If you haven’t seen Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show you should. It’s a great, darkly satirical movie that anticipates the rise of YouTube, online TV, the no-privacy future — and numerous people turning their lives and experiences into fodder for online entertainment.
Apropos of that is this video interview with Sarah Meyers. It almost plays like a parody of itself, but both she and her interviewer are in total earnest. I had never heard of her until I read this post on TechCrunch.
On the one hand you could see this young woman as a shrewd self promoter, bootstrapping herself into a career in “TV.” But on the other you could see her as a representative of a generation (I’m 43) that has a diminishing sense of the value of privacy and has been raised on Oprah and Jerry Springer where people willingly exploit their own lives for attention, celebrity and financial gain.
I’m struck that is woman, as a “lifecaster,” is simply an extreme version of something that many people now aspire to: notoriety for its own sake. By the same token, making all your interests and activities known on Facebook is another example, on the continuum, of this phenomenon.
As a friend of mine said to me this morning, “it’s a perfect marriage of narcissism and voyeurism.”
December 1, 2007 at 6:07 am
[...] exactly about remixing and publishing content, its about publishing yourself. Interesting post from Greg Sterlings Screenwerk blog looks at the diminished view of privacy that is emerging in today’s web generation. Shameless [...]
December 1, 2007 at 9:29 am
[...] exactly about remixing and publishing content, its about publishing yourself. Interesting post from Greg Sterlings Screenwerk blog looks at the diminished view of privacy that is emerging in today’s web generation. Shameless [...]
December 9, 2007 at 6:53 pm
There are people who haven’t seen “The Truman Show”. Wow. That was easily my favourite movie as a kid. It’s wonderfully done. I liked “EDtv” as well, which had a similar theme, but “Truman” was far better. It wasn’t quite so comedic as “EDtv”. It actually made me cry not once but twice during the film, the first time I saw it of course, not knowing if he had indeed drowned at sea. The second time being when he says, “Good morning and, in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night,” for the final time before taking a bow and walking off stage - although that time, they are tears of happiness.
Cheers,
Doug