupré were in the same scandal ten years ago, the call girl wouldn't have been so well-documented and wouldn't have stolen the news cycle from her client Eliot Spitzer. She wouldn't have felt like just another hot girl. But seeing her MySpace page (which was no more packed with self-promotion than the average teen I know) evaporates some of the mystique. So, thanks to the superdocumented life of Gen Y, everyone's prefabricated for their rise to fame. Like Ashley, we won't even have to do something new.
Comments
When is Newsweek finally going to break down and just go all large-print, anyway? It's like a cheat-sheet for the "You damn kids, get off my lawn!" set.
this dude musta watched that quarter life marathon. not that i watched it or anything.
/hides
"...pretty young things prepping for fame, not life, such as Jake, who says, 'The whole MySpace thing is a good warm-up for when I'm really famous.'"
Sorta like the whole Gawker thing being such a wholesome stretch exercise for when I blow my first book contract for a "true story" about whoring out my Stuyvesant students to journalists and documentarians?
Nah. Just "prepping" for life.
When I was your age, "totes" was an umbrella.
@benmaimon: Or things that went over your real shoes.
@ In Other News...: Wait now. You wore totes over your shoes? I thought they were those anklet sock-thingies with rubber lines on the soles that the friendly staff at the psych ward dresses you up in upon admission.
In one week alone, my father has learned what Wiki is, asked me about webcams and what "BTW" means. I fear what will happen two weeks from now: "Favorite daughter, what is goatse? What exactly is a lemon party? What is this bit about two girls and a cup?"
My mother, who is 92 this year, turned me on to the Beat poets when I was 13, is the only one I know who has actually read Finnegan's Wake,, protested the Vietnam War, can snark with the best ("when you're done climbing the mountain can you fix the fence?), and lately has been casting envious eyes at my laptop ("that is the most wonderful invention"). Only failing eyesight forestalls theft. So let's not be too quick to judge someone who is old even by mu standards.
@JessicaLovejoy: Stars & Dykes Forever!: Just discovered goatse -- the description alone will require brain drano to remove. What the heck is a lemon party? I am too afraid to google. Also, where do I apply for social security payments -- I'm clearly referentially ancient.
@In Other News...:
Those were rubbers which, when I was your age, I wore over me dingus.
@ donmiguel: You can spend the rest of that Social Security money on the high grade ocular bleaching your going to end up needing if you continue your crash course in this line of research.
@Mike_Jahn: You're right, there certainly are some kick-ass old people out there. And Newsweek probably bores the shit out of them.
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