Today was my first experience of the new daily newspaper 'i', brought to us by The Independent. It's basically a condensed version of he Independent, sort of like the Metro, which rips articles from the previous day's papers and puts them in one paper for commuters to read for free. At least, that's the impression it gave to me.
It was an easy read, I browsed and I find more than one article particularly interesting. In today's edition was an article critiquing the new film The Social Network, or more to the point, critiquing the society Mark Zuckerberg has created: 'They are forging a culture in which words are things you vomit out onto a keyboard - because without the keyboard, and the screen at the other end of it, the words are nothing - and one in which an experience isn't real until it's been ratified by a photo, or a tweet, or an "update" that your "friends" can gasp at.' (Christina Patterson, My View, 27/10/10)
She has a point. Why do we sit at our computer's, updating and tweeting, almost as if we have nothing else in our lives? It is so unheard of for someone NOT to have Facebook, and even people who don't see the point in Twitter are still signing up because their friends are encouraging them to do so. There are millions of blogs just like this one, that document the writer's life because they are so desperate to write it all down and make the experience real. Whatever happened to writing in a journal or diary? Was it just a predated version of the blog? They were more private, but now we feel free to write our hopes, our fears, our tears of sadness and joy on the internet for all to access. Is that evolution?
The Social Network was well-written, well-directed, well-acted and well-edited. I doubt it will win an Oscar, but it will be nominated for awards because it tackles something that everyone is involved more and more in, and people like films that tackle "real issues" (although the issue here is probably whether or not Facebook was a stolen idea and how the man behind it is an "asshole", rather than how our culture and society has developed and moulded around the Internet and its endless possibilities).
I will be seeing Paranormal Activity 2 tomorrow. I was extremely scared by the first one. And it's taken some persuasion to go and see the sequel. But I am currently reading Feel the Fear... and Do It Anyway, so I'm doing it anyway.
