Let's say you like cats. When you visit a friend's house and he happens to have a cat, you make a big deal about stroking it, picking it up, talking to it. And you do the same thing with every cat you encounter. It demonstrates to the people around you that you're a sensitive, sympathetic, tactile person. All these things are true of you, including your innate adoration of cats. But that doesn't mean to say you haven't cultivated your cat-fancying into a self-conscious, gushing performance that somehow represents you. This doesn't make you a phony; it makes you something else: mediated - Thomas De Zengotita, Auhtor "Mediated"

Sounds like an interesting book. Jus read a Interview with the author ...sortta review you can say...How the media around us influence the way we respond to events, how conscious we have become to the glare that is always on us...the case of media overwhelming the human intellect. We the ordinary bloggers too might be responding to such a phenomenon. One thing interested me very much...He says, Flattery fails to satify you, and you yearn for it...the more you get flattered, the more you need it....the circle starts and it never ends....you start blogging, capturing your life in camera phones, post them in Internet, wait to be flattered.....The medium facilitates it and as there are many more of the same ilk, it becomes all the more stronger and all the more pervasive.....You can't escape it.....This need not necessarily be bad or harmful. It's just goes to satisfy( or atleast try to) your yearning for flattery.