Thursday 27 August 2009

Forever Young

A quick comment inspired by yesterday's (8/26) New York Times:

I read two fascinating articles. One was the column by Maureen Dowd about on-line celebrity gossip  and about a case involving a set of lawsuits that materialised after horrendous and initially anonymous  blog-bullying.  The other one discussed Twitter's popularity and who are driving it

The former text documented a vile fight between a 28-year old blogger and a 37-year fashion old model; the latter noted that both Facebook and Twitter are really forums of the middle class, middle-aged (and regarding Twitter, those doing business / marketing, too). Teenagers may send hundreds of texts a day but tend to consider Twitter and FB platforms that are too public for them.

Slightly scary: 40 is the new 14? It is as if certain forms of social media allow the kind of virtual yet public teenager / student socialising; as if to show off  that while we middle-aged can still lead somewhat adult lives off-line, the inner youth has not died. And as a consequence, it is as if -- as perhaps in the case of the beauty and the blogger -- the conventional limits / ethics / adult behaviour patterns can get totally mixed up virtually and in real life.

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