9 Jun 2014

When life in cyberspace becomes horrifically real on earth

By chance in New York over the weekend, I happened upon the continuation of a modern phenomenon. The internet is coming back to earth.

Close on the heels of last week’s Channel 4 News report about the extent to which internet fashionistas are beginning to become teen super stars on terra firma, I run into another dimension of the same.

Mooching past Madison Square Garden on Saturday I was bombarded by the throbbing presence of a rock band. The event was merely to sign post a much bigger musical experience in Citi Field, out in suburban Queens.

DigiTour Media Presents DigiFest NYCAbove: Our2ndLife perform at Digifest NYC on Saturday (picture: Getty)

Digifest NYC is a rave fuelled by Instagram, YouTube, Vine and more. It’s an event in which stars made in cyberspace, come down amongst their fans to perform on three dimensional earth, down and dirty with the people. These guys count their followers in the multiples of millions.

Suddenly we are not ourselves cast asunder in cyberspace but re-engineered as temporal humans performing for other humans in the flesh. The implications are simply massive. The eBook comes back as a book. Online news looks to television to enliven its cyber consumers – there is hope for us all!

Saturday’s concert was headlined by no less than Our2ndLife. I’m told that out in cyberspace the balance cotton balls on their noses. I heard no complaint.

I haven’t yet checked the music but 12,500 punters bought earthly tickets to see them in the flesh on Saturday and seem to have been satisfied.

The New York Times, no less, quotes Meridith Valiando Rojas, the co-founder of a Los Angeles start up, DigiTour Media, as saying “it’s all about bringing the internet to life”.

I thought the traffic was all the other way, that I and so many others were being brought to life in cyberspace. Suddenly it is not. Seeing is not believing. The fans need the physical throb, the deafened ear, the weed, the Coke cans.

Oh, yes, I omitted to say that temporal Coca Cola sponsored the Queens concert at which 70 bands rocked, and 150 security guys kept temporal control.

Stand by for Teen Hoot, Nick Tangora, and Mr Fanta. Folks – I’m way out of you when it comes to downloading the internet experience into a grassy heat bowl on earth.

Satanic forces

But now the horrible sting in the cyber reality show. More than 500 miles north of New York, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls face trial for attempting to murder their 12-year-old best friend.

It seems that they were trying to please an online figure, conjured on the internet, called the Slender Man. It is reported that the girls had become convinced that the Slender Man lived in a mansion near their homes and that he too had an earthly form and that in order visit him they had to bring about this ghastly supreme sacrifice.

Last week, a passing cyclist found the girls’ victim bleeding profusely struggling near a cycle path in a wooded area. The girl lives, but doctors declare that of her many stab wounds, one was within a matter of a milimetre from a main artery.

I’m sorry to end like this after such an exuberant start. But as in life on earth there is good and bad, hope and despair in all.

Humankind has yet to reach that precious place where there is balance and understanding in all. While the bands rock, and fashionistas sport their wares, we should never forget the deeply satanic forces that share our evolving temporal and cyber universe.

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