Nowadays, attention economy and surveillance capitalism became a new platform for selling clothes, make-up, gadgets, and other types of goods. In this post, I would like to take a closer look at attention economy from the angle of social and mass media which include famous actors, singers, bloggers and other people, who we call celebrities. 

          21^st century is a century of television, stream TV, Instagram, mass production of films, enormous quantity of different music, you name it – we have it. Population of the world has a vast amount of choices what to listen to, what to read, what to watch. With this tendency and freedom of surfing the internet, increases the curiosity of following those “stars” who we view on the big screen or listen on Spotify while getting to work. We are the generation of dreamers, we are also a generation of “wannabes”. Not only young teenagers from the middle class look up to Taylor Swift, but also there is that older elite that wants to be like Angelina Jolie on the red carpet. This “effect of celebrities” plays a great role in selling merchandize even without having that specific person as an ambassador of the brand. Popular actors and singers can wear a t-shirt running from their home to the grocery mall and this piece of clothes will be sold immediately just because followers viewed images of paparazzi on the internet or posts on social media applications. One of Armani pieces were sold in a day just because Angelina Jolie wore it to a premiere of her film in 2014. Now, I would like to address a question not to the followers or buyers (because those clearly enjoy being a little bit like notable personas), but “do these celebrities enjoy being used this way by different brands?” Of course, one may say that it is a price that they have to pay by becoming one of the lucky ones. And there are plenty stars, who acknowledge the fact that their success comes with additional benefits and drawbacks. However, there are those who resist being worshiped and admired for their achievements and popularity. Shia LaBeouf has repeated a pattern of behavior wearing a brown paper bag on his head, trying to prove his point of being as everyone else and not requiring additional attention. From the point of view of the social media industry, it attracted even more attention and created novel news around him. On the other hand, this performance did receive some admiration and perhaps made some fans doubt their behavior towards their idols.

            Another topic that came into my mind regarding the surveillance, is a story by Edward Snowden. A young brilliant technology specialist, who used to work for such organizations as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA) and Dell. When Edward realized what kind of information the government was illegally tracking through digital equipment (e.g. notebooks, cameras, etc.), he revealed thousands of secret documents to the journalist. 

“I don’t want to live in a world where everything I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity and love or friendship is recorded.”

            Snowden was not the first one to work on secret projects for CIS and break people’s private boundaries, but he definitely became the first one to speak up and open eyes to the world about the digital surveillance. Based on his story, a movie Snowdenhas been produced and exposed to the whole world. This helped reach awareness among those who are not related to the subject of discussion and turn this into a movement that can change regulations of privacy. Moreover, in 2019 Edward published a book Permanent Recordwhere he describes the leaking of highly classified information in 2013 that revealed  global surveillance programs. Thanks to people like Snowden we can create a movement that will have an impact on privacy regulations and creation of topic-related laws.