cooler online?

Unfortunately, I have already seen You've got mail, and Wall-E sounded ridiculous as well. Paisley's video seemed funnier (and less time consuming) to watch. It was pretty dumb though-a great example of what country "music" has become. It seems I'm a little grumpy this morning.

The Paisley video, "So Much Cooler Online," is exactly what it sounds like. It portrays what seems to be a thirty-something, short, balding, dorky pizza delivery boy (Jason Alexander), who of course still lives at home, using the internet as a way to escape into a world where he is "so much cooler." The video begins with Alexander delivering pizza to a nice house where there is certainly a party going on. The blond stud who answers the door takes the pizza and slaps Alexander on the forehead with the cash--"keep the change jerkwad," he says. A disappointed Alexander gets in his car, pushes play on his laptop, and says, "Wow, I want to be him" (Paisley). Apparently, Alexander has an alter-ego online, where he is a 6'3" rockstar who drives a Maserati. He also has 3-ways (chats) with beautiful women. In the end though, Alexander realizes that his life online is not his own and is worthless if it has no relevance in the "real world." He puts on his band outfit, straps on his tuba, and marches off into the sunset with the girl next door.

For the most part, this video seems to be a sort of lesson in that it shows that life online is not to be taken seriously and does not bring legitimate happiness or self-efficacy. Not only was Alexander's character revealed for who he really was, his online lady-friends' personal exaggerations were also brought to light. Apparently, they weren't as attractive or exotic as they had let on. For me though, the video brought some insight to what we are like as people--what we value. Not only are we expected to be a certain way in life, tall, blond, famous, and wealthy, we should strive to be so online even if we cannot do so in real life. What I mean to say is that we don't even try to escape the ridiculousness online, rather, we reiterate it and even exacerbate it. Why didn't Alexander try to find a place online where the real him and his real interests would be accepted? Why does he still fantasize about the "beautiful" people who reject him?

I suppose this brings us back to the question of "are we better off" with such technology? I think we realize by now that the answer is both yes and no. The logistic "we" is certainly better off--life is easier anyway. I think though that the Paisley video shows us that the personal and conscious "we" is greatly compromised by anything that comes between us in our self-portrayal and communication, or that enhances our ability to not be or understand ourselves. However, I also think it is evident that the real problem does not exist in the technology itself, but in our own human behavior. I think that maybe our brains are entirely too capable of inventing shiny pacifiers, yet are all too limited in their ability to discern legitimate happiness and purpose from such pacifiers. We are also unable to see it when technology is the the greatest factor controlling such perceptions. I leave you with a relevant quote from Postman:

"Marx argued that history had its own agenda and history was taking us where it must, irrespective of our wishes. Freud taught that we had no understanding of our deepest needs and could not trust our traditional ways of reasoning to uncover them. John Watson, the founder of behaviorism, showed that free will was and illusion and that our behavior, in the end, was not unlike that of pigeons. And Einstein and his colleagues told us that there were no absolute means of judging anything in any case, that everything was relative." (54-55)