DarrenBarefoot.com

I wish I’d written this essay, found via Beth. Emily Nussbaum has a smart, insightful article in New York magazine entitled “Say Everything”. It’s essentially about the privacy gap between the bloggy, MySpace generation and their parents. It clearly articulates so many of the half-formed ideas I’ve had kicking around in my head:

But maybe it’s a cheap shot to talk about reality television and Paris Hilton. Because what we’re discussing is something more radical if only because it is more ordinary: the fact that we are in the sticky center of a vast psychological experiment, one that’s only just begun to show results. More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would—and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy.

I regularly remind people that Paris Hilton’s rise to fame was because of a sex tape. We all seem to have forgiven and forgotten about that, which seems slightly baffling to me.

Regardless, this essay dovetails nicely into the survey I just ran about why we blog, and some creative writing that I’m doing as time permits. It’s recommended reading for anybody in the social media space, or anybody trying to figure out the current redivision of fame.