Exhibitionists Reign Supreme

In a world of too much competing for everyone’s attention, individually it’s harder to get noticed. This could explain why vast segments of the population have turned to online exhibitionism. Writing in the Washington Post, economist Robert J. Samuelson says, “ It turns out that the Internet has unleashed the greatest outburst of mass exhibitionism in human history.”

“Everyone may not be entitled, as Andy Warhol once suggested, to 15 minutes of fame. But everyone is entitled to strive for 15 minutes -- or 30, 90 or much more… This is no longer fringe behavior. MySpace has 56 million American "members." Facebook, which started as a site for college students and has expanded to high school students and others, has 9 million members. …YouTube, a site where anyone can post home videos, says 100 million videos are watched daily.”

Samuelson notes, and it’s hard to counter, that “People seem to crave popularity or celebrity more than they fear the loss of privacy.” However, “what goes on the Internet often stays on the Internet. Something that seems harmless, silly or merely impetuous today may seem offensive, stupid or reckless in two weeks, two years or two decades. Still, we are clearly at a special moment.”

Samuelson concludes by noting that “Henry David Thoreau famously remarked that ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Thanks to technology, that's no longer necessary. People can now lead lives of noisy and ostentatious desperation. Or at least
they can try.”