16 days ago. I started a post about Rihanna and Chris Brown. The two had just made and were just about to make (respectively), very public reveals on the details of the 'incident' and what has transpired since. The web was abuzz with the news and everybody was chiming in, expressing their varying views on the matter. I intended to do the same.
Somehow - just as I was about to drive my point home - about 5 paragraphs into it, I got side-tracked. I left the post there and didn't come back to it until just now. On many occassions when it suddenly struck me how I hadn't posted anything in a while, I considered finishing it up but realised it was no longer "current" and wouldn't help my blog stay "relevant".
It is a shameful irony, and I'll tell you why... That very same post was about the throw-away manner in which we all brazenly help ourselves to the juiciest titbits of people's personal lives, gorge ourselves on every detail and then go on to leave a long trail of judgement and ridicule in our wake. We treat the actual everyday lives of the people we consider to be in the public eye as much part of our daily entertainment as Monday night sitcoms or the boxoffice opening weekend of This Is It. The hype builds up just as fiercely, the buzz takes over just as combustively and the whole thing is forgotten just as quickly.
I tried to paint a human face on these two rockstars and maybe get us all to start questioning how much of them we were actually entitled to own. I was outraged by what I'd seen on blogs, websites, Twitter steams and Facebook feeds about these two kids. I felt they mattered more than that, they deserved better...
But apparently not from me. A mere 16 days later and I don't feel so strongly. It's not top of mind anymore. In fact, I had to re-read my 5 paragraphs to remind myself what my point was exactly!
Hypocrisy? Could it be?
Admitting there is a problem is the first step to fixing it, so I am finishing that post and I am putting it up. Why? Because I was 21 once and if the web was as big then as it is now, somebody could just as easily have ended up blogging, tweeting or facebooking about me!
[Update - 16:38 It's up! http://thewebandi.blogspot.com/2009/11/mote-in-your-public-eye.html]
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