R U A Publizen?

Note to Webster: here's a new entry for you...and metrosexual hasn't even made it yet! A publizen is an individual who chooses to live his/her private life publicly via the internet. The more than 94 million users of MySpace.com and other sites like this one and Facebook.com are such people. Details of private life from ideas to frustrations to life goals and relationship issues can be found everywhere. I have a friend who doesn't even like his name mentioned in public...he is not a candidate to be a publizen.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more than half of the 12 million or so bloggers are under 30. Truly, this is a phenomenon for younger people: Generation Xtrovert, as they have been called. One theory concerning why so much of life is so public is that people would rather be publicly humiliated than privately ignored. Face it, the Northwestern women's soccer team would have had no trouble if someone hadn't posted photos on the internet somewhere to be picked up by BadJocks.com which regularly publishes photos of sports people doing really dumb and embarrassing things. Andy Warhol promised in 1968 that everyone would get his/her 15 minutes of fame, but it seems as if we'd settle for infamy as well. Web cams, camera phones and a host of other technological advances make it possible for the world to watch our lives unfold. Reality TV? sure, but there is really a limited audience...the internet will take us around the world. The Loud family in the early 70s were involved in the first reality television on a program called "An American Family," and it's possible to see just about anything on TV. I suspect, though, that television is a Boomer technology. Kids have the 'net, and it might be the only time that their lives aren't totally structured. The rest of it is spent under the watchful eye of parents, school personnel, coaches, therapists and the media. This explains how the girl from Michigan got all the way to the Middle East trying to meet a guy she met on the internet: that part of her life went unmonitored.
Can advertising be far behind? It's not; in fact, it's here. The US Marines have a site up on MySpace.com which allows visitors to become"friends" of the Corps. So far, 12,000 surfers have done so in five months. Of course, there is the "contact a representative" button if one wishes to reach an actual recruiter: 430 young people have so far done so. Toyota has a space dedicated to its Yaris, a new subcompact aimed at a younger buyer, and Verizon Wireless (go figure) can also be found at MySpace. There is little privacy anymore, and many younger people, reaching for their 15 minutes, embrace that fact. Me? As part of the witness protection program, I'm trying to maintain a low profile.