Ambient Stupidity

Have you seen this video of Miss South Carolina‘s answer to a question during the Miss Teen USA pageant?

If this cannot be used as a prime example as to why South Carolina needs more funding for educating THEMSELVES then I have no idea what possibly would be.

Can you say trainwreck?

So I read this post over at Mashable, one of the many feeds I read.  Basically it is about Ryan Fitzgerald of Southbridge, Massachusetts who posted this video:

Does any of this sound familiar?  Maybe because it appears as an unrefined and not really thought out copy of the Luke Johnson Phone Experiment that got posted back in September of 2006.  I will acknowledge that Ryan appears more interested in the “people” aspect of it… allow me to stress the word appears once again.

So even in the aftermath of the Kathy Sierra saga, people are still putting unprotected information about themselves on the Internet.  Why would someone do this?  I have yet to see an online set of safety rules say, “Be totally honest about your name, age, and location.” You really have to wonder whether this kid has paid attention to anything in the news about cyber-stalkers or internet predators, especially after offering to actually “meet” people.  Of course there are always alternative motives, since according to Ryan’s twin brother Sean who was interviewed in a Boston.com article about the video, it may help them break into modeling/acting.  So basically… they’re looking to generate a buzz about themselves.  However, his poor planning may in fact cost him more than it was worth.  It turns out his cell phone company does not have an unlimited plan like Luke Johnson… so after his free weekend is up… he’ll be paying cash for the calls.  Duh.

It’s one thing to offer yourself up on the altar to try and get those 15 minutes of fame, but its an entirely different thing to offer other people up.  There has been recent backlash at the media for the airing of the video by Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho.  When you think about it, he and Ryan are pretty much the same.  They both want attention.  Cho decided to get his attention by wrongfully ending the lives of 32 other people, so that he could get his face seen and his message of depressive rage heard.  Ryan decided to get his attention by offering to be a good listener for people who want to talk.  The methods are radically different… but the desired effect is the same.  We as a society have enabled it through the media.  The backlash the media has seen recently?  They’re just giving us what we want… and they know it but are too kind to rudely point it out to us.  Oh… and Ryan will in fact be appearing this morning on the Today Show.

To a certain degree… I too am like Cho and Ryan.  I have an obsession with myself being a celebrity just as they do.  I’m just not willing to go to such extremes for it… instead… I’ll just blog about it which is my chosen method of garnering attention to myself.  Afterall… if I didn’t want SOME attention… then I would have either never given out my URL or I would never have started a blog in the first place.  We are a society obsessed with the celebrity of ourselves… we are… for all intense purposes… attention whores.