There always been idols, heroes that we are in awe of… We always believed the road that they are walking. We want to walk beside them because we feel like them. If we were them, we would just do what they do, because we feel like them. Their war is justified. We want to solve problems like them, give the rightful message to the audience.
Yeah, there always been heroes. Our fathers, society’s leaders, sometimes our friends the dogs...
But, How about avatars?
Apart from heroes, Avatars does not need to be rightful. We can call them alter ego, too. They just need to be like the audience. They exist for their cause, extend it, and winning.
In our age, our faith in heroes turns into the love of avatars.
I think you have witnessed how specialized people from different disciplines transformed. A carpenter may tell you the length of wood by just looking at it. A psychologist can tell a man’s feeling by the word the man chose. All of us turn into what we do. After a while, we perceive the world from inside the profession we have. While a business person evaluates an election company by the investments, an advertiser can see it as an operation of perception. A Marketing expert can talk about the audiences consuming tendencies and a developer can criticise about the vote count software.
Well then, since the 1990s, what are these business people, marketing experts, advertisers, and developers doing?
Choosing avatars for themselves. In chat rooms, in video games, in reality shows.
The choice of Avatars instead of Heroes triggers even our elections. We don’t look for a leader who is fair. We look for the person who will work for the profit of the nation. As the leader of Turkey Erdoğan always states: “We are manservant of the public.” Public expectations of him are to make more money for the country, to make more jobs available and higher living standards. They don’t care him to be kind or consonant with the other countries.
All countries people want that kind of leader for a while. This is what Germans expect from Merkel and Americans from Trump...
In addition to that, being an Avatar of the nation is not only related to what you do, it is also related to how you do.
Take Obama for example; remember when he drops the mic on Fallon’s show? He was cool, groovy, sexy and charismatic which in a way, only in the USA, a president can do this kind of show.
Another example is Merkel when she became Person of the Year in 2015 by Time magazine. Nancy Gibbs depicted her with these words: “Her political style was not to have one; no flair, no flourishes, no charisma, just a survivor’s sharp sense of power and a scientist’s devotion to data.”
That is so German, isn’t it?
Every country conjures their Avatar. After all these leaders from their countries selected, they meet at United Nations and start to quarrel. And we watch them like we watch Big Brother. Wondering who will win in the end.
"Convention" is not today's word no more. We can just hope the world becomes better. But somehow, maybe this structure will help the people of the world.