The Internet is the Obvious Starting Point
Yahoo Philippines Social Media Editor Joey Alarilla got a chance to interview Filipina cosplay queen Alodia Gosiengfiao at Chowking’s 25th anniversary party. He even got her to do the Yahoo yodel.
While Alodia’s yodeling is certainly sonorous, that’s not the most interesting part of this interview. Joey first asked Alodia how she got into cosplay. The first five words out of her mouth speak volumes about how young people today initiate their pursuits:
“Of course, I started online.”
Think about what that means for a second. There was a time when using the Internet in connection with any enterprise was a mere afterthought, a fringe adjunct to the “real” business at hand. Now we have a twenty-two year old girl who sees the Internet as the obvious starting point for what she does. “Of course.”
Note that cosplay is mostly an offline art, involving physical flesh and fabric instead of digital code and media. Despite the nature of this performance art, Alodia’s apparently self-evident entry point for cosplay was still online. “Of course.”
That Internet-first mindset doesn’t just apply to geek girls taking up unusual hobbies. More and more people discover new shows on Hulu and iTunes before following them on TV. More and more people put their questions to Google before putting them to other people. More and more people plan entire road trips on Google Maps long before starting their cars. More and more people read authors’ blogs long before buying their books. More and more people connect on LinkedIn before making a single business call. More and more people chitchat on Twitter before ever shaking hands. More and more people make first contact on Match.com before ever meeting at the bar.
The Internet is no longer just a complementary channel for human endeavors. It is now the launchpad for human endeavors. For more and more people, the answer to how they took the first step on any given journey is “Of course, I started online.”
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Well, I am an Alodia and a Danny Choo fan, I love them both. I can say that online, you can make your own identity / identities, like JP Angeles and 12circles Manila. =)
The Philippines first came online on March 29, 1994, at an academic conference in Cebu. How appropriate that this interview came two weeks before the sixteenth anniversary of the Internet in the Philippines.
It just goes to show how far we’ve come since the Internet was considered a fringe playground for computer scientists. Now it’s the obvious starting point for just about everything we do.
wow really?Thanks 4 enlighten those who watches this website man(although I’m not a Alodia fan).Wow I can’t believe that the Internet here in the Phil.came in the early 90’s man.Now that was a trivia from this dude who is an owner of this website.