Perez Hilton (MARK THIS ONE)

Harold Innis said "changes in the mode of communication lie at the heart of social, cultural and economic evolution".

This could not be more true. If you were to ask any university or high school student who Perez Hilton is or what he does or what his website is about, there is no doubt in my mind that they would be able to tell you the correct answer. This website which is basically an online tabloid magazine with his own personal opinions about celebrity gossip. This mode of communicating the latest news about celebrities is indicative of exactly how much our society has evolved. We are now so fixated on what celebrities do, how they dress, who they're dating, that this fixation borders on unhealthy. Our society places an unnecessary amount of value on celebrities and their lives, but nobody really takes a minute to think about how they feel about this. This puts huge amounts of pressure on them to always look the part. We idolize them and so they feel like they need to live up to these standards to the point where it can be harmful for them (look at the number of celebrities in rehab for a multitude of different reasons). Even this video of Britney Spears getting mobbed by paparazzi after she just got out of rehab shows just how unhealthy and frustrating this must be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9lcJHXoPIc. There are also those instances where the paparazzi get injured as a result of this too. This got me thinking.
There is no doubt that we have evolved socially, economically, and culturally through our different uses of media but is this a good thing? The social evolution is the one that really relates to Perez Hilton and is probably the one with the biggest change, however this change might not be good. It really isn't healthy that we fixate of fame and fortune. I think we place value on things that really shouldn't mean that much.
So is this evolution a good thing? Some people don't like change, they think it is bad. Progression and moving forward is usually a good thing, as long as the things we are moving into have meaning. I think that overall our evolution with communications is amazing, but I don't think our cultural and social and even economic evolution are necessarily great.