masking the gap

"The rich and the poor no longer live in two nations, at least not socially. Economic divisions may be more pronounced than ever, but we support the same football teams, watch the same television programmes, go to the same movies. Mass culture is for everyone, not just the masses." Lulled by the celebritariat

Somewhat ironically, in the same publication a rather ignorant article (though worth reading for the data despite the author's neglect to analyze its implications to their fullest) promotes the benefits of meritocracy (via the growth of online gaming networks) and how industry can instantaneous collect this data to better gear their products to the consumer (who is so generously referred to by the "father of virtual economics" as the "hairless monkey"):

"From Castronova’s perspective, the fundamentally measurable and manipulable nature of electronic media means that the time for setting theories and ideals above practical observations is now largely gone. It is no longer possible to pretend that you can change what people are like or, indeed, what they like. It’s all about using what you know."

This comment is never directly addressed. Giving itself over so blatantly to the mass of mediocrity's demands, the online gaming industry only further imitates existing industries' thirst for exploitation of interests, but with the innovative advantage of immediate adaptation of the product, which as a byproduct inhibits any chance of adaptation or growth of the consumer. Why should one question one's ridiculous demands for base gratification when they are so readily catered? This mentality spreads far beyond the virtual world.

Instead the author praises the rediscovered sense of community found in playing online checkers on Facebook, never questioning why people feel the need to play such games online, denying themselves the intimacy of immediate conversation and sometimes drawing these games out ridiculously over the course of days depending on how often they sign in to their accounts. The virtual world of gaming and social networking might be becoming more "real" but only to the extent that it is increasingly modeling our consumer-driven capitalistic world, sweatshops and all. They bring profit to the few who excel at exploiting the masses' impulses and increased complacency to the many who are thought of as no more than the compiled statistics of their purchases, which they proudly list on their Facebook pages.

"Behind this micro-transaction model is the secret of these games companies’ success: data—and data of a kind that no other online business can match. The biggest online games companies now record more than 1bn data points every day, measuring everything from whether blue or red objects generate more sales to whether a certain phrasing improves the rate at which users click on a particular purchase. They can also see, for instance, exactly when the majority of players give up, and then release several subtle variations on that precise point to different segments of their audience, recording what works best and following it up with targeted email questionnaires. And games companies have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. As Nicholas Lovell, an industry analyst, consultant and founder of the blog Gamesbrief, put it to me, “I can’t think of a single media company that couldn’t learn from the world of social and online games”—whether this is about the power of community, of precisely calibrated rewards, or of simply creating a virtual location so appealing that people will make it a part of their online lives."

Belittled into these statistics, every opinion is given equal weight and little thought is given to one's credentials or authority on a subject. Instead the perkiest voice gets the spotlight, so long as it is willing to promote the egalitarianism of the dollar. We are all equal now, and the comfort of knowing that our spokespeople are just as everyday as we are and that we are just as fashionable as they are, allows us to rest quietly, purchasing more and thinking less.

Cheers to a peachy future.