Our greatest desire.
If you haven't seen the "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" (It must be typed in caps) video then I assume you literally live under a rock in an area which does not have WiFi or cell phone coverage. And right now? I envy your lifestyle. I'm not going to link the video. If you really want to see it go to youtube. Or, at this point, just get online. The video is waiting for you.
In this two minute eleven second video young Chris Crocker, internet celebrity, screams into a camera and cries while he berates everyone, seemingly, for being mean to Britney Spears after her lackluster performance at the 2007 VMAs. Obviously he did not visit Everyone Is a Sith before making this video, or he would have made a calm exception during his ranting.
As I reflect on this situation what I struggle with is whether or not this is a good thing. I am tempted to say that without the internet Chris Crocker would have cried alone, so alone, so very very alone, in his room and none of us would have known of it. But that is not true. I don't think the "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" video can be assess in this way. Part of what led to the creation of this video is the internet, the Web 2.0. Without the blogs and forums and news sites and youtube there would have been no "mean" against which Chris could lash out. We cannot extract "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" from Web 2.0; "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!" is Web 2.0.
This is what Web 2.0 is about. Anyone can communicate anything. Anyone can have a blog or post on a forum or upload a video to YouTube. We can all be Chris Crockers, or we can all make mean-spirited posts in the comments section of Chris Crocker videos. And I think this shows the problems with democracy, freedom, and abandoning authority.
Martin Luther did not think that the authority of the Catholic Church was a good thing. Martin Luther thought that the people ought to be allowed to interpret scripture. And as a result of that we get "guilt free sundays" at WCC and "Be Real" Christian student organizations that have drinking nights. Wikipedia is based on the idea that we do not need authorities with regard to information, that information can be collected and presented by everyone, that truth is decided democratically. Youtube allows anyone, anyone, to upload videos, to communicate their ideas.
And if you think these are good things, that these benefit society, then please spend the rest of the day watching "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!".
Because that is our future. That is the path upon which we tread. Everyone has a voice. Everyone's opinion is counted. This is Democracy. This is freedom. This is liberty. This is the actualization of humanity's greatest desire.
It is truly as Oscar Wilde once said, "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."
11 comments:
I have not seen it
I have not heard about it
and im ok with that
I thought that you would probably be the sort of person to find that rock under which you could live.
I had never seen it before either. Eventually i will get around to seeing. I don't really feel like watching it at work though.
It's not worth watching unless you enjoy watching Emo 19 year old homosexuals cry about people they've never met being mean about a person they've never met.
How dark was the shade of black that the homosexual emo person was wearing?
I agree with the things said.
It was a light shade of black.
The blackest black that ever was, I say.
That's an inside joke from Hanover.
People would ask about shades of black and I would get pissed of because BLACK doesn't have SHADES.
Grey has shades. WHITE and BLACK do not have shades. If they have SHADES then they are no longer WHITE or BLACK; they're GREY.
I'm aware of the joke.. considering you sprung it on me unawares those first couple weeks.
I do that.
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