"For Fear Of . . . "

[Ankesh]

Thanks Michael for your thoughts.

Its not about Jason Bourne vs James Bond. Its not a one-off thing. Its more than that. Maybe a trend?

It can be seen in many areas. For eg: reality TV is replacing soap operas. Listen to the lyrics in top songs - they are so very different than lyrics from songs ten or 15 years ago.

Even business. Maybe its just a catch-phrase - but you can hear words like "corporate citizenship" more and more these days. (Note: I'm not saying that thats a good thing or a bad thing. Just an observation.)

By "real" I didn't mean the opposite of fake. May be authentic is a better word? Its close to meaning "not phony."

I didn't mean that the thin models are fake. But the context that they've created seems phony.

Its just like the difference between seeing reality TV and soap operas. Both are made up. But one appears to be more authentic than the other. More non-perfect. More raw maybe?

I don't have the right word in mind but I hope you understand what I'm trying to mean.

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There was some research done that was about analyzing centerfold pictures in magazines like playboy to predict the economy. They'd found that the more muscular the models got - the worse the economy became.

This system wasn't a 100% thing. As in - there could be an odd month where the models could be very muscular and the economy would be doing extremely good too. But it was right more times than it was wrong.

(Sorry, couldn't find the research online. Just found smutty websites when I tried to search.)

And maybe thats the same thing happening with "Jason Bourne vs James Bond" or "reality TV vs soap operas" ? Could these things help us to predict how society-concious people will become?