The Guardian

James Harkin wrote an interesting article about future trends called The Shape of Things to Come for the English daily newspaper The Guardian. Very interesting article, especially the bit where he mentions iliketotallyloveit.com:

The new vicarious consumption

Ambitious futurologists need credible buzzwords, but good ones are in perilously short supply. One option is to take an old trend off the peg, dust it down a bit and give it a whole new twist. The idea of "vicarious consumption" was first coined 100 years ago by the economist Thorstein Veblen to describe the thrill rich people get when they buy their butler a lovely new uniform. Nowadays, reckons Evers, it is making a comeback in a whole new form. Just as book reviews have become a substitute among many of us for reading books, Evers says, our enthusiasm for endless product reviews is becoming a way through which we can vicariously experience almost anything through the eyes (and sometimes ears) of people who have already been there. Sites dedicated to reading reviews on other people's experiences, such as iliketotallyloveit.com and ballofdirt.com, offer a heady mixture of entertainment, voyeurism and exhibitionism, and are already quietly attracting millions on the web.

Thanks a lot James for thinking of us.