Oscar Front Runner Sandra Bullock’s Love/Hate Affair with Social Media

The Academy Awards are only 3 days away and according to Nielsen’s data, Sandra Bullock is leading in the online buzz for the ‘Best Actress’ category. Time will tell if social media indicators have any correlation to her chances of winning. But the star has not always had such a charmed relationship with the digital realm. One only has to remember a different era–the mid-90s–and her starring role in the tech thriller ‘The Net’ which emphasized the dangers of digital media.

The film’s central character, played by Ms. Bullock, avoided all personal contact, had no real friends, and her stolen identity, the central point of the movie, was due to her all encompassing digital lifestyle. Her lifestyle in the film is quite simple to recreate with today’s technology platforms for serious fans of Ms. Bullock with this handy guide:

How to Live ‘The Net’ Lifestyle

• Order your take-out online: In the film, this was supposed to illustrate how cut off from real human contact she was, but it is also undeniably awesome. Nowadays we can accomplish this through most major pizza chains’ sites, Seamless Web (in New York City), or Open Table, but back then Sandy used a pizza.net (perhaps the world’s greatest url?).
• Put your medical records online: There are benefits to digitizing your digital history via Google Health, Microsoft Health Vault and PatientsLikeMe. The events in the movie did take a tragic turn as Dennis Miller’s character was killed off by hackers falsifying medical records.
• Books your vacations online: This has become one of the most popular online activities. Did Sandra use Kayak? Travelocity? Probably neither since this was 1995.
• Work remotely: Between Skype for telecommunications, Box.net for filesharing, Google docs, you can successfully work from home just as easily as Sandra did.
• Chat online: Who needs “real” people in your life when you can chat online all day, especially with Gchat and Google Buzz? After all what IS Google Buzz but a latter day 1990s chatroom?!

Chances are you are probably already sort of living out Sandra Bullock’s futuristic digital lifestyle. Come Oscar night, perhaps Sandra herself will be re-inspired by her “Net” days and skip the ceremony to stay home and order from pizza.net.