Cutting yourself off the Internet
We have been at Sakuracon 2008 over the last couple of days to celebrate the Otaku culture, watch some movies and take pictures.
When we take pictures, we offer our photographers business card and let people know that they can pick up their pictures on line. For the first time in 3 years of taking pictures at Sakuracon, this is the first time that people said they couldn’t afford to be connected to the Internet, and had no way to pick up the pictures.
Kids in the 9 to 40 bracket have said that they can not afford to purchase access to the Internet.
That is an interesting thing for that age bracket to be saying, and says much about what is happening with folks and their disposable income.
They can afford 90 dollars for the event, the hotel room, travel, money for stuff, money for food, and the rest of it, but 39.99 a month for Internet service, is something that people are finding they can’t or do not want to pay.
Of all the people we took pictures of at least 4 made mention of this, and when offered the choice of going to the library to pick up pictures, they were not interested in that either. They thought that the library was a place where people were surfing bad stuff all day.
This is a disturbing trend, not just for taking pictures, but the idea that with the high prices of housing and gasoline, that people are starting to economize by shutting down extraneous costs in their households. Part of that was shutting down access to the Internet.
These are not your average people, the people that go to Sakuracon have money, at least their parents money. They can afford to purchase a lot of Anime and Manga books, costumes, trinkets, and other things that go along with being part of the culture.
The scary part, and the part that businesses should be paying attention to, from Facebook to MySpace, to on line advertisers, book sellers, and people that take pictures is that the Gen-Y group of folks is finding that to economize and afford the things they want to afford, they are starting to shut down their access to the Internet on Home PC’s.
That alone should make folks take a look at the quickly disappearing ability for people to pay for things that they need to remain competitive in the market place.
Keywords: sakuracon, otaku, internet, access, money, pictures, gen-y, gen-x, anime, manga, 2008
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