Harriet The SpyCam

So apparently there is going to be a movie called Harriet The Spy: Blog Wars.

It’s starting.

I mean, remember when we all first started using the Internet, and suddenly movies had to try to make web surfing dramatic? Instead of “Can she get to the car before the villain kidnaps her?” it became “Can she type fast enough to send an email before the villains hack into her computer?” Typing in and of itself is not exciting, as it involves sitting instead of running, jumping, or screaming. Okay, so I sometimes scream at my computer if it freezes, but that’s not exactly the kind of stuff that gets Scorcese so excited that he starts talking like the guy from Micro Machines after a few hits of helium.

Anyway, point being, the Internet and cell phones ruined drama as we know it because now in order for someone to be believably stranded they can’t have access to either. In every new horror movie or thriller the director has to belabor the point that the heroine’s phone is out of batteries and/or got taken or smashed to bits. If a character needs to know something they can’t go to the library anymore; they just Google it (my favorite example of this is when Lindsay Lohan types into Ask.com “bleeding wounds unexplained” in I Know Who Killed Me. If you have inexplicable bleeding wounds, it’s time to call 911 or at the very least search WebMD.com. Also, who the fuck uses Ask? But I digress.) All I’m saying is it’s a sad day when a shot of an Ethernet cable is supposed to be thrilling.

And now, I guess, blogging is becoming a plot device. For the past decade or so the main character job of choice seemed to be magazine editor (which, trust me, is also not nearly as glamorous as Hollywood would have you believe), and now we must count the days until our next rom-com heroine is an influential blogger who meets her paramour when she falls in love with his Tumblr page. It’s only a hop, skip, and a jump until You’ve Got Mail—a remake of a movie based on a play—gets remade again as Tweet Nothings or some shit. (Although I should totally copyright that title...)

Jezebel has a funny list of other children’s books reimagined for the 21st Twitterverse, but I thought I’d come up with a few blogs that literary characters might have started had they had the technology:

The Terrific Liar, by Holden Caulfield
http://sleeptightyamorons.blogspot.com

(Woah! This an actual blog url! Holden, is that you?)

Lo in the Morning (NSFW) by Humbert Humbert
http://www.flickr.com/photos/humbertsquared/sets/

Fuck, We’re Still In Kansas, Toto, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
http://prairiegrrrl.tumblr.com

I know you guys can do even better than me, and that’s what the comments are for.

P.S. Harriet the Spy on the Internet seems wrong, doesn’t it? Like Harriet and Her Spycam: Girl Voyeur. Gross, Hollywood. Gross.

Harriet The SpyCam