As my classmates may already know (in which case, sorry for the redundancy), my first life-changing interaction with Web 2.0 was not with Facebook. It wasn’t even with MySpace. Rather, it was in the form of traditional media (the O.G. of traditional media, might I add): the book.
Specifically, a young adult novel by one Cecily Von Ziegesar, Gossip Girl. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, but in case you haven’t, it chronicles the lives of impossibly wealthy high schooler’s who freely roam the streets of Manhattan in haute couture. Now, what I was doing reading these books at age 13 (or how I got my Mom to buy them for me) is beyond me- they’re ludicrously inappropriate for anyone under the age of 17 to be reading (and 17 is even pushing it).
Through GG I gathered that French cigarettes were not gross and don’t cause cancer, that labels were to be lusted after, and that talking s*** about one’s peers anonymously online was a big hit. It got me thinking: is Gossip Girl really at the root of my generation’s obsession with Web 2.0? (more…)
Studious Musings 