World Wide Web and Generation of Egocentric youth

Introduction

In a polemic titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Web,” Chaudhry rails against the rise of online user-generated media. This is how she sees us: “So we upload our wackiest videos to YouTube, blog every sordid detail of our individual lives so as to insure at smallest fifty inbound connections, add 200 new 'friends' a day to our MySpace sheet with the help of friendflood.com, all the time hoping that one day all our efforts at self-promotion will merit—at the very least—our very own Wikipedia entry.” (Chaudhry, 4)

So the concept of a YouTube video of someone “farting to the tune of 'Jingle Bells'” is not to her taste? It isn't actually to ours either. But she has a larger, more rotated contention to make. And this is where her cursor lets slip off the screen, if you know what we mean.

Discussion

Chaudhry conceives the ease with which we can gain attention for revealing us on the Internet has commanded to a highly detrimental “democratization of good reputation.” Her assertions that good reputation in this new intermediate does not distinguish between persons who have a legitimate talent (she presents the demonstration of political blogger Kos) and the jingle bell farter. And because, as she sees it, this tide elevators all vessels identically, the World Wide Web holds out this chance. This directs her to wonder at what she apparently believes is a new truth: “Celebrity has become a product in itself, detached from and more precious than riches or achievement.” (Chaudhry, 4)

She then works up a lather about how juvenile people these days are much more filled with a desire to be famous than ever before, much more narcissistic, and much less eager to believe, as she extracts from one survey, that they shouldn't be the first persons to be saved from a going under Titanic. All this is the fault of the Internet, of course, with the appearing proximity of celebrity for any person with a camera; it gives us the flawless outlet for our crazed individualism. Aided by a heritage that, she says, for the last thirty years has told us, “You're exceptional; love yourself; follow your aspirations; you can be any thing you want to be,” and an “all-pervasive financial narrative,” that has taken benefit of that note to “hawk everything from movie tickets to sneakers,” the around is now complete. We are not ...