Gossip Boys: How Social Media continues to keep stories alive.

*Note: This was Actually written last week, but due to Holiday Travel, is just now being posted.

Fame comes easy with the Internet. It is the Ultimate vessel for the aspiring movie director, writer, or artist. If you have something you want to create, be it a movie, book, or even a band, you can simply plug your product into the Internet and go from there. Nothing becomes famous overnight, but if you can create a little buzz, and chip away until you find your audience, anything is a possibility. There are so many possibilities that if you use the Internet, you can literally become famous in just about every venture. The Internet is the ultimate place to get noticed as people can literally comment and see everything these days on it.

The reason why I am writing about fame today, is because of the passing of Britney Murphy, a few days ago. If you are not familiar with her work, I recommend you going to IMDB.Com and looking up her credits, but her most notable performances came from "8 Mile" in which she played Eminem's girlfriend and "Sin City" where she played the Ex of cop killer Dwight. When I first heard about her passing, I was saddened to hear that we had lost another star, who seemed to have it all. The story just like any other story, seemed to be popping up everywhere on twitter and as one person put it "It is a slow news week, so I am sure we will hear more about this." When I first read this, I thought that that was so true. It is the Christmas, season, we have no news stories, that people seem to care about. But as I continued to think about this, I thought about how much us as a Social Network were adding to the buildup of the story. We will discuss and talk about her death on every Facebook account and message board, and with all of these thoughts, I could not help but think how much power that we truly have when we log onto the internet. True, we follow every product, and icon that we like, but in doing so we make them that much more powerful over us.

Now I bring this all up because of the passing of Britney Murphy, if she had passed away in any other decade, it would of been just another young actress passing away, but we live in the age of Social Media where we are able to comment on just about everything, digest every fact, and even uncover the truth. Our gossip, our critiques mean more now. than ever before, with online reviews and the ability to comment on just about everything through social media and message boards.

At the end of the day, I wonder not just what people will say about Britney Murphy. Was she just another Hollywood actress to die or in this day and age of media relevance, will she become something more? Will the Internet empower her or will it even empower you? Only time will tell.