This past weekend was a media carwreck that you just couldn't help but get a little sucked into...the death of Anna Nicole Smith. The more you tried to avoid it the more ways the rumors and "news" surrounding her life and death crept into your world. What's the real story there? What's true? What's genuine? What's authentic?
I am NOT fascinated by this story for its content as much as for its hold on all types of media...traditional and new media - worldwide - instantly practically. I am sketchy on the details but I got home from errands about two hours after her death was announced on CNN and I had the feeling that I had really missed the boat. What I mean is it was a HUMONGOUS news story (I am not here to debate the merit of it being such news - merely stating the facts as I saw/observed/felt/experienced them) - and now there are so many channels (not the old fashioned kind - Two, Four and 49) to get information that you can't possibly cross reference them all to glean the "actual story" out of everyone's spin.
So I wonder - what does authenticity really mean to most people these days? Is it a quaint value that is slipping away like handwritten thank you cards, fish forks and finger bowls?
We live in a world where some people proudly buy a FAKE Louis Vuitton bag that looks really really really like the real thing but then they tell everyone how little they spent to get a bag that looks just like the genuine article. It could be argued:
(a) The purchaser of the fake is more authentic because while they buy it for the status they also are very forthright about its very inauthenticity!
-or- (conversely)
(b) The purchaser of the geniune purse is more authentic because they bought the Real McCoy.
It's a silly example but it does give one pause to think...
What is authentic these days?
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