Attention Economy

Everyone wants to be a celebrity these days. Even if one doesn't get to appear on a reality TV show or Idols, Popstars or Do You Want To Be A Millionaire, one can maintain a blog on the Internet. Nothing is too trivial or banal there: may I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen?

Let me bore you to death in the course of these following columns of personal tedium and with my ill-advised opinions no one wants to hear. Let me share with you the deadening details of the drudgery of my everyday existence. Join me in my latest nerve-wrecking neurosis and existential ennui. Do you really want to hear the explicit details of my excursion to a grocery store today or of my exciting adventures in the lift (that's "elevator" for you Merkins)? Well, countless blogists around the world seem to think so. Everyday life has become the Spectacle.

Everyone has become a brand in the so called attention economy, which feeds unbridled narcissism. A marketing-consultant-cum-lifestyle-guru in his neatly cut tailor-made suit earning thousands of euros for one hour's "lecture"; spouting for full auditoriums of CEOs platitudes of "finding one's inner hero", and receiving a standing ovation from his corporate fans.

Pseudo-celebrities whose sole claim to fame simply is that they're famous, but no one knows what for. Garish gossip mags feed off these people -- their marital crises, alcohol problems, eating disorders -- though the relationship here is not really parasitic but symbiotic. A pseudo-celebrity can't exist without the constant spotlight of publicity; otherwise she will wither like an untended flower.

I think pHinnWeb is an anti-brand, and pHinn an anti-celebrity. I am amused by the thought of someone reading any of these lines, and attaching them with "a deeper meaning", though, like everyone else, I'm fascinated with "the ecstasy of communication". The centre is eveywhere, and everyone can be a guru. May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen?