I think that I am not alone when I say that I wince every time I see instant messaging play more than a minor role in films. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the only successful movie featuring mainstream Internet activities was You've Got Mail, and that clearly featured e-mail, not instant messaging. I'm using my relative ignorance about what movies are out there as the yardstick for being "successful."

On a side note, doesn't the term "instant messaging" seem totally dated? It's so not-catchy, I wonder how it ever stuck. It's like the exact opposite of an idiom -- weird because it's so literal.

For instance, look at this trailer for Hard Candy. Does anyone else say "God damn it" as soon as they see the intro? It doesn't even matter if the rest of the movie looks good or bad, that part just ruins it for me. Those were the first words out of my mouth.

Why?

This is an honest question, because I really can't think of an explanation. I considered the Early Adopter argument, wherein early adopters of a trend are bitter when they see their habit get mainstream attention. But I actually was a late adopter of instant messaging (and Internet access itself), so that can't be it. Maybe it has something to do with me being such a computer nerd. Or maybe it just seems like a forced attempt to capitalize on a popular activity.

This led me to thinking about when we'll start seeing blogging in movies. Certainly blogging has seen more press than instant messaging ever did. Who will be the first to capitalize on this attention? Am I behind the times, has it already happened?

Here are some predictions for the first movie plots we'll see come out of Hollywood that feature blogging.

  1. Man and woman write popular competing-interest blogs. After months of posting innuendo-laden comments on each other's blog, they meet and fall in love.
  2. Crazy guy stalks high school students through their blogs and murders them one by one, taking over authorship of their blogs in the process, making it appear that nothing ever happened.
  3. Girl writes popular blog, but her world is falling apart around her. Twist ending: the author is really someone else, and Girl is just a psychotic fan.
  4. Guy's small record shop is going to be shut down and replaced with Conglomerate's store. Guy rounds up Internet denizens by creating a blog to drum up support. Conglomerate is defeated by a landslide and Popular Band even plays at Guy's shop during the finale.

Anyone care to take bets on these? Feel free to comment and add your own tired plot ideas. Or, hey, you could even post something original.

Update: Hey, I think I owe myself $50 or something. The winner: prediction #3. Chris just alerted me to the movie Perfect Blue, in which:

A pop star Mima ... finds a website called "Mima's room" that has public diary entries which seem to be written by her discussing her life in explicit detail. ... It turns out that the diarist herself is delusional as she believes herself to be Mima and has made a disillusioned psycho-fan believe that she is the real Mima and the girl in the show is an imposter.

Pretty close, huh? Sadly, Chris says the web site plays only a minor role in the film. Plus it came out in 1997, way before blogs became mainstream.