Edison Chen, Broadband TV and the Digital Fame Game

Posted on March 7, 2008
Filed Under What's New |

I wonder could Edison Chen’s story have gone so big without broadband television or broadband Internet?

Put another way is the fame game today a result of all the new tv channels, in the sense we have to fill broadband with something? Or did it all happen the other way round? There really were millions of people who wanted to be more exhibitionist and just didn’t have the TV channels to prove it.

By the way Fame Tv which was supposed to catalyse the amateur pursuit of fame doesn’t seem to have lived up (or down) to expectations.

Chen, you may remember is the man who has serially exposed a group of his girlfriends to a global audience. They happened to be naked and often in one or another stage of intercourse with Chen. Who is holding the camera? Usually him.

I find the Chen case interesting because it tells us we have two new sociological trends to understand. The first is the intimacy we now have with cameras. Cameras are everywhere including the bedroom. Cameras are in the streets in some countries, in railway stations, shops, garages, hotels…. But to takae the step and have them as part of our most intimate acts is mind blowing. Sure, I can see the erotic payoff too but a wider public is inevitable and you guess that is part of the motivation.

In the case of Paris Hilton’s video of course it did her no apparent harm. Let’s face it, it got her name out more. And that trade off to is fascinating. Revealed but a star.

Decades ago (or maybe just years) we built social mores around the distinction between what is private and what is public. Clearly we are changing the boundaries and I wonder what motivates that. The technology? Pent up desire? Emulating the stars (Hollywood kittens usually end up naked in at least one film, so is it a role model kinda thing?).

The second trend is best summarised as live performance. Live is available in so many places on the web and it creeps into the home through broadband. Live performance can be live semi-sensual webcams, recorded YouTube clips, and even Chen’s sex videos or those of Paris Hilton. Live simply means largely unscripted and unedited.

It is the other side of the coin from private. The public display of our sex lives as they happen. As we get more technology and more bandwidth I wonder how these things will change?

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