The Royal Event of the Year– No, Decade. I Mean, Century.

I stand (sit, type) before you completely flabbergasted. The high level of intense media coverage of this wedding is unbelievable. (Just the fact that I didn’t have to mention WHAT wedding I’m referring to speaks for itself. For those of you who have been in the woods for the past couple of months, I am talking about the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.)

A few mornings ago I turned on the news and watched for half an hour as the local butcher and hotel master of the small English town Kate is from were interviewed in extraordinary detail. Did I mention this was on CNN, and it was 8am? As it turns out, this is the first “full-on British royal wedding of the digital era in which a potential future king of Britain will marry”- NY Times; Nontheless, the amount of coverage on the topic is unnecessarily thorough and sheds a light on our values today.

You can pay $3.75 per week and receive “Groundbreaking Royal Wedding Coverage” through the NY Times mobile application. What?! Why is it that we as American’s are so transfixed with reality television and events like a royal wedding, to the point where it is on the news for a longer period of time than the travesties still going on in Japan? With all of the interactive media we have today, one topic is covered in so many angles, it’s quite amazing to see. Type in Royal Wedding on Twitter, and watch what comes up! There is also the NY Times website’s features here, and of course the OFFICIAL Royal Wedding Website (I could go on for paragraphs with these links, ha ha).  Though I question our values for being so transfixed with this wedding in particular, this event is also a really interesting indicator of the extent of Social Media and how information goes from fact to opinion via various networking tools.