I didn’t want to be the only blogger on the planet to miss posting on this story.
Time Magazine has named YOU as their Person of the Year.
If you haven’t caught up on the details you can check out their story by clicking here.
They’re pretty much saying that we all now have the opportunity to shape our world by publishing on-line. We have blogs, YouTube and so many other ways to interact on a world scale so we have now all become Person of the Year.
I must say that this is clever marketing at its best. Surely they would have known that as soon as they bestowed this honour upon us, we’d immediately reach for our keyboards and publish the details. We want everyone to know that we’ve reached this lofty height and that we’re all so incredibly important. We must be, Time said so. Instantly they have millions of dollars worth of advertising spreading across the globe absolutely free.
Ironically we’re all now plugging the technology that we’re supposed to be replacing. The print medium may be suffering from the easy access to information on-line but Time has managed to use the internet to throw the spotlight back onto themselves. Brilliant.
My vote for the real person of the year? Whoever it was that came up with the idea to make the rest of us Person of the Year.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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at last!
fame!
success!
irony…
So it really is all about me. I mean, us.
Well, I hate to break their bubble, but AMP were using the old “you are the most important person in the world” slogan back in the ’80s.
Still, with so many blogs or myspace pages (or even the old Geocities pages from 1997) or whatever being published these days, one wonders whether the influence of each is diminished in some capacity.
And now for something completely different…
Carina is back driving our producers nuts.
I told her I would tell Rodney, and so now I have told Rodney.
But she’s the Person of the Year too. 🙂
Good to hear from you Lance.
…. and we now return you to our scheduled programming,
My acceptance speech was prepared in advance…
I would like to thank my wife, my Mum, my year 8 typing teacher and my 11th grade computer teacher for this award 😉
man… I was hoping that I would make it some day, but I didn’t know that i would have to share it with so many other people.
Mr. Olsen,
I disagree (with most bloggers, it seems) about WHO really received TIME’s “Person of the Year.” It is not you, or me, or us. It is the Internet itself. TIME has anthropomorphized the Internet, as if it is a “you,” an “us,” a Being. One headline in the TIME article even refers to the “Person Of The Year” as the Beast… “The Beast with a billion eyes.” It is not really about US. It is about what we are building: the Great Thing.
Besides, it appears that most contributors to the WWW do so pseudonymously, even anonymously. There are few “persons” here; there are mostly personae, alter egos; mere fictions at worst and mere fragments at best.
What’s really telling, I think, is that TIME’s own editor, shown in a picture holding a copy of the “Person of the Year” issue, is also shown as the face on the cover. In other words, and this should disturb us all, TIME has awarded the “Person of the Year” honor to itself.
This “honor” is not merely pathetic. It is, frankly, quite scary. But if it is not scary, it is at least curiously twisted. Hopefully we are shrewd enough to see it: TIME has actually noted, not the “Person of the Year,” but the “Thing of the Year.”
Blessings!
BG
Thanks everyone for your comments on this one.
By the way, Bill, the reason that you can see the editor’s face on the cover when he is holding the magazine is that the real cover does not have the word YOU in the middle of the computer screen. It has a shiny panel which reflects like a mirror. The idea is that when you pick up the mag you see your own face, showing that YOU are the person of the year. Not the internet, not the computer, not Time magazine, YOU.
Your theories are interesting, Bill, but I think you missed the point.
Dear Rodney,
I appreciate what you are saying, but I disagree. I get the point exactly: we are all “Person of the Year.” Which is nonsense, since WE is plural, and TIME did not print just one cover that with a mirror on it. So TIME means for this to be a plural unity, or a unified plurality.
But when TIME describes the “Person of the Year” as “The Beast with a billion eyes,” we are now venturing into something utterly strange: Is the Person of the Year a Beast? What does this even mean?
Moreover, when we look in our individual mylar mirrors on TIME’s cover, we see the reflection of ourselves: but far too many creators of this new medium are not even real: TIME admits this when it discusses fabricated personae. When Joe Smith looks at his TIME cover, he sees Joe Smith: but the persona of himself he presents — and would find — on the WWW is not Joe Smith, for he only writes as Josephine Babesmith. Joe Smith is not there at all in any substantive, even self-reflective, way.
I grant that I may be straining at straws. But at least I see that they are straws.
They are, right?
Blessings to you!
BG
Thanks for continuing the conversation, Bill.
I’m particularly intrigued by your interest in the anonymity of the internet. When it really comes down to it, how many of us present our true persona in any setting anyway?
I agree that the internet allows us to present ourselves as someone vastly different than who we truly are but we do that in public life in more subtle ways every day.
Do we display all our doubts and faults openly in our workplace? Do we try to demonstrate how flawed we are when we meet people for the first time?
We all present ourselves in the best light possible whenever we can. It’s no conspiracy, just human nature.
I find life a lot easier if I’m not looking for a conspiracy or hidden meaning under every rock.
I really don’t think that there’s anything sinister in what Time has done. They’ve simply hit upon a great marketing campaign for their magazine and by the simple fact that I’m posting about it and you’re looking for hidden agendas means that it’s working for them. They want to be talked about and whether we agree on what’s behind it or not, we’re playing right into their hands.
Dear Mr. Olsen,
I don’t believe TIME’s agenda is hidden. I believe it doesn’t fully realize what it has done.
What IS this thing we are building beneath our fingertips? What IS the Internet, and where is it going? Do WE (the simple you and I of the WWW) really control the information age?
There is nothing conspiratorial in these questions. They are raw and direct; they look at the data and wonder. But there is no small irony in the fact that the Christian vision of the end of the world very much includes the notion that The Beast — some sort of anti-Christ — is a foe of humanity, and not a friend. Can I find no small irony in all of this, namely, that TIME referred to the Internet as The Beast and has given it some vestige of personality, if not personhood?
And isn’t it at all fascinating that the editor of TIME is pictured with his own face reflecting on TIME’s cover? Is this not TIME’s award to itself in some small way (besides moving culture and boosting sales)?
Yes, you are right: we all break ourselves up into little pieces (or big pieces) to some extent. But we ought not to, I think. It is ultimately deleterious to the soul: psychologists and novelists and priests have long urged us to seek integrity, to bring cohesion and coherence to the psyche. That the Internet in many ways invites us to splinter ourselves even more concerns me a great deal.
Look. I had professors tell me that I was a “divergent linear/divergent sequential” thinker. I have no idea what that even means, but it not only sounds good, it sounds like it applies here. I have diverged in my interpretation of what TIME has done. There is no doubt that I could be diverging too far, that I’ve gone way out of line.
But it’s all kind of fun. Heaven knows that had I remained safe within the lines, I would not have made your acquaintance. If I can conclude one thing with any certainty, it is that I am glad to have landed here.
Peace.
BG
I agree that it’s great marketing. I actually emailed my suggestion to Time, which was James Kim. Oh well.
I think making “you” the person of the year was one of the worst marketing ideas I have ever seen. Rather than highlighting the “power” of individuals using the internet, blogs, etc., it really seems like TIME either 1.) ran out of any decent ideas for actual, individual people (“person of the year, hullo”) or 2.) does not have the mental fortitude to actually make a decision one way or the other. To homogonize the choice to an ambivalent, collective “you” is a dull, witless way to sell magazines. The only reason I would even thinkg about buying it is because of the shiny mirror on the front ;).
I don’t think I would want this kind of publicity if I were them, especially since most of us are ridiculing it.