On Sunday, Councillor Cameron Stoltz had lobster for lunch. How do we know this you ask? Because he told us in his Facebook posting.
In all the debates surrounding the phone hacking scandal and subsequent closure of The News of the World, not one mention was made of Cameron's lunch.
Of course we are being facetious in suggesting that he should have received a mention, but the point is that the scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation is symptomatic of a bigger issue.
While no right thinking person or reputable media outlet would condone the tactics employed by Murdoch's staff in chasing down a story, there's another pressing issue in what it says about us as a society in 2011.
Consider the following:
Facebook has 750 million active users who spend more than 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.
In May, the number of unique visitors to Google surpassed the one billion mark for the first time.
YouTube has more than 300 million accounts and more than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010.
As of May, MySpace had 19.7 million unique visitors and just happened to be owned by Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation until last month.
Twitter has 200 million users (twits?), generating 350 million tweets per day.
Canadians sent 56 billion text messages in 2010, more than four billion last month.
Even more disturbing is the fact that from 2006 to 2010 Google Streetview camera cars collected about 600 gigabytes of data from users of unencrypted public and private Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries.
In short, we as a society have become willing slaves to social media and in the process happily sacrificed any semblance of personal privacy.
As American painter Andy Warhol predicted in 1968, "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes."
Little did he know the unbridled passion the current generation would show in trying to achieve that goal.
From virtual reality shows like The Bachelor and Biggest Loser to Facebook, people are desperate to share every detail of their usually mundane lives with the rest of us.
This quest for attention is to a large extent why social media and papers like News of the World and the National Inquirer could exist.
If we didn't click on, text or buy a copy, these companies would not exist.
Smelling blood and an opportunity to "bite the hand that fed them," politicians like former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and movie actor Hugh Grant have turned on Murdoch with a vengeance.
Meanwhile, talk is rampant on both sides of the pond for the need to rein in the media and for public inquiries into the relationship between the media and politicians and the police.
What a shame these same commentators and politicians couldn't get as worked up over the lack of transparency and accountability on the part of governments and the bureaucracies they oversee.
So, before we join the chorus of those calling for stricter controls on the media, we should take a look in the mirror first, then perhaps consider cancelling our Facebook account in the name of good, old-fashioned privacy.
-- Prince George Citizen
