Still amusing ourselves to death?

No 377 Posted by fw, December 23, 2011

This headline on page C4 in the Entertainment section of today’s Windsor Star caught my attention –

Lopez sizzles You Tube with video — On the Floor has 454,305,629 hits on the Internet.

454,305,629 Internet views!

Good grief.

The story’s author quipped —

The line between what distinguishes the “most viewed” Youtube videos of the year from the “most annoying” is as weak and insubstantial as our attention span, but as Youtube has just announced their annual rankings of the clips clicked more than any other in the year that was, we’re happy to remind you of the various videos everyone watched. No. 1 on their list of the most-watched music videos — or, to use the official title “Most watched videos from major music labels globally” — is Jennifer Lopez’s On the Floor. Although it’s essentially four and a half minutes of Jennifer Lopez watching herself booty-pop and sip her sponsor’s drinky-drinks in the company of Pitbull and a few hundred sweaty extras, the video was viewed 454,305,629 times. That’s a lot of people hitting refresh, because they could have sworn they missed something — anything — interesting about it.

If these viewers are part of the 99% then Occupiers have their work cut out for them if they ever hope to bring about a “World Revolution”.

Perhaps Huxley was right after all — Our “infinite appetite” for pleasurable distractions will be our downfall.

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