Cartoonist Rob Cottingham left a comment on my recent post Early Days about online friendships which I headed with one of his cartoons. The link was to a TEDx talk (above) and blog post you might find interesting.
The contents of the video are emphatically not real. A finger-pointing, shouty American who is telling me the way it is, and how we have all got it wrong, and how I should think, and who uses stock rhetorical tricks like....pauses....and who seems to be so, like vibrant and committed, is surely not real.
She is an LSD flash-back, surely, or possibly an ominous warning of some personal mental difficulties ahead...
The HBR article brought to mind an Umberto Eco book 'Faith in Fakes ' - "America's obsession with simulacra and counterfeit reality." as Wikipedia says. This idea segues itnto Ryan Holiday's 'Trust me I'm Lying', a tale of internet media manipulation in America. The importance of media manipulation by 'What Americans Really Want' by Dr Frank Luntz - a gentleman who has expanded Orwell's ideas beyond Eric's worst nightmares.
The video - I came out by the same door I went in - execubabble. I read somewhere that internet advertising was not bringing in the moolah to sponsors, perhaps she hopes if we reveal our souls the moolah will follow - as if.
Whilst it seems unwise to reveal too much, the blogs I see seem reasonably genuine - the Facebook/Twitter world much less so. To create a totally false persona seems a game for children, but given the infantilising influence of mass media it is the children who now have the votes.
4 comments:
The contents of the video are emphatically not real. A finger-pointing, shouty American who is telling me the way it is, and how we have all got it wrong, and how I should think, and who uses stock rhetorical tricks like....pauses....and who seems to be so, like vibrant and committed, is surely not real.
She is an LSD flash-back, surely, or possibly an ominous warning of some personal mental difficulties ahead...
The HBR article brought to mind an Umberto Eco book 'Faith in Fakes ' - "America's obsession with simulacra and counterfeit reality." as Wikipedia says. This idea segues itnto Ryan Holiday's 'Trust me I'm Lying', a tale of internet media manipulation in America. The importance of media manipulation by 'What Americans Really Want' by Dr Frank Luntz - a gentleman who has expanded Orwell's ideas beyond Eric's worst nightmares.
The video - I came out by the same door I went in - execubabble. I read somewhere that internet advertising was not bringing in the moolah to sponsors, perhaps she hopes if we reveal our souls the moolah will follow - as if.
Whilst it seems unwise to reveal too much, the blogs I see seem reasonably genuine - the Facebook/Twitter world much less so. To create a totally false persona seems a game for children, but given the infantilising influence of mass media it is the children who now have the votes.
Agree with Sam.
Sam, Roger and James - I agree, I found it a little ominous too.
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