A friend recently summed up the Facebook-era of online activity succinctly, stating “it feels as exciting or thought provocative as watching an episode of Ellen.” Adding the phrase, “it feels like your Mom’s internet.”

In many ways we agree. The whole online experience today feels like a time-wasting trip to the suburban mall. Maybe it’s all the senseless chatter, commercial signage and snapshot voguing that echos the food court environment. Or maybe it’s all the young girls.

That’s the one, great step forward in the social media era. It brought women, younger and older, into the once exclusively male and geek dominated domain of “cyberspace.” For a flash back to how this used to be, five seconds spent on ChatRoulette (link) will show you an anonymous webcam portrait of dudes in dorms, masturbating schlongs and more dudes in dorms. In other words, good luck finding women outside of the fluff communities of Facebook, Twitter, online retail and homogenized blogging.

Whereas all this social media stuff is purported to be keeping everyone connected, in reality it’s all just pretending your famous. Facebook / Twitter / et al are only about  emulating celebrity culture, with  followers tracking your every minute move like  stalker fans. It is just ego stroking,  borrowing from the culture of tabloid soundbites and newsmagazine fandom. As if everyone in corporate marketing is a rockstar wannabe. There is no real communication going on here.  Just people who are sold on the US Magazine / Access Hollywood view of America, and now simulate it being by both groupie and B-list famewhore.

Whereas this publicity environment of constant press-releases used to be the domain of the media, today the situation is brands trying to figure about how to excite all these miniature self-promoters to buzz about their latest product.

It wasn’t always this piss poor. The release of AVATAR has got us thinking of what a pussy time 2010 is. Which is even more depressing, when you where you consider where James Cameron took pop-culture Read the rest of this entry »