Instaobsessed

So I could bore you with my life since we last saw each other, or I could let you in on the current goings on in my seriously gripping and totally unpredictably crazy wild life. I'll pick.

I've become an Instagram addict(!)

Once a social media portal I viewed as being pretentious and, quite frankly, overly FOMO-encouraging, I've converted. What was once concisely said in the medium of 140-characters on Twitter, is SO much more appealing summed up in a photo. Words are so last year... unless they're #hashtagged.

The point remains though - I'm hooked. I'm insanely obsessively obsessed over PHOTOS of peoples lives. Famous people, not-so-famous people, weird people, wonderful people, fashion people, the lot.

Gone are the days when people got their kicks out of window watching people from Starbucks. Now, anonymously scrolling through seams of photos is obvs the thing to be doing. Is this normal??

Us Instagrammers though can all sympathise with that awkward moment when the finger scrolling turns into an accidental like on a random's photo. Worse, still, it could be someone you know who doesn't know that you know that they have an Instagram account and then, bam, the love heart glows and you've pretty much done the equivalent of finding out where they live and turning up on their doorstep just to let them know you like the filter on their breakfast shot this morning. 

I think it's safe to say that E-etiquette is yet to be perfected in this crazy world we call life. 

I, for one, am considering a digi-detox. Starting from tomorr...soon.

The (sad) pursuit of e-popularity

Oh, social media, you never fail to surprise me.
In my e-lifetime to date I've experienced numerous annoying viral social media born campaigns.

Share this status if you want to get rid of AIDS! 
Like this photo of my ticket and I'll give you £1,000,000 if I win the lottery!  
Urban legends which urge you to re-post this status in the next 4 minutes, or else 28 kittens will get hit by a truck. (The emotive ones always work a treat.)

Just when we thought we'd seen it all... Welcome the 'If I get 1 million likes' phenomenon. 

It's like anything, at first it's quite comical - some shy boy who eats his feelings (and everything else) wants to sleep with the hottie, and she only agreed to it because she never in a million years assumed it'd go viral, and so we click that electronically generated blue thumbs up. Like. We laugh. We laugh at how hysterically excited he will be when he shows her the "evidence". We laugh at the thought of her face when she realises she's sold herself online, both visually and physically. We perhaps share said photo.  
And then what? Unless they actually somehow manage to inform us fellow million likees that they have actually achieved their goal, what do we gain from this situation? Absolutely bugger all. Did he get to travel to England from Japan to buy fish and chips? Did she sleep with him? Did she actually run around the city naked? No idea. And, to be honest, after you've supported them in their quests, do you even remember liking it? Again, probably not.

So what is the deal with this unending desire to be approved of by strangers online? People will do anything online for their taste of fifteen minutes. The wilder, the better. Whether it's seeking re-tweets, likes, LOLs or shares, the world has become obsessed with strangers making their decisions for them. 
And this makes me sad. It's such thoughtless validation, and at some point it's going to end in tears. I can't help but feel that it leaves you with an unsettling thought of a new digital era in which nothing can define us more in life than our extravagant pursuit for internet fame.

"The Gulf War Did Not Take Place"

Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and sociologist, once made the profound statement that "The Gulf war did not take place". Some thought it genious, others dismissed this as a sensationalist headline grabber sparked by a continental philosopher searching for the truth and reality. Because naturally philosophers are solely tormented people in the search for truth. If, however, you read past this simple statement, you would realise that Baudrillard wasn't actually denying the validity that the event happened, instead he was making a bold statement about the contentious issue of interpretation. That is, Baudrillard questioned whether the events that took place where comparable to how they were presented through the means of media.

For those of you who know me personally and whom have read my articles prior to this one, you will know I have a keen interest in reality television and the frightenly blurred relationship that it creates between fact and fiction. I learned of Baudrillard and his views in my Media class when I was at school, and I would say he has definitely influenced my outlook on life and made me cautious of the powerful entity that is the media itself.

With relation to the Gulf war, Baudrillard put forward the notion that it was a media spectacle, rehearsed much like a war game and then played out to the public as a simulation. The war itself, including the real violence and real bloodshed, was lost in the heavily shaped electronic narrative. That is to say the news reports and other forms of coverage were so heavily edited and focused on dangerously shot hand-held video clips and boasting of their supply of missiles that the nature of the war itself dissolved. The media stood in the way of communicating the truths of the war, as opposed to adding to it.

Whether or not you agree with Baudrillard picking of such a contentious topic to use as the example to put forth his theory, it would be hard to dispute how much the media shapes, influences and distorts our lives. I for one believe it's a sad reality that newspapers and their highly one-sided political bias shape our views of politics. If we don't know the whole unbiased and unedited truth about politics, then surely it's a dangerous situation to vote for someone or a party to gain political reign of our country that you know so little about.

Naturally you would want to deny that the media is a replacement of reality, but that is exactly what Baudrillard believed and I advocate. Consider your use of social media: you de-tag the photos you look bad in, you upload the ones that you look nice in, you write comedic and captivating statuses that make you sound interesting and you 'check-in' at 'cool' and 'hip' places - because that shows your friends and followers that you too are cool and hip. So you might not do all of that, but you're guilty of at least one point I guarantee. (I used to be jealous of compulsive Instagrammers, until I attempted to 'join the club' so to speak, only to realise it would take far too much time from my day trying to edit photographs to make me look artistic and effortlessly cool.) We ourselves are guilty of shaping our own lives through the media, and the media does this in turn to us on a much larger scale.

Next time you're watching the news, or reading the newspaper just think of how fictional and contrived the "news" really is. Because after all, reality cannot be replicated or reported, only distorted.

Real Housewives: A dramatic success

Like it, loathe it, or perhaps you are yet to hear of it but The Real Housewives docusoap reality series created by Bravo TV has become a franchise in its own rights. What started as a “one and done” season focusing on Orange County took off with huge popularity and 6 years on the show has now followed women in New York, New Jersey, Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Miami and Vancouver. The series follows affluent housewives and professional women in America and their luxurious lifestyle and social circles.

Figures estimate the franchise is worth a jaw-dropping half a billion dollars, so what was it that made the shows so popular? Primarily, with it being a reality series, the drama itself is often the main character of the show. It follows them everywhere, and situations which demand classiness often turn into a bitter slanging match between two or more ladies. The divide between Vicki and Tamra against the other women in Orange County set the bar for the other seasons to follow. Let’s not forget that the focal point of the show is to follow attractive wealthy people and to provide insight into how they live. For the rest of the world it’s a case of seeing how the other side live. Life sure does seem exciting when you’ve got money to flash. It’s a personality driven show, and with characters as strong as Vicki Gunvalson’s (OC) and Jill Zarin (NY) it makes for explosive situations. The cast have been described as “combustible characters” which fuel drama and addictive viewing.

The success of the franchise lies not only in the shows themselves but the products that have launched off the back of the shows. Book deals, recording contracts, wine ranges and jewellery lines are to name but some of the products that have been released. Social media has also played an important role in the success of the franchise. People are riveted by their on-screen and off-screen lives and viewers can follow them on Twitter, in magazine interviews and on personal website pages.

Real Housewives shook the reality world up in America and proved just how successful a one-hit-wonder idea can evolve into something worth serious money.

It's Made in Chelsea, not Real in Chelsea

In 1992, reality TV was a novelty. In 2000, it was a fad. In 2010, it's a way of life. What better way to describe reality TV then with Time Magazine’s perfectly worded summary. Welcome to 2012. We are a nation, a world even, consumed with reality TV. From The X Factor to The Only Way is Essex to one of our most recent additions, Made in Chelsea, reality TV has become as commonplace on our TV screens as the news every evening at 6pm sharp. This genre is so fascinating because it has changed the way viewers relate to and interact with the cast of the shows. Yet at the same time this interaction is becomingly dangerously one-sided, with – guess who – the viewers. So what is it about reality TV that has the power to drag us back to the screens even though we may not even like the show itself? Well for starters we humans are natural voyeurs; we are so very curious about these characters and every little detail about their lives. And it’s only become easier to ‘stalk’ the cast with the use of Twitter and other social networking sites. Let’s not be irrational here though, it’s fine to follow them and to talk to them because that’s what they want you to do – to follow, engage and become loyal to their brands. The issue arises when, for example, after Monday’s (07/05) episode of MIC fans loyal to Jamie Laing took to Twitter in their masses to send messages of hate and even death threats to Louise thompson and Spencer Matthews. These problematic and unhealthy relationships on the side of the fans develop primarily due to reality TV having blurred the lines between reality and fiction so deeply. Whilst being hilariously entertaining, these shows distort fact and fiction. If you hadn’t already have guessed it, all forms of reality TV are in fact heavily scripted. Have you ever considered how boring it would be if someone filmed you and your everyday life? These people don’t just consistently ‘randomly’ bump into each other on the streets with a camera by their side; they are set up in such a way to put characters together in uncomfortable situations. But boy does it make for addictive viewing. The point I hope I’ve got at here is that next time you watch these programmes and see X kissing Z when she was supposed to be with Y, just remember – she’s probably with F in real life who has nothing to do with that show. Casts of reality TV shows are real people, they are however effectively actors in the shows.