I have to admit this commercial is terribly funny and rather brilliant (props to YSMarko). And, yet, how odd it is that we all get the cultural references being made; it’s still further evidence that pop culture has been transformed by YouTube.

Meanwhile, I’m intrigued that this is a commercial for a news service. Really? In a year where a record number died in Iraq, mass disaster struck in the form of California wildfires and an Asian typhoon, mortgages failed, and people died at Virginia Tech, are you telling me that the way to advertise the quality of AOL’s news service is by spoofing viral videos? Who knew that YouTube was news?!

Author and pundit Neal Gabler wouldn’t be surprised; he predicted in 1998 that we are increasingly moving into a world where “the news has become a continuous stream of what one might call ‘lifies’ — movies written in the medium of life, projected on the screen of life and exhibited in the multiplexes of the traditional media which are increasingly dependent upon the life medium.”¹ News continues to degrade to entertainment, argues Gabler, because the overriding objective of all our lives has become getting and satisfying an audience.² And indeed that’s exactly what every “news story” spoofed in this commercial did.

These people got and satisfied an audience. And if we’re honest, we’ll admit that our blogs, YouTube videos, and a great deal of our online and offline lives are strange attempts to get and satisfy an audience. This is a kind of life that would have been completely alien to society one hundred years ago, but it’s almost completely unchallenged today. ³ In fact, we preach about it in youth ministry without even realizing it. Do a Google search for “Audience of One” and see all the Christian references to how we’re apparently teaching kids they should live life for God as an “Audience of One.” I heard plenty of “Audience of One” remarks in 10 years of evangelical youth ministry. Get and satisfy an audience is the goal of life, just be careful who your audience is. But maybe we should challenge the perceived objective of life instead of merely the details. God is so much more than an “audience.” We are so much more than entertainers. The purpose of life is far more than audience maintenance and entertainment. And, at one time, so was the news.

1. Neal Gabler, Life: The Movie (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998), pg. 5. [↩]
2. Gabler, pg. 5 [↩]
3. Moral and political philosopher Charles Taylor in his amazing little book, The Ethics of Authenticity, argues that our insatiable need for recognition stems from a change in the source of personal identity that has transpired in the Western world over the past several centuries and has accelerated in the past fifty years. In a society where identity is no longer guaranteed by social order we have to desperately seek recognition for our identities. See The Ethics of Authenticity, pgs. 43-54. [↩]