How far would you go? Katie Cassidy in Live! © Pretty pictures
ZeroSocialMedia, one agency blog about Social Media in China, published an interesting post in extent to one I had previously read on Mashable on how social media contribute to enhance individualism. People belonging to what is called now “Generation Me” are using such tools for ”self-promotion, narcissism and attention”
To understand this phenomenon, we have to look at our era largely influenced by media evolution trends coupled with wild capitalism in most places of the world.
Let’s simplify the mechanism and create a chain :
Technology and equipment development > devices multiplication >production costs decrease > communication speed increase. Then we witness the emergence of UGC (User Generated Content) a fabulous model in which people create content for free and offer it at anyone’s – or almost, disposal. By using UGC and triggering Egos, media manage to make profits with low costs programs for satisfying the hunger of wide audience.
Reality TV and talk shows are the exact reflection of Generation Me. Unsignificant people are encouraged to provide more “individual content” and get rewarded with money or pseudo-fame. The easier it is to upload and broadcast content, the more individualism strenghtens.
Someone working at a high position in a very big media corporation recently told me proudly about his job ”We are creating dreams“. “In fact, you are creating illusions” I replied, “You can fool the audience, but don’t fool yourself my friend.”
This makes me think about latin “Panem et Circem”. To maintain peace, people must be feeded with bread and entertained with games. As entertainment has become the new opium of the masses, our societies are providing more efforts to entertain masses rather than feeding people with much needed resources.
Getting back on the subject, China has always been focusing on its unity, from unification of the territory and of Chinese language two thousands years ago until the “One World, One Dream” slogan for Beijing Olympics. At some point, contradictions will emerge between “Generation Me” and “Generation We”, their parents and grandparents who lived a totally different era and shared dramatically different values.
Seems like the letters are reversing and the society evolving…towards what exactly?
