Brand Me Famous

Have you ever Googled your own name? Come on, just admit it: You’ve indulged in the ultimate narcissistic pastime, haven’t you? Well I have done it…several times, in fact – each time hoping for a different result.

I’m the only Tanya Nel I know, which used to make me feel unique and rather special. However, I discovered that there is in fact an entire army of Tanya Nels out there, when I Googled my name. And, horror of horrors, they all seem to be more “famous” than I am. Every few months I repeat the process, hoping that my name will appear at the top of the search results list, along with an extensive list of commendations on my extremely important contribution to this world.

Surely I deserve some praise for my generosity. For example, the fact that I pay a small fortune to car guards every day (for foreign readers who may not know what car guards are: car guards wear bibs, give gap-toothed smiles, and make grasping gestures with their hands – yes, I know this sounds like a description of a baby, but the difference is that a car guard expects to be paid for this behaviour). Surely I deserve some Internet recognition for my contribution to world peace. For example, I don’t have any nuclear weapons in my back yard, which is more than American president Barack Obama can say, and he’s just been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Andy Warhol predicted that in future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes. I first became aware of fame when Britney Spears released her first album (a multi-platinum seller) at age 16. I was 23 years old at the time and experienced my very first bout of depression, when I realized that a teenager was more successful and making more money than I ever would in my entire life. It probably had something to do with the fact that she danced suggestively in a school dress and pigtails – I’ve considered doing the same, but Teasers strip club is the only venue willing to host my performance.

The fame phenomenon continued to grow since then; everybody wanted to stake their 15-minutes-of-fame claim. Thanks to the Internet this became possible for mere mortals. The concept of creating a personal brand and becoming visible on the Internet has become a major priority for most people.

One way to become visible is by joining a social network. My first entry into the world of Internet social networking was via Facebook. Initially I was overwhelmed by insecurity: what photo should I display as a profile image? Perhaps a photo of myself surrounded by friends, to show how popular I am. Or a particularly sexy photo, to make my ex-boyfriends squirm with regret. Once I chose the profile photo, I had to deal with the calamitous reality that I had a pathetic number of Facebook friends. What would people think? I frantically searched for every person I ever knew in my life, hoping they would accept my friend request.

Internet visibility is about much more than just social networking; it’s about making yourself as desirable as possible. The aim is to get people interested in you, your skills, your product, or whatever else you’re trying to “sell” via your Internet image. The Internet is a fantastic tool. Unfortunately it’s also a source of endless BS – searching for factual information on the Internet is a bit like shopping at a second-hand clothes shop: you have to schlep through a ton of crap to find a gem.

I love using e-mail and the Internet. For one, I’ve made lots of new Nigerian friends, who’ve promised to send me millions of dollars in exchange for a small initial administrative fee – I’m still waiting for the millions to roll in, but I’m absolutely sure it will happen. I’m also grateful for all the spammers, including American agencies that send me weekly Green Card lottery applications (I wonder whether they would stop if they knew I had Muslim friends). Aah, the Internet is such a friendly place, filled with so many helpful, generous people.

Now I’m off to post another pointless status update on one of several social networks - I know my friends and followers can’t wait to read that I’ve just eaten broccoli for dinner and that I have a foot fungus. But which social network will it be? MySpace? Twitter? Facebook? Or maybe all 3? Yes, I think I’ll settle for My Twit Face.

I remember when I was young...

A strange thing happened to me last week. A friend offered to lend me an audio seminar to listen to. Naturally I expected her to hand me a CD or maybe a memory stick with the files on. Instead she gave me this fat plastic thing, with 2 holes in the middle and what looked like a piece of ribbon wrapped around the holes. I stared at it, stared at it again and finally my memory bank came up with a name for this thing: A cassette tape.

I had not seen one of these since my pre-wrinkle days (a looooong time ago). Eager to listen to the seminar, I was suddenly confronted by the fact that I needed some kind of apparatus to play the tape. I did an archeological dig through cupboards and boxes - somewhere between the Bronze Age section and the 80’s section I found this bright yellow thing, with fat buttons on it. I dumbly pushed at the buttons like an ape woman, making guttural animal sounds. It was a discovery of immense magnitude – I had managed to excavate the mythical Walkman.

Playing the tape was a whole new experience. There was no simple way of skipping backwards and forwards to different tracks. This was a chronological process: Listen to side A, turn the tape around, listen to side B, turn the tape around, and only then could I get back to the start of the tape. Not only did I find it all very frustrating and slow, but I also discovered a lack of small-muscle control and dexterity in my hands. I have an overdeveloped SMS-thumb, a hand palm shaped like a computer mouse, and an index finger that wants to left-click with obsessive-compulsive regularity. Retrieving and turning a cassette was positively exhausting.

I never thought I’d be one of those people who'd say stuff like: “I remember when I was young…” Well, I was wrong. I remember when I was young you couldn’t create a latest hits CD by downloading tracks off the Internet. No, you had to sit by your radio on Saturdays, listening to the top 40, your finger poised over the record button. The skill lay in pushing ‘record’ just after the DJ uttered his last word, then you had to carefully listen to the song and try to figure out when the DJ would start speaking again at the end of the song.

You’d usually end up capturing the DJ’s first few words on tape. So, you had to quickly rewind and try to pinpoint the exact moment just before the DJ spoke, in time to record the next song (the anxiety caused by such a moment, would classify this process as an adrenaline sport). By the end of this process you’d end up with a tape filled with songs that started halfway through the first verse, ended halfway through the last chorus, interspersed with half-spoken words by the DJ. It was the era of the “mix-tape”.

I remember when I was young you also couldn’t send off an email to catch up with friends and family. No, you had to write a letter. You had to contend with pens that dried up halfway through the letter, forcing you to complete the letter in different coloured ink. There was no spell check and delete button to correct spelling mistakes. The end product looked like a dog’s breakfast: 3 different shades of ink, white blotches of Tippex, and blobs of smudged ink where the pen decided to vomit onto the page.

Then you had to put up with the postal service. It took at least 2 weeks for your letter to reach your cousin in Upington, another 2 weeks for your cousin to get her act together and write a reply, and another 2 weeks for her letter to reach you. By then you’d forgotten you even had a cousin and had moved on to bigger and better things.

The world has certainly changed a lot since then. We now live in the era of instant gratification, thanks to the wonder of technology. If I send an email and don’t get a response within an hour, I start badgering the recipient with repeat emails. If someone does not answer their cell phone, I feel offended: “How dare they not answer their phone?” Technology has brought many great luxuries into our lives, like iPods, the Internet, mobile phones and email. Unfortunately we now believe that this gives us the right to intrude on each others' personal space anytime and anywhere.

Sometimes I miss the days when personal space was still respected. I remember when I was young…