Citizens of the New Digital Democracy

[andhramass]

You control the media now and the world will never be the same. Meet 15 of the web generation's movers and shakers

 

in this series v r going to meet 15 diffrent people

 

Leila

The Real Lonelygirl

 

Lonelygirl15 is one of the most viewed YouTube users of all time. She's young and pretty, with a complicated and absolutely compelling personal life. She's also a work of fiction

[andhramass]

Lane Hudson first met former Florida Representative Mark Foley in a Washington bar in 1995. According to Hudson, Foley hit on him, unsuccessfully. He "made everyone, gay and straight, uncomfortable with his sexual advances," Hudson says. "Mark Foley's sleazy behavior was the worst-kept secret in Washington." In a different world, a less wired world, that would have been the end of the story.

 

Fast-forward a decade. On Sept. 24, 2006, Hudson posted on his blog Stop Sex Predators some amorous e-mails that Foley had sent to a congressional page. Other bloggers linked to them; soon the news networks were covering it, and some incriminating instant messages surfaced. Five days later Hudson was standing in line at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when his cell phone and his BlackBerry went crazy. Mark Foley had resigned from Congress and dropped out of his re-election campaign. "My heart stopped," Hudson says. "I thought, Oh, my God, what have I gotten myself into?"

 

Now 29, Hudson is no political outsider. A lifelong Democrat from Charleston, S.C., he has worked for quite a few politicians, including John Kerry in his 2004 campaign. His feelings about what happened are complicated. "How can I not be so excited about how this turned the midterm elections?" says Hudson. He says he's surprised by the furor he started, although he has been around long enough to see the judo-like power even a tiny blog can have over a towering public figure

[andhramass]

Ali Khurshid

"The Eye Is Supreme"

 

There aren't that many digital cameras floating around Karachi, Pakistan. Or computers, for that matter. Ali Khurshid started taking pictures with a disposable Kodak his parents gave him when he was 8. Since then he has graduated to fancy digital gear, but he has hung on to his low-tech attitude. "I love how the best pictures are usually taken with Holgas and other toy cameras," he says. "It just confirms my belief that the eye is supreme in taking a brilliant photo. The camera is secondary."

 

Khurshid, now 22, is an artist in a country that's known mostly, in the West at least, for its politics. He takes pictures "to make sure Pakistan's real beauty was put through," he says. "Not just the Pakistan that is shown in the media, always the center of attention for all the wrong reasons." Fortunately for Khurshid, he lives at a time when a solo shutterbug can have the same reach as a staff photographer at the New York Times.

 

Last year Khurshid began uploading his pictures to Flickr, a website where anyone can post his photos, view another's and swap comments and critiques. In all, there are more than 320 million photos on Flickr right now, about 200 of which are Khurshid's. He's a shy, polite man, but Khurshid is more than willing to wax romantic about the unifying, globalizing greatness of the Flickr community. "I love the world coming together in one place and just sharing all that's in it," he says. "I feel like I get to see the world like it really, truly is. Not by stereotyping a people or a country."

 

Even more than blogs or video-sharing sites, Flickr has the power to forge international bonds because it works in an entirely nonverbal medium. In fact, it works almost too well. Lavannya Goradia, a heavy Flickr user in Bangalore, India, finds it to be a bit of a lovefest. "I suppose it's a need to pat each other's backs, but that will always happen on a public forum," she says with a sigh. "I am still waiting for a day when I will get constructive criticism from someone here." As for Khurshid, he judges a picture's quality by its use of light and its spontaneity

[andhramass]

Megan Gill

Generation Network

 

When Megan Gill broke up with her boyfriend in November, it wasn't easy, but she gritted her teeth and did the inevitable: she changed her relationship status on her Facebook page. "I knew there would be a flurry of annoying questions about what happened that I didn't want to answer," she says. "But it was the fastest way for it to be over and done with. Besides, if these people are supposed to be your friends, and care about you, then why keep it a secret?"

 

Gill, 22, a senior at the University of Portland, has a lot of friends

[andhramass]

Lee Kelley

The Bard Of Camp Blue Diamond

 

Captain Lee Kelley is 35 and hails from New Orleans. He spent 12 years in the Army without once being posted overseas, but that streak ended in June 2005 when he volunteered for service in Iraq and became a signal officer at Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi. He has always been a writer

[andhramass]

S.R. Sidarth

The Accidental Assassin

 

His full name is Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth. He usually goes by just his last name, or even just Sid. But most of the country knows him as "Macaca."

 

Sidarth, 21, is a senior at the University of Virginia, a double major in engineering and government. He spent the past few summers doing campaign grunt work, and 2006 was no different. He worked for James Webb's Senate campaign, tracking Webb's opponent, Virginia Senator George Allen, which means he videotaped Allen's public appearances. On Aug. 11, the tracker became the tracked. Allen singled him out in the crowd with a long, rambling riff. "This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca or whatever his name is, he's with my opponent," Allen said. And later: "So welcome, let's give a welcome to Macaca here! Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!" The clip is on YouTube. One copy has been played more than 320,000 times.

 

It's ironic that Allen would welcome Sidarth to Virginia, since Sidarth has lived there his whole life and Allen grew up in California. It's also odd because until then, Allen and his staff had been nothing but friendly. "There's no way he didn't know who I was," Sidarth says. "He'd never addressed me before, and then to do so in this context?it was humiliating. That it was in a racial context made it worse." The crowd cheered, but Sidarth believes it was only because they had to. "It was an unfair indictment by Allen of the people there," Sidarth says. "They would have applauded no matter what he said." Later, some audience members went over to Sidarth to apologize.

 

It was definitely not Sidarth's idea to put the clip on YouTube. "Getting drawn out into the limelight was really surprising," he says, and he means it. He's an intensely private person, and he declined to answer quite a few of the questions put to him by TIME. He's focused on keeping his head down and getting into law school. "Ultimately I'd hope people wouldn't pay as much attention to things like this, instead caring more about who can serve the country or the state better," he says. "Of course," he adds, "character plays into that. And this event reflected on Allen's character."

 

[andhramass]

Waz and Lenny

The Un-Emerils

 

To watch Warren Murray, 34, and Leanne White, 32, make sponge cake is to hear the silent screams of Julia Child's dear, departed spirit. About 45 seconds in, they add two tablespoons of butter instead of two teaspoons, and it just goes downhill from there. Waz (as Warren is known) and Lenny (that's Leanne

[andhramass]

Harriet Klausner

The Constant Critic

 

Without the web, Harriet Klausner would be just an ordinary human being with an extraordinary talent. Instead she is one of the world's most prolific and influential book reviewers. At 54, Klausner, a former librarian from Georgia, has posted more book reviews on Amazon.com than any other user

[andhramass]

Wang Xiaofeng

Bart Simpson In Beijing

 

"Chinese people don't do irony like Israelis and the English," says Wang Xiaofeng. "They don't have that making-fun-of-yourself gene." In China the blogosphere is dominated by the dronings of millions of earnest diarists, and there are still many things that can't be said in the mainstream media. Wang, however, enjoys making fun of art, culture, politics

[andhramass]

Tila Tequila

The Madonna Of MySpace

 

Tila Nguyen was 1 year old when she moved to the U.S. from Singapore, but she's Vietnamese by heritage and blond by choice. As for what she does for a living, there isn't really a word for it yet. Nguyen, 25, who goes by Tila Tequila professionally, is some combination of rapper, singer, model, blogger and actress. But what she mostly is is the queen of the massive social-networking website MySpace.

 

Nguyen

[andhramass]

Smosh

The Intertainers

 

On Nov. 28, 2005, a video was uploaded to YouTube. It shows two American River College students, Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, lip-synching to the Pok?n theme song. Their lip-synching is completely earnest. They're really into it. They're gonna catch 'em all. This video would go on to be viewed more than 17 million times. For six months it was the most watched video on all of YouTube. It's enough to shake your faith in a new medium.

 

Padilla and Hecox go by the joint nickname Smosh, and they are the Saturday Night Live of YouTube. Their videos are insanely popular. Their genius, if that's the right word for it, is in their unswerving, unwinking commitment to idiocy. It may also be in their shaggy haircuts. (Smosh is some kind of inside joke that has something to do with some friend of theirs talking about mosh pits ... Never mind.) Since Pok?n, they have done other theme songs, including those for Power Rangers and Mortal Kombat. They have branched out into sketch comedy as well. (Typical setup: a friendly game of Battleship gone horribly, horribly awry.)

 

So far, Padilla and Hecox haven't been able to monetize their viral notoriety on any significant scale, although they do sell ads on Smosh.com. In fact, for Padilla and Hecox, being Internet celebrities is a lot like being normal people. "Our girlfriends hate that we're so busy," Hecox says. "The videos take up a lot of time, and we're working on several projects simultaneously. Overall, it really hasn't affected our lives." The dream is to end up like Andy (Lazy Sunday) Samberg, who went from online comedy to the real SNL. But not everybody can live the dream, not even in the ultra-democratic YouTube era. "Our future is wide open," Padilla says. "There seems to be a huge potential in what we're doing, so we'll just keep doing what we're doing. And if nothing comes out of it

[andhramass]

Kamini

Straight Outta Cowtown

 

Kamini grew up in a tiny town deep in the French countryside called Marly-Gomont. He stood out, in part because everybody stands out in Marly-Gomont

[andhramass]

Simon Pulsifer

The Duke of Data

 

There is a list on Wikipedia of who has written or edited the most entries, and for a long time the volunteer at the top of this list was a user known as SimonP. His real name is Simon Pulsifer. He is 25, unemployed and lives in Ottawa.

 

Pulsifer has authored somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 Wikipedia articles and edited roughly 92,000 others. "I've actually fallen to No. 2 in terms of edits," says Pulsifer, who's tall and a little overweight. "But it's a fairly meaningless measure, so I don't feel too bad." He first heard about Wikipedia in 2001, but it wasn't until 2003 that he got serious about contributing. That was the year he got a really, really boring summer job. At that point Pulsifer got "superinvolved" with Wikipedia.

 

Why would somebody donate so much of his time? "There's a certain addictive element," he says. Pulsifer was still in school, and writing Wikipedia entries turned out to be a handy way of studying for exams. While taking a Russian-history class, he wrote entries about the czars. He has chipped in pieces on African history and biblical studies. Some he wrote "off the top of my head." Others took research. "It's a combination of things," Pulsifer says matter-of-factly. "It's great to see your writing published online

[andhramass]

Kim Hye Won

Dateline: Everywhere

 

Kim Hye won doesn't look like a journalist, which is to say that she doesn't look like Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday. Kim looks like a 45-year-old Korean housewife, which is what she is. More and more journalists are starting to look like her.

 

Kim is a citizen reporter for a South Korean website called OhMyNews. There is nothing quite like OhMyNews in the U.S., or not yet. Imagine if the Washington Post were produced entirely by bloggers. OhMyNews is written mostly by a floating staff of 47,000 amateur journalists all over the country. The site gets 1 million to 1.5 million page views a day.

 

OhMyNews was founded in 2000, after decades of authoritarian rule had left the South Korean media deeply co-opted. The website was a revelation for Kim. "I felt the mainstream media was one-sided," she says. "But after I began to read OhMyNews, I found out there were different views and perspectives available." Kim read the site for about a year before she tried her first piece, about her son, who was studying for exams, and her husband, who was dealing with corporate burnout. The headline: DADDY'S DEPRESSED, SON'S TAKING TESTS, AND I'M WORRIED. She was a natural.

 

Over the past three years, Kim has written about 60 pieces for OhMyNews. The site awarded her Citizen Reporter of the Year for 2005. "Korean housewives become nameless after marriage," Kim says. "They are often just called someone's wife or someone's mother. I finally found my name through OhMyNews."

 

[andhramass]

Blake Ross

Outfoxing Microsoft

 

When Blake Ross was 15, he moved from Florida to California to take an internship with Netscape. This was a rather quixotic thing for a 15-year-old to do, because Netscape was on life support at the time

[Yuvarathna]

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