MySpace is such an odd phenomenon. A bit back, through your basic three click wandering, I stumbled on Drew Carey’s MySpace. As a couple of my musician friends know, you’re always apprehensive when you come across someone of some fame on a public site like that, so I did some poking around and managed to confirm it was indeed. Clicked a couple more links, found a couple of other folks. Mused on the oddness, went on with life.
So anyhow, I was reading one of another of the blogs found during that click-thru (Proops’) this morning, and did a doubletake at one of the names listed. Click. Holy… Click click. Whoa! Click – good god, he did gastric bypass and looks fabulous! …and is online right now. Strange.
And then found myself sort of flipping a bit, at the weird stalker feeling of knowing someone is online, someone with some modicum of fame – a name, at least, that I recognize, and someone I would likely be tonguetied to be in front of. And also just the very odd of knowing that someone “like that” – that is, someone with that bit of fame and such that would leave me in a bit of awe – is doing something so simple as sitting on a computer somewhere and poking at their own computer keyboard, browsing the same basic site as me. It’s a small world collapsing feeling.
It’s been known for a while that Milgram’s original 6 degrees wasn’t necessarily as accurate as portrayed, and is certainly nothing like what popular media has done with it. And yet, these strange moments of collapsing world make me realize that the technology does exist that allows us to be just a few clicks away from anyone.
It’s a very dizzy sort of thing.
“basic three click wandering…”
I like that phrase.
They used to say about celebrity, “yeah he is an ordinary guy puts his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us”. I think I know the world collapsing feeling you are speaking of. I remember once going to a Taco Time after work and saw Jay Buhner of the Mariners walk in and order some food with his family. I guess his kids just had a craving for some fast food like the rest of us.
I couldn’t ever get into myspace. I think I finally deleted mine. And your run in with Drew Carey made me realize that I’ve met (at least been in the same place at the same time) Edward James Olmos. He was MC’ing a festival the Balinese gamelan was playing at. (Yeah, latino-inspired festival, Balinese gamelan. You figure that one out, but it was a lot of fun.) So unassuming I forgot I met the guy. ๐
Yeah, Gordon – the funny thing is, nine times out of ten, when I actually meet someone who’s some sort of celeb or another, I can handle myself well and not kick myself after (unless it’s Neil Gaiman, in which case I just turn into a gibbering idiot, sigh). But for some reason, it occasionally just seems so weird to see someone on a DVD one day, and two clicks from your MySpace list the next.