The web today is filled with Tweets on the tragic death of Michael Jackson. The first company that benefited from this tragic event was Apple. The iTunes Music Store and 9 out of the 10 top albums are all Michael Jackson’s. And top 5 selling DVDs in Amazon all Jackson’s too. Michael is iconic across generations. Music fans around the world have a deep-rooted connection with this iconic star and his music. And people are quick to try to make money from this. This Neverland Ranch domain name is selling for $20mm on eBay. Why? The seller is suggesting that there is talk of that the Neverland Ranch will be be tnred in a money making thinng bigger than Graceland as an amusement park.
Music is like air we breathe and iPod is the first electronic gadget that every kid grows up with. Does music helps us to become more ‘us’ as ‘individual’ or it is causing more conformity? Does Michael Jackson’s music scream loud the language of individuality? What causes the cultural conflict with the problems of identity and identification. Our society possesses culture of our own; varying with diverse ethnic and education etc. and at the same time conditioned by popular cultures such as music and TV, and now social media.
The notion of identification and identity, two concepts which frequently appear in connection with the individual's personality development and they are now reflected in our images or avartars on Facebook and other social networks. The terms identity and identification and implies some key differences; namely that a person's image or identity of himself/herself is obtained early in life as the result of selecting desired traits from various models and that an individual must have a concise concept of himself in order to survive as a productive human being. Sometimes these two create conflicts.
Michael’ story of his fall was so profound, from a superstar into a financial, physical and psychological. People wonder how that could happened to a talented person and why? Many belief that Jackson had body dysmorphic disorder, where the sufferer has a distorted self-image and identify crisis. It is very sad. But it is not that uncommon, I see people in the workplace who are unable to obtain meaningful, purposeful identities; and therefore a real "identity crisis" occurs. There are some indications that the younger generation will rely less and less on TV for cultural refinement of an individual. The emergence of social networks and media hopefully will become a medium for them to shape their own identities and prevent crisis.
What’s an identity crisis? The identity of an individual incorporates culture and cultural values. If the culture and the cultural values are unclear to the individual ("culture conflict"), then the result will be faulty identity formation or "identity crisis". Constantly confused and trying to be someone else.
This tragic event shows us again how fragile we are, both as human beings and the things we created-the Internet. Twitter was even temporarily jammed into inaccessibility, and story-breaker TMZ went down as fans around the world tried to find out what was happening.
According to data from Akamai worldwide Internet traffic was 11% higher than normal during the peak hours between 3 p.m. PDT and 4 p.m., when news of Jackson's death was breaking. That traffic forced even Google to its knees for a brief period of time Thursday afternoon. That won’t happen with radio or TV when the world tuned in to see a man landed on the moon. Networking problems will only get worse as traffic grows and our demand for real-time and more new Twitter-like apps.
May he rest in peace.
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