Surviving online publicity obsession
After coming to terms with the technological shifts of the past ten years that have destroyed privacy and intellectual property and given everyone on the planet an opportunity to become a 'star' in the online world, Scarlett has given up hope of earning a little money from writing romantic fiction and now amuses herself in retirement mentoring budding young writers.
"If there's something I've learned about the new generation is that it defines privacy so differently from my generation," says Scarlett. "When I realized that most of my work was never going to receive any financial reward, I stopped using my real name and used a pseudonym for my writing submissions, but young writers have no hang-ups about being out there with their real name whether or not they get paid for their work and whether or not they get plagiarized."
"For them, it's not about 'my name is worth money' and I'm not going to use it unless I get paid for my work," explains Scarlett. "It's about grabbing attention, boasting of their work, posting links to it everywhere - YouTube, Facebook and Twitter particulalry – and generally being obsessed with online publicity."
"They judge their worth not in terms of financial reward - like my generation does - but by how many Facebook 'friends' or Twitter followers they have."
"And their creative talent is really secondary to their online popularity or notoriety," says Scarlett. "It's such an amazing phenomenon not just in literary circles but in all human endeavors that Marshall McLuhan's warning in the 60s that the medium is the message really has come true."
"Without the IT revolution none of this would have been possible," says Scarlett, "and older people everywhere are scratching their heads, trying to comprehend these technological shifts that are making nerdy types billionaires, very ordinary people household names and, indeed, changing the very nature of the fabric of our society."
"Privacy, for instance, is something that few people respect in this new world," says Scarlett. "Young people are not only willing to put their own private lives online - for the joy of it - but also see it is their right to expose the private lives of others, and see nothing wrong about engaging in blatant plagiarism and piracy."
"More and more these days online services require your 'real' email address rather than a Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail address," says Scarlett. "This wouldn't be a problem if you knew that your private details would be securely stored, but everyone knows, or should know, that identity fraud is a lucrative industry and that no IT system is immune from hackers."
"These days, we are far more likely to be the victim of hackers than burglars - but they are, essentially, the same thing," says Scarlett. "And, most young people like to draw a distinction between good hackers who expose corrupt governments and corporations and bad hackers who steal your bank account details, but they are, essentially, the same guys who do this sort of thing and they do it for the same reason - the kudos it gives them among their peers."
"They get into hacking for the same reason that every kid uploads personal information about themselves online," explains Scarlett. "They want to become a 'star' and excel at something, anything, and they do it because they can – because the technological shift has made it possible for every man and his dog to make asses of themselves via the social media sites or reality TV."
"Sure, in this new technological world without respect for boundaries a few 'stars' do emerge and deserve whatever financial rewards come their way, and, let's face it, we all love the marvels of the Internet," says Scarlett, "but is the price we pay in the loss of privacy, hacking scams and Big Brother watching our every movement online really worth it?"
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