WWWinning…

By Gerald McGrew on March 24, 2011 in Other

How much cocaine does Charlie Sheen take? Enough to kill Two and a Half Men.

So we see Mr Sheen claim what is, perhaps, one of the more pointless Guinness World Records ever. He’s garnered 1 million Twitter followers faster than anyone else. More accurately, this is a world record for the most people who hope to receive raunchy updates from a famous guy who lives in a ménage a trois with a particularly skilled porn star and a 24 year-old bikini hottie.

It could also be a world record for the most people wishing to keep a close digital eye on the effects of crack addiction, something which no doubt irks the less well-known of us who are on the pipe and rapidly losing our teeth with no one really watching. Anyway, if you really want to see the raunchy side of Charlie’s life, simply do a Google image search for Bree Olson. Just make sure you’re not at work, and the kids aren’t around.

What has been equally disturbing is the ease with which Sheen has been able to create and broadcast his own online show, ‘Sheen’s Korner’, live via a webcam to replace his cancelled sitcom. While admitting it was a complete heap of shit and perhaps not his finest hour, you can be sure future episodes will attract plenty of viewers, most of whom will be watching and hoping that Bree will spontaneously prove her porn cred live on the show. Ustream, the free online service that provides this scarily easy-to-use capability, must be keeping worried TV bosses awake at night. This may be the future of their industry.

In other news we saw the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) take place in early March, the website for which promises it to be “five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders, the incredible new SXSW Trade Show and an unbeatable line-up of special programs showcasing the best new digital works, video games and innovative ideas the international community has to offer”.

Since 1995 this celebration of total geekery has excited relatively few about fundamentally eff-all, and this year promises to be no different. While Twitter and Foursquare both launched at SXSW in recent years, it is hard to think of anything else of serious mainstream note that has come out of this conference. Not that this has stopped excessive amounts of digital crotch heat and orgasmic frothing on blogs around the world, eagerly anticipating what might be the next big thing. Somewhat ironically, I predict that within a few short years this will be one of the most hyped events in the world.

And what do these two phenomena – Charlie Sheen and SXSW – have in common? For a start they’re both relatively unimportant in the broader scheme of our lives, and yet they’re massively amplified via the Internet. One has effectively begat the other, and symbiotically each gives the other life. If there was no SXSW then Twitter may never have grown to be the monster it is now. And if there was no Charlie Sheen then two million or more people wouldn’t have their own threesome-powered train wreck to watch, brought to you live via the Internet!