The Social

Is it a childhood nightmare, a modernized niche of folklore, a box-office-tested horror film staple, an ironic riff on American consumerism, or simply an undead corpse hungry for fresh human brains?

Maybe it's all of the above. On Saturday at noon, somewhere around 200 zombies assembled at a bar in midtown Manhattan and proceeded to terrorize the city well into the night. This was Zombiecon 2007, the third annual edition of the pre-Halloween flash mob, and these reanimated corpses took the day very seriously. Among the crowd were undead clowns, airline pilots, ballerinas, doctors, chefs, Roman generals, prom couples, and tennis players. There were also zombified versions of Santa Claus, Pirates of the Caribbean protagonist Captain Jack Sparrow, singer Amy Winehouse, and author Hunter S. Thompson.

(Others, like yours truly, just spruced up jeans and a T-shirt with theatrical blood and white face paint.)

Also spotted: Lindsay Campbell, host of video blog Wallstrip, in a full-on goth-zombie ensemble as she interviewed fellow members of the undead for the cameras.

Hey, so, I'm going to tell you about a party for a new social networking site that was hosted by a big-time blogger. But I'm not talking about the Twittering, lifecasting, Flickring kind of scene...think bottle service, trendy rap music, and a guy famous for drawing obscene Microsoft Paint captions on photos of Lindsay Lohan.

Yup, I mean Perez Hilton.

On Thursday night, the notorious celebrity gossip blogger descended upon Manhattan to host the launch party for the new nightlife-centered social networking site PMbuzz.com. Held at the subterranean midtown nightclub The Grand (click here for a video clip from LX.tv), the party was packed thanks to viral online publicity as well as numerous plugs on Hilton's widely-read blog. There was an open champagne bar, a DJ was spinning dance-worthy hip-hop all night, and if (heaven forbid) you happened to get sleepy, there were plenty of Vitamin Energy drinks courtesy of a sponsorship by the caffeinated beverage brand.

Sometimes there's some ambiguity when it comes to over-the-top Manhattan nightlife: it's hard to tell where the celebrity-culture-addicted, see-and-be-seen desperation ends and the self-aware irony and mockery begin. At a party where the celebrity guests include a Paris Hilton impersonator and a former Project Runway contestant, the motivation for the guests to show up could easily have been either. Or, alternately, there's the middle ground: free drinks, new people to meet, and the ability to say "Hey, this one time, I partied with that guy..." the next time one of your friends brings up Perez Hilton.

It's tough to discern.

Likewise, I can never tell whether to consider Hilton to be a legitimately annoying and overexposed gadfly or a schlocky cult figure. On one hand, the rotund Hilton, who regularly refers to himself in the third-person with monikers like "Perezzle" and "P-Nasty," showed up sporting bleach-blond hair and a mustache worthy of the Comedy Central cop show Reno 911. But on the other hand, he basked in the flurry of camera flashes at the event's red carpet (yes, there actually was one) and restricted his socializing to the confines of the velvet ropes that delineated the VIP section. If there's any self-deprecating irony left in Hilton's head, the fame has likely blocked its way to his cerebral cortex.

One thing's for sure: I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of the crowd, a gaggle of aspiring male models and minidress-clad girls with blown-out hair and glittery stilettos, had never heard of what the average social media junkie would consider to be the "blogerati." Say the name "Michael Arrington" and they'd probably ask if that's the guy who promotes on Friday Nights at some lounge in the Meatpacking District. Perez Hilton, however, is in his own league.

Every few months, a contingent of New York digital media entrepreneurs known as the Founders Club gets together and hosts a mixer for several hundred people to celebrate the start-up spirit of the local tech industry. The end result, as one might imagine, is a mixed bag of "big media," venture capital and finance types, start-up entrepreneurs, and members of the press.

On Tuesday night, the Founders Club threw its third event at the Frank Gehry-designed InterActiveCorp (IAC) building in Manhattan's West Chelsea neighborhood. I've put together a slideshow of some photographs from the event; a few captions may be cut off, but you can see the entire titles by clicking on the pictures in question to open up a new window.

UPDATE (9 AM ET): If you're more one for words than photos, the Alley Insider's recap is here.

All photos were taken by Wilson Tang of CNET Networks.

I count this as one of social networking blog Mashable's greatest accomplishments: installing as many Facebook Platform applications as possible onto a single profile and then taking a screenshot.

I've copy-pasted the screenshot below, but I'm warning you, it's enormous. Scroll down at your own risk.