Someone should revise Andy Warhol's meme for the new century from "Everyone's famous for 15 minutes" to "Everyone's famous forever." Since nothing ever dies online, including everything you've ever done and especially wished you hadn't—fame is the least of our worries.

But for Huntsville, Alabama, resident Antoine Dodson, fame could be a good thing. It doesn't seem he had a lot going for him when a search for his name suddenly saw spikes on Google—after all, his sister was nearly raped in the apartment they shared together. But what makes the brother of an attempted rape victim  a particular standout? The difference is in, as most things go these days, style over substance.

The important lesson here is it's not only easy to find unintended fame, it's also easy find yourself in a remix with your voice synthesized. This Lebron remix of "I'm taking my talents to Miami" will probably live forever—much to his chagrin.

For Dodson, he couldn't be happier with his own remix. Hopefully he'll read some Marcus Aurelius: “Life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion.”

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (0)

Some things simply speak for themselves—so much so you don't even need to know Chinese to enjoy this near "hentai"–style retelling of the Lindsay Lohan saga. If more news outlets here resorted to apocryphal news "renactments" in 3-D, we wouldn't have to watch the live-action talking heads anymore—hacks like Shepard Smith and Keith Olbermann come to mind.

I'd much rather watch an entire newscast in 3-D animation—somehow it would make reality more absurd and thus more real.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (0)

At no other time in history has it been so easy to be both shamelessly public and anonymous. Of course, publicity and anonymity aren't inherently bad, they just need to be used with discretion, which is something that's being drowned out in the cacophony of tweets and feeds and the endless proximity of platforms for broadcasting every human urge.

Jessi Slaughter, the screen name of an 11-year-old from Florida, is the most recent flotsam of this phenomenon known as cyber-bullying. Her story, which recently swelled to Good Morning America, is a fairly textbook example of 21st-century digital detritus in the following order:

(1) Child streaming her every thought on Stickcam community, trying to get attention, (2) says something stupid and (3) becomes the mass target of trolling from a glut of anonymous cyber-bullies, including crank calls and mean emails, (4) threatens suicide and despair while her father makes cameo on video post with an angry invective, making the phrase You done goofed! an important contribution to the lexicon, before (5) dozens of parody videos ensue, and (6) GMA portrays Jessi as a martyr.

Of course no one condones meanness in any form—the punks that harassed her should be sent to some Maury Povich–style boot camp. But are they really at fault? Slaughter's reactive parents are the real culprit. This attitude of just throwing your kid a computer and a videogame to shut them up is a big reason kids are broadcasting every unpublishable thought they can muster. Technology is only a tool, not a substitute for parenting.

Though Slaughter sounds like the victim in the GMA piece, there's a video of her talking about how much she loves the attention in her online community chats. When a child seeks any kind of attention at all costs, something's rotten in Denmark.

Unfortunately, her Youtube videos have received millions of hits, which is scary because it means we love this. Reality has nothing at stake anymore—it's all just entertainment.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (1)

I'm trying not to be a Debbie Downer, but there are times when it's painfully obvious that we live in the Narcissistic Century. It seems like every day these walking personality disorders are either celebrated or vilified (Miley Cyrus, Mel Gibson, Kanye—do I need to go on?). To narcissists, ANY publicity is good publicity. And we are enabling them.

Enough has been said about Mel's rant against his former Russian hottie, so I won't throw gas on the useless fire (the tapes can be heard here and the mashup of Gibson and Christian Bale can be heard here). But isn't Gibson's bathos the culmination of a culture that is voyeuristic and ripe with schadenfreude? Indeed it is. Do we need to all become vegans and live west of the 405? Hopefully not.

But we do need to pay more attention to the symptoms and not just ask what's wrong when there's a tumor like Gibson. All this makes me think of Geoff Sarkin's live tweets during his wedding, which were posted on the New Yorker a few months ago:

"Fixing bow tie. Last moment of freedom! Putting out cig, making sure breath doesn’t smell...Okay! Let’s get married!...Yes! Yes, I do take Helen to be my lawfully wedded wife!"

For some reason, reading this is harder than listening to Mel hyperventilating. Here's a man on what's supposed to be the most important day of his life, capturing each dull moment. He's not getting married. He's watching himself get married. He thinks his observations about his wedding are more important than the wedding itself.

This compulsion really speaks to the larger issue: Can we just experience something discreetly and not have to televise every inane microcosmic thing in our life? I'm hoping we can.

This just shows not only are we coping with an era of bad taste and narcissism, but we are doing it because everyone has a platform—social media, after all, is just an amplifier. If you have nothing interesting to say, Twitter won't make you more interesting.

It all reminds me of what Barry Diller once said: "There isn’t that much talent in the world." Amen.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (2)

I have friends who are programmers. Other than some minor facial tics and a propensity for trying to be too funny or too referential toward Simpsons and Family Guy episodes, they're actually a nice group of people. In today's world, it's obvious we'd be lost without them.

But that could be changing. Digitally speaking, creativity in interaction design has always come up against the learning curve of coding. It's like we can never really fix our own plumbing—we have to hire a goddamn plumber.

Recently Google unveiled App Inventor, which is still in private beta, and it should give us R-brain types reason to be excited. (Actually, I have a killer app idea myself that I can't wait to launch—okay, laugh at me, but it's I who will be laughing as I sip from my scorpion bowl in Aruba.)

App Inventor requires no coding skill. It's simply a drag n' drop interface. Think of iMovie or Xtranormal. Here are some of the things Google says you can do with the product:

"You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackaMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend's faces. You can even make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

"But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud."

Of course, App Inventor, which is for the Android platform, is not the first to the game.

That honor would go to App Makr, which produces apps for the iPhone. It also allows nontechnical types to construct apps from scratch in a rudimentary interface, though it will still cost you $299 to release your app in the iTunes app store.

Not so with Google's App Inventor. Really, how can you hate Big Brother when he makes everything free? Hopefully we all won't be harvested in pods in the back of Google's server warehouses one day for this brazen embrace of their freewares.

By that time, it won't matter. We'll all be rich app inventors. I'm sure Google will spare the rich from this fate.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (3)

The King. Feh. If LeBron James isn't a solipsistic, megalomaniac then I don't know who is. Can you imagine how skewered Kobe Bryant would be if he left the Lakers before they won a championship? Um, you can't. The guy gets skewered even after winning one.

But LeBron is the golden boy. The nice Kobe. Yeah, right! This is a major basketball wuss. Someone who takes the easy road; someone who would rather be a supplemental player than a leader. LeBron just wants hardware. He also just wants attention. What kind of freakazoid would string his hometown fans along only to forsake them in an hour-long broadcast called "The Decision." Vomit. Much has been written about the travesty of this show, in which LeBron squirmed meekly under Jim Gray's ludicrous questions only to say he's taking "his talents to South Beach." Taking his talents?

Can you imagine if I quit my job and said, "You know what, I'm taking my talents to the Washington Post." I would be literally thrown out of this office (it's possible that I still might be escorted by security).

Anyway, enough about me.

The silver lining in this is the vitriolic, articulate screed posted by Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert minutes after "The King's" announcement on the Caveliers Website.

One thing I love about our digital age is the immediacy of it. Gilbert wasted no time calling it like it is. How he can be lambasted by some sportswriters for being mean is beyond me. I mean, the poor guy's spent millions on LeBron and was seriously shafted by a playoff-quitting, prima donna baby.

The Letter is here, but let me quote my favorite part:

"As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier. This was announced with a several-day, narcissistic, self-promotional buildup culminating with a national TV special of his 'decision' unlike anything ever 'witnessed' in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment."

I say props to Dan Gilbert. How great that he doesn't have to take this lying down. With so many of these kiss-up sportswriters out there, at least we don't have to read their hack opinions to get to the real rage Gilbert's letter represents for all Cleveland fans.

LeBron. Good riddance. Good luck with your "global brand" in Miami.

Putz.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (1)

These are good times. The Celtics lost to the Lakers. It's Summer. I'm disease free. My wife is still hot.

It's been a little over a week since the Smeltics lost—i mean choked—to the Lakers. Now, one of my favorite things to do is go to boston.com and the bostonherald.com and read posts from unhappy Celtics fans. It brings such joy to my life—well, just thinking about it now makes me smile. Who knew schadenfreude could be this wonderful?

Today, the Boston Herald ran a story about how Celtic "legend" Tommy Heinson is still upset about the loss. In the piece, he says:

"I got tired of listening to Phil Jackson create the atmosphere around the referees to watch this and watch that,” Heinsohn said. “(Celts coach) Doc (Rivers) didn’t do any of that stuff. And Kobe, on every play, if he didn’t score he was bitching about getting hit. OK? The two most protected players in the league don’t need protection - LeBron (James) and Kobe. But Kobe, I don’t know how many times he went up in the air and came down, walked, and then passed the ball, and that never got called. And he was shooting elbows at the defender to get him out of the way.

Now you know why I dislike him.”

As a Laker, reading this filled me with pure joy for Heinson's misery, but also some rage for his stupidity. Before I could even comment, another Laker brother beat me to it and made this excellent point:

"After game 3, Doc Rivers whined for 2 days about Fisher getting charge calls. Fisher never got another one. Doc ran out on the floor to call a timeout to prevent a backcourt violation—illegal. Wallace ran around the court with his mouth wide open in protest of most of his foul calls. Big baby acted like a fool just because he scored a basket in game 4, slobbering and yelling like he was having a baby. Nate Robinson yelled and jumped on Baby’s back like the series was over in the 4th game."

Again, I considered twisting the knife a little deeper into our shamrock enemies and then I read this masterpiece from another Laker comrade:

"It just shows how much this Laker victory has hurt every Celtic fan across the country. A week has passed and they still can't deal with the outcome...

Just as Boston was the better team in 2008, The Lakers were the better team in 2009 and 2010.

The difference between us and [expletive] like Heinsohn? We can tip our hats to deserving champions and Boston fans can't.

It's because of this ridiculous excuse making that makes this win the sweetest ever. Makes you want to twist the dagger in just a wee bit more, doesn't it?

Wish us well, Tommy. Kobe and Phil will be doing it, again, in 06/2011. Sadly, for Doc and the Big 3, they will have little chance in the playoffs next year. Hope you're around in another 20 years, Tommy, cause that's how long its gonna take to rebuild your team."

But no. Just to show what type of philistine, whining, self-righteous, crying, sore losers we are dealing with, and even after my fellow Lakers made some great insights, we still got comments from beantown bums like this:

"We got robbed. Did we miss shots at the end...yes...BUT...it never should have been close. Once we went up by 11, the whistles started....when it was done, we shot 17 ft's to ther Lakers 37. Fantom foul calls against the Celts and non-calls against the Lakers on obvious fouls on the Celts. Think it is a good time to boycott basketball again. David Stern is a joke."

It's a good thing Celtics fans didn't run the Warren Commission, for surely they would've arrested Marilyn Monroe instead of Lee Harvey Oswald.

If only this moment could last forever...

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (0)

Sometimes I find myself hating the Internet. On those days, I feel tormented by its relentlessness and immediacy. Who cares that Lindsay's alcohol bracelet went off?! Okay, so a cop punched a woman in Seattle. Do I have to watch it? It's like I have to follow every tweet, every blurb, every index, or I will somehow devolve into a slug.

Then something happens where I suddenly realize its tremendous democratizing value. Like, what other medium would allow some guy to start a free online university based on instructional YouTube videos he initially posted for family and friends.

Salmon Khan, a native New Orleanian with three degrees from MIT and one MBA from Harvard, would be just the right guy to do this. Now his Website, Khan Academy, which features more than 1,400 videos of instruction, has 100,000-plus students a month and upwards of 40,000 video views a day.

Did I mention that it's free? Most of the videos are in mathematics, which is fine by me. Americans students, after all, are way behind their counterparts in Asia and Europe in that field. With public schools failing and an overall feeling of Weltzschmerz sweeping the nation from things like oil spills and Celtics, Khan's solution is just the ticket.

The cool thing about his videos is they don't consist of some erudite academic standing in front of a podium in tweed. Instead, students look directly at the problem Khan is working out—and he does all this from a converted closet in his Silicon Valley home.

Of course, traditional universities are now posting their lectures on YouTube and while this is a great positive step for making higher education accessible, it really doesn't go all they way. If anything, the intention is probably more of a teaser or a showcase for the school to get students to apply—a classic upsell strategy.

But online learning shouldn't be piecemeal. With school budgets being slashed and the economy floundering, citizen initiatives like Khan Academy may be our nation's best bet for making quality education available. I guess this Internet thing isn't so bad after all.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (0)

Remember when you had to actually call people back? Now you can text them and pretend you're vaguely interested. Network connectivity has been a fabulous way to maintain a circle of "loose ties" so that when you need a recommendation for a job, you can email that friend you've avoided having lunch with. After all, you commented on their Facebook status—why, come to think of it, you've been in touch all these years! But wait, did you know that person's mom died? Er, no.

With the unveiling of Apple's new Facetime feature on the fourth-generation iPhone from Mr. Jobs today, that's all about to change. If there's been one thing missing from the digital deluge of ways to communicate (and avoid communicating), it can be boiled down to one word: intimacy.

Yes, now through this new video chat, you can tell the Romulans you're going to target them with your proton laser before you blast them to smithereens. But only if they ALSO have a fourth-generation iPhone. Smart move, Apple.

The return of intimacy is is a powerful proposition. When you have a video chat with your wife, she'll know if you have a genuine level of interest in hearing about the broken sprinklers—more important, she'll be able to know if you're lying about something. (Women, however, through their superior intuitive powers, probably don't need an iPhone application to be good at this. It's just that men will stop trying to lie or feign interest.)

Another way Facetime will deliver a blow to matrimony is through porn. Men will be chatting with their paid mistresses on levels that almost approach the French.

Jobs claims Facetime is an open system—whatever that means. I have the sense that "open" to Apple is about as open as the NSA. QIK, which is another video calling application for Android, was also put to use last Friday with the arrival of the HTC EVO 4G.

So, when Jobs says "open," does he actually imply there will be compatibility between competing platforms? It's not too much to ask. Imagine back when you had a landline if, in order to have a conversation, the other caller had to have a certain brand of phone. That would suck. And so do Apple and Google if they don't play nice.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (1)

It's amazing anyone gets any work done. Sometimes I wish I did something pure and analogue all day like make bobbleheads or catch butterflies—in other words, measurable things.

Meanwhile, as someone with a “computer” job, I have to cope with the great bounty of distractions that get thrown at me all day. Most of these are a welcome relief—like the clip about the Skype laughter chain. But many of them are pointless and vapid, like the one from a publicist about vajazzling. At the end of the day, I feel as if I've been raped by ennui.

But that's now changed since I discovered the site xtranormal. The site has taken type-to-voice technology to the next level. You simply select a scene with a couple of characters and write your dialogue out between them—you don't even have to be an aspiring animator or filmmaker. It's disgustingly easy. What's impressive is how the site’s designers took some very complex variables like gestures and facial expressions and made them literally drag ’n’ drop simple. This type of site shows the creativity of the Web at its best. I'm amazed that marketers haven't jumped on this bandwagon. But then like the comedian Bill Hicks once said to a crowd: “Does anyone here work in advertising or marketing? Well if you do, when you get home, take a gun and shoot yourself. No bullshit, I'm not joking—just do it.”

I created my own movie below. I've also included some notable homemade movies I found on You Tube.

COMMENT    READ COMMENTS (1)