Culture

Celebrity Presence And The Failed Die-Out

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Awhile ago a variety of celebrities declared themselves dead, not Tweeting and such until enough donations to fight AIDS came in.  Despite this being for a good cause, it was a failure at the time as noted.  The site now appears to have donations up to par, but it sort of looks like  . . . well judge for yourself (http://buylife.org/).

So why didn't this death-on-social-media have an immediate influx of donations?  I think part of it was the odd, kind of self-centered method of raising funds and the tastelessness of it.  The other part was that the celebrities stopped being celebrities.

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Go, Go Gamification!

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I hear a lot of talk lately about "gamifictation" – adding gamelike elements to non-gaming software and services.  It may be achievements, titles, even controls – and the goal of course is to get people interested and using the software and services.

Let me state frankly that this is a great idea.  I'm bang alongside it, and I wanted to explore just why I think it works, and why we need to pay attention to it:

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Let Us Ask: Geeks as Celebrities

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(After reading "Starstruck" I began asking can geeks/progeeks be celebrities.  This was actually a fun speculation, and I wanted to write it up).

So, my progeeks and profanes and protaku, can we working nerds, technophiles, and geekonomists be celebrities?  Can we breathe the same air of awesomeness that the truly famous do, can we confuse paparazzi with our "Let the Wookie Win" T-shirts?  In short, can we be beloved and admired and followed?

The answer is literally, yes, no, and maybe.

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