by Kirjavaa

Created on: December 29, 2006   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Welcome to the 21st century, the age of information and technology, the age in which computing has been developed to such a rate that the science fiction of instantaneous worldwide communication, implanted microchips and computerized toasters are no longer science fiction. Of course, perhaps one of the greatest examples of the human development of communications technology is the vast and ever growing universe of the virtual world. While traditionally, technology and machinery may have been seen as cold and impersonal, the internet seems to have ushered in a new era of personal site creation that has allowed everyone to have their own little planted flag in the digital world. It seems as though you can't get anywhere on the internet without bumping into yet another budding site created solely to allowing people to have their own virtual fanfare, their very own billboard sign advertising everything that is great about being...them.

At first, you had the blogging sites. Livejournal, Blogger, Xanga, Diary-X, and many many others filled the net with the promise of your very own personal space to write and say whatever you wanted, as well as allow feedback from other users about the things you had posted. While not as vapid as the more vapid MySpace and its clones, one could definitely see the roots in these sites, very often used as shout boxes for daily rants and self-promotion. With the spawning of the MySpace clones however, many moved from writing daily rants to not even writing at all, but simply having a web page all about themselves with little more substance than the listing of their favorite bands and several self-taken photographs begging to be commented on.

But what is the allure of these websites, which offer you the chance to write, to post, or simply to exist on the internet as a single page floating in a sea of other faces? Perhaps one of the strongest pulls is the allure of fame, even if only on a small scale. The blogger who puts up his daily rants no doubt is eager to read his friend list comments, and perhaps if his website has a blog showcase, to be featured and then have his daily comings and goings read by thousands of people on the net. The teenager who puts up pictures of herself, in the hopes that her impish pout and her list of favorite movies will inspire comments to fill up her page and friend requests to fill up her inbox. Nothing feels better in this context than being acknowledged, especially by people you don't know, and therefore being given the chance to put yourself out there for acknowledgment is a very powerful lure to many.

The only problem seems to be that many of these sites are moving away from the idea of sharing ideas, as many blogs did, to the idea of simply adding friends and promoting pictures, a far less worthy intellectual pursuit. Perhaps it is because as more and more of the younger generation are socialized to know how to navigate the web, it becomes necessary to have some way for people to feel as though they are being seen regardless of if they are able to express themselves through writing, though it is obviously a key to communication on the web. Perhaps the reason the trend has turned the way it has is because there is now a need for a forum which is more user-friendly in which those who seek to do less and have more can still obtain their 15 minutes of fame.

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