Another Definition of Social Engineering
http://mtv2.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1592703&vid=265829
(To readers not in the USA: Unfortunately, you won’t be able to receive that stream of bytes without going through a US proxy. MTV, like all major media outlets, makes use of obnoxious DRM. You might find this page helpful.)
More information about this television program is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_(TV_series).
This is the first MTV program I’ve watched in over a decade. I found it because it intersected with my interests (anime clubs, etc), and at first I wasn’t sure which I hated more: MTV or whom I perceived as the “obnoxious” anime fans. (It’s funny that I’d even be bothered by such a thing, considering I did AMVs and am currently doing work for Anime Central 2009, but, hey, you know.)
But I’ve been thinking about it, and — well, as much as I hate to say that MTV gave me anything to think about, the program provided me with an opportunity for a small bit of introspection.
I think what bothers me most about this show is
- how blatantly it manufactures and manipulates people to be something, regardless of whether or not that person “really” wanted to be changed like that, and
- how young people just seem to take that in stride as if it’s the norm. (Is it? I really don’t know. I’m years out of the social trends and cool kids’ circles.)
I think that personal change is a road that everyone has to walk alone, and watching people be dragged along that road is just immensely disturbing. I’m finding it difficult to articulate just why I think that’s the case. I’m sure it has something to do with my intense dislike of marketers.
I was going to write a lot more here about my own experience in middle and high school (somewhere back in the 1996-2002 range), but I’m not going to do so because, on reflection, I don’t think it’d add anything. Hit me up in the comments if you’d like to hear my self-serving “I was an outcast and proud of it” story.
Speaking of being cool: now you know that I’m not totally above all that social stuff. Does that make me _un_cool? (Yeah, probably.)