While reading various news stories this morning, it struck me how a story will break in one place, and spread quickly through related news sources over the following minutes.Somebody will get the scoop, and then the geek army seems to descend - quickly followed by the unwashed masses.
Nowhere is this more true than within the realm of the celebrity bloggers. I have no idea where the “news” (if you can call it that) comes from, but it seems to travel incredibly fast. Perhaps the increasing usage of services such as social networks and microblogs is serving as a high speed dissemination network of sorts.
Example - somebody with a mobile phone camera (or a whacking great SLR) will take a photo up a Z lister’s skirt (insert “Lindsay Lohan”, “Britney Spears”, “Jessica Simpson”, or “Miley Cyrus” as appropriate), and take a picture off whatever she is or isn’t wearing. That photo will be sold very quickly to an agency, then get ripped off immediately - appearing on FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter - with the various eschelons of the “technorati” expressing their disbelief that (insert name) has anything more anatomical to show anybody…
The fire then really starts. Countless blog postings spread across the WordPress, Typepad and Blogger universes.The search engines index the blogs, and suddenly several million teenagers search results reflect the content they were searching for while sidestepping the parental controls.
Perhaps the old maxim that “all publicity is good publicity” still holds true. Perhaps it’s a shame that no mystery is allowed to exist any more, and that no level seems too low to stoop to. Who remembers the paparrazi managing to aim their cameras up Emma Watson’s skirt on the day she was 18? (the first day they could without being arrested for indecency).
Where will it all end?