Fanatic or Foe?

It bothers me when my friends and family discount social media for something less than a brilliant marketing tool bringing global masses together. I’ve had several late night debates over the benefits and failures of Twitter, my own self dramatically involved in the future potential this one website holds for millions of individuals and hundreds of corporations.

Reading Ben McConnel and Jackie Huba’s Citizen Marketers (When People Are the Message) is going to give me one more tool to help bridge the gap and usher my peers into the social tech of the next decade.

Here are a few of the citizen marketers McConnel and Huba mentioned:
Hacking Netflix, Ilounge, The Barqs Man, and Vincent Ferrari

I definitely consider myself a fanatic when it concerns certain hobbies and leisure activities. Mostly Harry Potter and TV. I will forever be obsessed with the wizarding world imagined by J.K. Rowling, the mystical yet demonic Sunnydale of Joss Whedon’s Buffy, the special world of Peter Petrelli and The Invincible Girl set in Tim Kring’s Heroes, and currently the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica airing next Friday on the newly rebranded SyFy.

I am a fanatic about TV in my daily life; surely I could harbor this personal oddity for greatness?

The series Caprica is just beginning, and I see such potential in this beautifully original new show. I spent a couple hours of my Saturday afternoon reading up on Battlestar Gallactica, a show I’ve never seen before but follows the same timeline as Caprica, only to slightly understand the world of The Twelve Colonies better. But I want to be a part of the discussion because Caprica is posing great questions about religion and the philosophy of science.

So whether I’ll be a filter, a fanatic, a facilitator, or firecracker… I hope to find a voice among the masses.

The New Playground

A hundred years ago buildings and rooms were keeping people in, and not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally as well. Today the significance of the physical realities in our world are lessening. Today we think different.  The teenage version of my grandmother would be baffled by such alien terms as texting, blog, and website.

Information travels across the world now, through walls, and through pockets. You can be anywhere and have a meaningful experience, even alone in front of your computer. You can find out what your best friend did Friday night, or where Ashton Kutcher went for lunch on Tuesday. You can order dinner online and blog about it during breakfast telling your mom to do the same.

The environment within which all of us are allowed to play has changed. Every person is represented virtually on the internet. You’re identity transformed into something intangible yet very real. And social media supports the building blocks of that virtual existence. Who you are, what you like, how you spend your time, what you find funny, what you don’t support, what you love, what middle school you went to, where your parents grew up, where your grandma died, what you did on the fourth of July two years ago, and where you had your last birthday party… It’s all online now. (AND SO MUCH MORE) Probably. For me some of it’s in my profile on Facebook, a bulletin on MySpace, a re-tweet on Twitter, a blog on Live Journal, a Google search on my dad, or a website my thirteen year-old self made.  

I’m a little bit there, aren’t I? In all those places?

It’s not exactly me, but it sort of is.

[I’ve been watching Caprica, a new science fiction series, in it a girl is able to replicate herself virtually and later that virtual self is transferred to the real world. It’s weird and oh so interesting.]