Here's something to titillate you.
Miss Bimbo is an online registration game where you get a "bimbo" to tend to.
The goal of the game is to make your Bimbo the " the hottest of hot Bimbos," which involves dating "that famous hottie," becoming a "socialite and skyrocket[ing] to the top of fame and popularity," and even resorting "to meds or plastic surgery", because girls should "Stop at nothing to become the reigning bimbo!"
The catch, is that the game has over 200,000 users who are between the ages seven to seventeen.
The average age is nine to twelve year old females.
How wholesome.
You can read more about this here, and here, and here.
Notice how in order to validate my claims, i provided several links to various websites. It comes from a habit garnered during the time i would write academic papers. The trick is that you always make sure that whatever you are saying, or reporting, is attributed to someone, somewhere.
It's not really a trick as much as its the law. or the rule.
it extends to journalism as well for example. if you don't attribute your claim, then you are just stating an opinion. any information, in order to be regarded as legitimate 'truth', requires for it to be backed up by someone.
but not just anyone. someone of authority. and the more someones you have, the more authoritative your 'truth' becomes. essentially then, contemporary times require that truth be a collaborative entity. the falling tree does not make any sound if there is no one to hear it.
that leads to the creation of a cataclysmic disconnect between what is perceived reality, and what is legally reality. if you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. of course, it is the preserve of sad blogger types to whine incessantly about how such situations are somehow debasing some vague notion of what 'should' be, but the fact of the matter is that this is it. how things 'are.'
but this collaboration in the creation/verification of truth is an intrinsic facet of the contemporary/western/modernized world. by having something which can be proven, you can apply a law to it. in order for laws to exist and function, there must be a ready manner for reality to be determined and be acted upon so that 'justice' can be ultimately delivered.
And modernity, as Weber foresaw, is big on rules and laws.
but if our sense of justice is based upon a system which requires you to fashion truth upon a foundation of authority, and that sense of authority resides solely within institutions and not personalities*, then some intriguing conclusions can be drawn.
*(Its a well established fact that the idea of authority stemming from individuals is a throwback from the bad days of monarchs and absolute power. Modern ideas of authority are intrinsically rooted in the ideas of institutions being the purveyors of all things worth being obeyed.just take my word for it.)
because we can now claim that we do not have to affiliate ourselves to what we know to be traditional (also known as indigenous, cultural etc) values or morals, but rather to institutions of our choosing. and institutions can be defined as “established law, practice, or custom.” Customs are “a traditional and widely accepted way of behaving or doing something that is specific to a particular society, place, or time”
Now in a world of i-want-it-i-got-it individuality customs can be rapidly established, especially those of a viral web-savvy nature. but in order for customs to be established as institutions they require validation, from some sort of institutional authority. and something like ms. bimbo can achieve that validation simply by becoming a popular website. because once you are popular, you have achieved celebrity, and celebrity status can bestow institutional authority.
i concede, that last statement was a head-spinner.
the reasons i would equate celebrity to institutional authority are many, but i would boil them down to five letters – Paris.
as in the hilton heiress. despite all your protests, what paris does is increasingly followed around the world. for all that rankles about her, people accept her as some sort of authority on how to live “the good life.”if nothing else, it can be proven that the world is extremely interested in her. a google search for her throws up 80 million websites. a search for pope benedict xvi throws up 5 million websites. george w bush, arguably the world's most powerful head of state, shows up on 49 million websites. so we can see that paris fascinates the world.
but what i must stress here is that it is not paris who is an institution, but rather her status as a celebrity. the institution here is celebrity, not paris hilton. the comparison with bush and the pope was to explain that celebrity dwarves both religion and politics. and like the pope and bush, paris won't be around forever. but in our epoch, the preeminence of celebrity as an institution will be unquestioned.
soooo, did the idea of 7 year olds jostling for breast jobs bother you? have you realised now why it shouldn't?
its how things are now. face it.
