BBC News - Airtime launch with Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning

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Oh, good. Another social media something supported by Hollywood celebrities and founded by the guys whose last co-worked creation was shut down by the United States government.

“The thing about the next big thing, is you don’t know it’s going to be big until it is big.”

With all due respect to the BBC and reporter Mark Gregory, that’s not true.

And, to be fair to them, they didn’t have much wiggle room with their reporting on this story. It’s a press event dedicated to the “brilliance” of Sean and Shawn (that’s Parker and Fanning, in case you forget what 1999 was like) and they actually pulled out the only pessimism they could probably find from the launch of Airtime.

Yes, Airtime. That’s the name of the “company.

Well, we do know when the next big thing is the next big thing.

When Facebook was launched, every student who hopped to it knew it was going to be big. I did. You did. Wasn’t that why the Winklevoss twins freaked out in The Social Network immediately when they saw that Mark Zuckerberg had launched his own version of their worse version of Facebook?

It was only old people who were surprised by it, and only because they can’t imagine a world where every one would want to be in contact with each other. They turn it into buzzwords like “social media” and “24-hour news cycle,” and they casually toss away old buzzwords that don’t seem to matter anymore, like “globalization” or “first date.”

If The Great Gatsby taught us anything, it’s that every society – no matter the era or their level of wealth – is desperate, lonely, and constantly searching for something that it cannot define. Some call it “the American Dream” and some before them called it “Manifest Destiny.” Other call it “keeping up with the Joneses.”

The hype over this product seems no different.

The only difference here is that Parker and Fanning appear to be as old as the reporters who are trying to wrap their hands around what digital IPO is, and they appear to believe their own fodder.

And all the celebrities, from Jim Carrey to Ed Helms to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, have no idea either.

History shows that we may not always see what’s right under our nose. But, if we notice it smells like sh*t, that’s not a good start.”