We’ve All Become Voyeurs (Blame Reality TV)

I had never considered how reality television played such a key role in the development of mediated voyeurism and how this directly relates to blogs.  The concept completely clicked upon reading it, but I had always attributed the beginning of blogging simply as a fast self-publishing tool for a public journal.  Livejournal immediately came to mind.  The marriage between the quick status updates on MySpace and the longer journal entries seemed to make up the format for blogging.  I had not thought about  what drives people to consume blogs as much as they do other than the efficiency reason and variety of in-depth topics blogs provide.

The shift to sacrificing privacy for convenience seems to increase with the popularity of smart cellphones and tablets.  As each generation springs up, the access to information has become more effortless and the level of stimulation our society is accustomed to keeps growing.  I get to witness this much of this from working in the Apple retail environment.

Thinking about how pervasive the media is and especially television before the Internet had taken such a strong footing, it is interesting to reflect back on when the reality tv genre had started and expanded at such an alarming rate. The idea of watching people in their daily lives fulfills the curiosities of what other people do and make tv personalities appear relatable.  Thoughts are expressed in an “unscripted”/honest manner that appeals to many.  It’s the rebellion against what is “commercialized” that translates to the blogosphere so well. It’s not the critics’ point of view that many want to hear, but the opinions of the regular folk.

The empowerment to be able to contribute to the public sphere and be a mediated distributor without having to go through a third-party publisher allows freedom to post whatever one likes and in the time frame they prefer.  The benefit to the consumer is the lack of wait time to study up on massive amounts of content filtered to the interests of the reader.  It then makes perfect sense why groups in homophilous relations tend to have the same attitudes and will follow certain blogs faithfully.  It is no surprise that people tend to like others that have common interests and personalities that match their own.

There are so many mobile applications that I can think of (Zite, Flipboard etc.) that are tailored to custom reading experiences for each individual.  The application will compile articles from blogs into a magazine or online newspaper format to make it that much easier for someone to only view what they desire.  Blogs are incredibly trendy at the moment (the kairos aspect) and so it will be amusing to watch how this genre will continue to evolve or if it will eventually “blow out” as trends do thought time.