“Hearing the blogger’s voice is no longer enough. We now want to read, see, and understand the blogger.”
–From a blog post on Scribnia, Blogging is About the Blogger.
What is it with us and this new breed of celebrity–the social media guru? We expect 24/7 real-time interaction with them. We can’t get enough just from reading their blog posts and tweets–we also want to swim in their lifestreams. What’s next: mind-melding, where their thoughts can stream directly into our brains?
The whole thing is starting to remind me of some kind of sci-fi plot where people want to become one with internet celebrities. It’s like we are the nano-particles that make up their personae. If you go by some recent job descriptions, actually, they need us to be who they are: after all, everyone knows anyone with fewer than 500 Twitter followers isn’t worth the blog page s/he’s typing on.
Why are we so fascinated? What do we get out of it? Sure, their wisdom, their knowledge…but also the shrapnel of their fame? The feeling that it’s our turn next?
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