International Law

"You, there. Step back from the Webcam"

In a post at The Social (a blog for CNET News.com) Caroline McCarthy ponders what the Corey Delaney phenomenon really says about that generation:

Corey Delaney, you're making us all look bad.

Last week, the Web became all too well acquainted with this Australian teenager and the sunglasses he refused to remove. On a Melbourne-area newscast, an anchor interviewed Delaney, 16, about the bacchanalia he'd hosted at his parents' house while they were out of town--and the $20,000 fine the police served to him. He responded with the most obnoxious flavor of awkwardness imaginable. Within due time it was all over the likes of YouTube, leaving the viral-video hordes to wonder if it was real. (It was.)

What happened? YouTube fame, Facebook groups in his honor, fan Web sites, a BustedTee emblazoned with his likeness, and rumors that reality show producers wanted to hire him. We haven't seen a lemons-into-lemonade tale like this since Paris Hilton parlayed a sex tape into international stardom in 2003. Corey Delaney, like so many of today's social-media-friendly teenagers and twentysomethings, knew exactly what he was doing.

We're the Naked Generation, and we've forged quirky shamelessness and the potential for viral buzz into weapons for success. In just a few short years we've become experts in self-branding, using the tactics of celebrity exhibitionism with a heaping dose of clever irony as a means to propel ourselves to the top. We've accepted that pointing cameras at our faces is geeky and awkward, but that's all right, because we embrace all things geeky and awkward.

But every generation of trend-setting youth hits a moment when it devolves into self-parody.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on January 22, 2008 (boomark / email).