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‘TWO
centuries ago, when a great man appeared, people looked
for God’s purpose in him; today we look for his press
agent,” the sociologist/historian Daniel Boorstin writes
in The Image.
Boortsin
published The Image in 1961, long before the
Internet was even thinkable.
In the
new century, when a “great man” appeared, we google them
or look for their personal blog sites, if not their
MySpace profiles. It’s not even a matter of greatness;
just a matter being famous simply for being famous.
I often
hear and read about supposedly famous people, and I have
no idea about their claim to fame. Perhaps they are
blondes, hotel heiressess and notorious for driving with
a suspended license. But if they are not Paris Hilton,
who are they?
One
particular “celebrity’ that intrigued me was reality TV
star Tila Tequilla. What is she famous for, other than
her funny-looking mouth and her sleazy image? I found a
web site, where she describes herself as “Internet
celebrity.” I guess PR agents are losing their jobs.
I
recently discovered that even the insignificant people
from the university where I graduated from have also
become famous by their own reckoning. I found their
names in a Wikipedia entry for “famous alumnae” of the
University of Santo Tomas. Will somebody please teach me
how to insert a name entry in Wikipedia?
Jessica
Cutler, a former congressional staff assistant for
former Sen. Mike DeWine, is one of the most-
talked-about Internet sensations. She serendipitously
acquired the celebrity status in the online metropolis
when her steamy blogs on her Beltway sexcapades in the
halls of Congress became a required reading in
Washington, D.C. in 2004. It resulted in a scandal in
Capitol Hill. She got fired and has since parlayed her
notoriety into a nude Playboy.com pictorial and a
reported six-figure book deal.
Millions
of bloggers and YouTubers have since found their way to
“celebritydom,” all playing political analysts,
journalists, filmmakers, authors, poets, sex counselors
and self-proclaimed pundits. Hence Time magazine’s
decision to name “You” (meaning all of us) Person of the
Year in 2006.
The
World Wide Web has democratized communication to an
overwhelming level, giving the nobodies of the world a
voice, and with amateurs overshadowing the pros.
I feel
my own insignificance in the cybersphere. Like other
members of the traditional media, I refuse to blog
because I write for a living. I belong to the old
generation of newspaper people, whose arrogant
resistance to succumb to the online world comes from the
fact that we taxed our butts before seeing our first
bylines in print. It’s nice to reap the fruits of that
investment by getting paid for my thoughts. You may not
like my thoughts, but, hey, I get paid for writing them.
But I
guess there is really no point in trying to resist. I am
a stranger from the mainstream who visits the online
sphere on a regular basis, and I confess to being a
consumer of online thought products. I watch YouTube. I
read blogs—with a tinge of jealousy but with hopes that
the print culture stays in honor of Gutenberg. |
