Living In The Era Of Cute by Jeremiah Smith
Last Saturday night I went out drinking in downtown Los Angeles. As I was walking up to The Edison on 2nd and Main I updated my status from my Blackberry. “Out boozin’ in downtown”, I informed my 22 Twitter (@eyevandrago) followers and 384 Facebook friends. Throughout the night I was snapping pictures of my fellow revelers with my digital camera. The next morning I woke up at 9:00 AM, and despite a slight hangover I diligently posted every picture I had taken the night before on Facebook. I had a few shots of a homeless man dressed up as pirate I thought had turned out particularly well so I posted them on Flickr. Then, I went on social networking and restaurant review site Yelp to voice my opinion about the 2 of the 3 bars I had visited. The Edison: 1 Star because the line was too long and I didn’t get in. The Association: 4 Stars because they use all freshly squeezed fruit juice in their cocktails. One night out and apparently it was interesting enough to share on 4 different websites.
I am part of a growing portion of society that enjoys publishing their lives on the Internet. A recent Pew study found that 11% of Internet-using adults regularly use status updates. Among the younger 18-34 year-old demographic 20% are “microblogging” via sites like Twitter and Facebook. Millions of people around the world are willingly giving up their right to privacy and sharing intimate details about their lives and activities on the Internet. Why do we do this? Why do we go online to post videos, pictures, and personal information, send public messages to friends, publish our travel plans and even share our GPS coordinates with the world?
This was the question I was pondering as I was preparing to meet popular blogger and video podcaster Chris Leavins. Chris writes, produces, edits, and anchors www.cutewithchris.com, a weekly video blog which in his words is meant to “celebrate and skewer the puppy and kitten thing”. Chris is a Canadian actor who, according to his website, has starred in several Canadian TV shows “you probably haven’t heard of”. He launched Cute With Chris in 2006 as a spoof on the over-abundance of websites he was finding dedicated to pets. Chris found it hilarious how many animal lovers were online posting pictures of their dogs and cats, and he was fascinated with the thousands of strangers that apparently found pleasure in viewing and commenting on these photos. His blog began as satire, and has since evolved into “one of the strangest, most original, and passionate communities on the web”. Cute With Chris videos frequently garner hundreds of thousands of views with several of the episodes topping a million. I figured if anyone could answer my questions about society’s obsession with self-generated publicity via new media it was Chris. He had, after all, achieved what I assume we are all striving for in our status updates, photo sharing, and restaurant critiques; he had captured the attention of the masses.
Chris showed up to our group interview a few minutes late wearing a burnt orange sweater over a collared shirt, fitted jeans, and slip on vans. His face was unshaven and I wondered how long he’d worked to make his hair look so stylishly disheveled. Based on the Chris Leavins I’d spent the afternoon researching I expected a garrulous, energetic, and charmingly obnoxious Internet host. The Chris Leavins sitting in front of me was quite the opposite. Instead of introducing himself he apologized in a thick Canadian accent for forgetting at home the presentation he was going to give, then looked out at the group and let an awkward silence begin our time together. As the interview geared up, he answered our questions succinctly and didn’t elaborate on any topic unless pushed. He talked about being a self-admitted hermit, his passion for reading memoirs, and how he doesn’t see any major differences between Canada and the United States. He likes Los Angeles because of its laid back vibe, the slow pace of life, and the creative community he’s found here. When asked, he said he misses the “glamour and excitement of Canada”.
Chris does not fit the stereotype of what I imagine to be the typical Internet personality. In a cyber landscape made up of attention hungry bloggers, political pundits, and quasi-celebrities like Tila Tequila, Chris is the antithesis. I didn’t realize until he told me that Cute With Chris contains almost no personal information about its namesake and star. There are no pictures of his apartment, no information about his friends, and definitely no details about where he went drinking last Saturday night. He has a Facebook account but he keeps it private and uses it exclusively to keep in touch with people back home.
Chris supports himself and his blog by continuing to act in Canada. He is planning a new Internet project in which he’ll do readings of the large collection of short memoirs he’s written. He even has ambitions of publishing a novel some day. It turns out Chris is nothing close to the Internet attention whore I expected him to be. He’s an artist who has skillfully taken advantage of the capabilities of new media. The best thing that’s come from his blog, he says, is the publicity it’s generated for his live shows. Before Cute With Chris he was doing one man shows in Los Angeles and Canada and nobody was showing up. Now, he is selling out multiple week runs of Cute With Chris Live.
So here we are. Me, a virtual nobody who broadcasts mundane details about his life that very few people ever see, and Chris Leavins who has hundreds of thousands of fans that would devour any morsel of personal info, but who guards his privacy fiercely. At first, I thought an internet star with a private life was a contradiction, but then, I realized Chris is just like the TV or movie actor that runs from the paparazzi. And I’m no different that the average citizen who throws a viewing party when interviewed on the local news. The difference between Chris Leavins and Brad Pitt, aside from the obvious scale of fame, is that Chris has complete control of his medium. The Internet is the media of the future. It is the paparazzi, the news, and our entertainment. Anyone with an email address can be a photographer, a restaurant critic, and can even send out press releases in the form of status updates. It makes us feel important, even if no one ever sees it. In the World Wide Web, just like the forms of media that came before it, those of us without fame want it, and many of those who have it could do without it.
Jeremiah is: done writing this article, and heading off to bed.
