’nuff said

“This reminds me of the time when everyone was hating on reality TV shows. Well, people still do. It always made me wonder how they got so popular if, apparently, everyone hates them.”

That’s a fair question. Partly the answer lies with the fact that the majority of the human race are cattle who unconsciously subscribe to the doctrine of Idiocy Of The Crowds. Just because a majority find something fills the emptiness of their existence, doesn’t mean that it is meaningful or that it has value (compare to the society found in Fahrenheit 451 for example). In fact the reality TV bubble has well and truly burst, especially since people have slowly realised that the majority of the shows are pre-scripted. They are nothing but chewing gum for the masses. In the same sense, even the social networking bubble is starting to burst as people realise that not only is it empty of value but that the social networking companies are simply commodifying your lives so as to sell the data.

Now I’m sure that critics will already be rolling up their sleeves to defend their position but what I wrote above *is* the truth. People just don’t like to believe it applies to them. Thankfully, I got rid of my TV years ago, around the start of the reality TV boom in fact. I have some social networking accounts – Twitter, which I almost never look at and which I’ve been stripping out recently. Facebook, which I now only keep for Island Life if I’m honest and AU, which I only keep to watch the carnage unfold. Oh, and I still have a MySpace page I recall from years ago if I can bother to remember the password. I guess you could also count my blog? If there’s anything I’ve missed, forgive me but it’s simply a sign of how little social networking impacts my life.

Here’s an old blog I wrote on web2.0 celebrity if you’re interested http://whenitchanged.blogspot.com/2009/06/celebrity-in-web20-generation.html (ONOZ MAH REEL NAYM ECKSHPOZED! – Probably added to a wiki page by the time you read this, know what I mean?)

Now it’s social networking sites. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t use a single one. I guess I just don’t like reading mundane facts about people I barely know. But the fact that they exist means that someone finds them useful.

Second Life’s TOS applies to SL itself and the SL forums, right? Well now that Linden Lab owns Avatars United, how long do we think it will be before the SL TOS is quietly updated to include AU?

Best start thinking about just what you write on there and about who before it gets used against you.