I too am an Individual
Reading 'Internet Fictions' (2009), ed. Sirpa Lepannen, Ingrid Hotz-Davies and Anton Kirchhoffer. The highlight is an article by Inger H. Dalsgard on marketing to 'generation 2.0': how a unique selling paradigm (which I remember from my experiences in publishing) and others has given way to a 'me-selling paradigm': selling the experience of customization, uniqueness, and product-ownership. Marketers understand the consumer's key question as no longer 'What can it do for me?' but 'What can I do to it?'. It discusses how the creation of 'buzz' and viral marketing create a sense of ownership in a generation over-saturated with advertizing and already-trained to read it critically. It's not defeatist, in the sense of denying the possibility of a self-created identity, but I think it's a very useful counter to over-positive narratives of media convergence (Cough *henry jenkins* cough. I'm not dissing Henry, I do love and admire you. But 'Convergence Cultures' is a little rose-tinted for my skeptical British sensibilites.)Anyway I've got a meeting with my supervisor tomorrow to see what he thinks of my lit review so far - which is annoying because I only got Internet Fictions on library loan yesterday, and have consequently made my lit review much better since sending it. Ce La Vie, I got the draft in, which nearly killed me. G2g as teaching tonight and have to finish notes first.